Zen at War

The history of internment is not a glorious moment in American history. Zen at Work points out that Buddhists were not immune to nationalism, to pro-war statements. I'm not saying that to justify any cruelty, I'm just saying it wasn't a sure shot to say "Buddhists" are not warlike ever. There is other evidence that "Buddhists" can be violent.

A nation doesn't have one religion. A nation therefore can't practice a religion because it is not unified. Sure, there are "Buddhist" countries. If you consider genocide by a Buddhist country, then that disproves a country practices a religion. I don't believe a true Buddhist can commit much violence, but even a vegan diet includes the death of insects due to machinery. How to you consider others and minimize violence is the question.

I hope American can maintain some religious freedom, and not just for majority sects of Christianity. Tricycle has an interview with Williams, who has a book about practice in the internment camps for Japanese Americans, which is called American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War. It looks like an interesting story and history. I am curious about Buddhist's experiences and practices, Japanese-American experiences.

Internment is similar to the wall. We can accept any problems but if one Japanese-American causes trouble, that is too much. Angel Mothers, not the original group, but the radical right wing group who co-opted the term, that takes exception to their children dying at the hands of a non-citizen. As if being murdered by a citizen would somehow be acceptable, as if a dead child isn't horrible enough. Indeed 1200 children have died since Parkland, for our love of guns and America's misinterpretation of the constitution. Democrats should definitely abuse presidential powers and declare an emergency for more gun control when they inevitably regain the white house.

The same wackado principle was in place at Riker's Island when I worked there. COs could bring in drugs to sell and use, rape prisoners, and commit all manner of crimes, and whatnot, but if you weren't a CO, they made sure you were not carrying in any contraband and I had to go around and around the checkpoint to get scanned.

It's the us/them thinking. So much othering. Call me unpatriotic if you want, but I want to live in an inclusive America that works to solve real problems, not just keep "others" from creating problems.

I feel a connection to Japan because my mother was born in Japan in 1947 (to Americans during the Occupation).

I note that Iniesta, a legendary central midfielder who played for Barcelona FC for 16 years, is enjoying his time playing for Kobe in Japan. There they don't see losing as quiet as tragic, and perhaps have a more zen attitude. Sounds so sane.

I hope we can distinguish those who are mistakenly violent in the name of spirituality, and those who truly work towards truly practicing ideals. This discernment will help to avoid idiot compassion.

The hope going forward is that being Buddhist won't disqualify one from being American. I can imagine things turning a way that will make it "un-American". Don't forget that Buddhism was hounded out of its birthplace in India, through competition, conversion and absorption. The burning of Nalanda is a low point. America's love of religious freedom isn't that firm that you can say it can't happen here.

The end of Buddhist Monks, A.D. 1193

The raise in American Buddhism is interesting to me. "Though the religion born in India has been in the US since the 19th century, the number of adherents rose by 170 percent between 1990 and 2000, according to the American Religious Identity Survey. An ARIS estimate puts the total in 2004 at 1.5 million, while others have estimated twice that. "The 1.5 million is a low reasonable number," says Richard Seager, author of "Buddhism in America." This is from the Christian Science Monitor in 2006. "

"People are looking for experiential practices, not just a new belief system or a new set of ethical rules which we already have, and are much the same in all religions," Surya Das says. "It's the transformative practices like meditation which people are really attracted to."

The Pew Center write, "The number of Buddhists around the world is expected to increase between 2010 and 2030, rising from 488 million to about 511 million. However, the global Buddhist population is projected to decline after 2030, falling to 486 million by 2050, roughly where it was in 2010."

It is considered dramatic for Buddhists to become around 1% of America. Twelve percent consider Buddhism as an important influence, 25-30 million people.

Buddhist have been persecuted in the history of Earth. And have done persecuting.

My job is to work to decrease the harm I do to others, to think about others and understand the context that I am in, with empathy, and see the larger picture than just my own selfish comforts, pleasures and avoidance of pain. To work towards embodying and exemplifying the ideals I find attractive and aspire to.

And as usual the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi has some answers for fostering peace: "While the endeavor to achieve peace may often be frustrating, we should remember that nothing truly worthy can be achieved without effort. Peace and justice may be slow to arrive, but we will never obtain them without a struggle."

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.

More on violence and buddhism

NY Times had an interesting article, with an interesting quote: "There is a philosophically problematic presupposition that also figures into widespread surprise at the very idea of violence perpetrated by Buddhists -- that there is a straightforward relationship between beliefs people hold and the likelihood that they will behave in a corresponding way."

I'm guilty of violating my core beliefs, spectacularly so, but I do think there is a "straightforward relationship between beliefs people hold and the likelihood that they will behave in a corresponding way." It's called integrity. Unless you're on Arrested Development and part of the Bluth family, there is an expectation between words and actions. Maybe not if you're the president of the USA, and his staff, but for everyone else. (I never realized how much I expect from the president of the USA until a president seems so unpresidential--I often realize my beliefs after I have violated them. I need to be more proactive.)

The writers goes on to say that we are not transparent, we are opaque, and we never really know what we're going to do or for why.

The writers are Dan Arnold and Alicia Turner, and they go on to suggest that what ever people believe, the same wide range of human failings will always be present. A sort of conservation of failings belief? In dumping the metaphysic that people might be influenced by their beliefs, they seem wise and savvy, but do they create another unbelievable metaphysic?

I feel like the second I stepped into Buddhism, it was all about exemplifying and inhabiting a belief in doing well for others, and not just saying it. That's the whole point. Now, we're all in process and we're unlikely to be enlightened so there will be a gap between our aspirations and our behavior. I'd say "hate the sin but not the sinner", but we are what we do, so the sin is the sinner. We can see people for what they hope to be. The point is to be realistic that there will be a gap, but also not make that an "alli alli in come free".

I did like it that the article pointed out that the colonizers, the British, started splitting the country's groups by saying the Buddhists were peaceful, and that the Muslim and Hindu were not. There are peaceful strains in both those religions, they could have worked to unite, but as colonizers they were more about exploiting. So the idea that Buddhists are non-violent may have a history in colonialism.

But I still think we should be able to follow belief to action. I'm not willing to give that up.

Buddhist Killer

I've written about buddhism and violence in this blog. People are surprised that "Buddhist" commit violence.

To put it another way, is someone Christian if they go against so many of the core teachings? You can call yourself anything. And some of religion is culture. People can superficially identify themselves as something, but perhaps they are making an expression of culture, not so much religion. I don't mean to be elitist, but you know you can't be a Mets fan if you never watch a game, and you don't pay attention to them. There are rules to language use that we agree on. For me violence is not something you can do as a Buddhist, although out of ignorance greed and delusion we make mistakes. To be a Buddhist means you are on the path towards enlightenment, among other things, but that doesn't mean you have to be enlightened.

So I read an article today about the "signs" that Aaron Alexis was taking a turn for the worse. I skimmed an article about how hard it is to really predict human behavior and the potential for violence. I read the article from Wildmind. Bodhipoksa points out that even ill will was considered dangerous, let alone violence. He says "Alexis was not a Buddhist representative. He’s not a Buddhist teacher. He’s just another tragic figure with a mental illness and access to high-powered weaponry — and a person who, at times, practiced Buddhism. The time he took a gun and used it to kill people is not one of the times he was practicing Buddhism."

Danny Fisher is quoted in a Washington Post article that Buddhists are human beings too. I take that to mean that they are not perfect, can make mistakes. My friend told me the comments are interesting in this article, but I didn't get a chance to read many yet.

In general, in the spiritual life, we take ideals and work to move towards them. At times I have beaten myself up for not living up to those ideals. Of course that is unproductive, and doesn't help me move towards them. The correct utilization of ideals is something you hopefully learn on the path. So anyone can look at Mr. Alexis and say, wow you didn't live up to Buddhist ideals. Yea, of course. On the other hand, we don't need to let ourselves off the hook easily, to dismiss our mistakes as just being human and move on. We need to look deeply into ourselves and try and figure things out, if we're to progress at all along the path towards enlightenment.

It is important to "start where you are", be realistic, authentic. To create a false self that apes the ideals isn't true spirituality, but an act. "I am not enlightened" is something one of my friends used to always say. 

We can sometimes project our idealism onto others. It is important to see people as they really are, and not just what you want them to be. I think that is an important step along the spiritual path--to realize you are projecting idealistic expectations onto others, and that perhaps you can just work to see people clearly and work on your own progress, instead of positing ideals in other people. When you become disillusioned, and see people for who they really are, that can be a fairly liberating and self empowering thing. 

To become enlightened is not an easy thing. I don't know how rare or common it is. I know one teacher who claims to be enlightened, and I know people who think that's really funny because someone who was enlightened wouldn't brag about it. It is certain that others are ahead of me on the path and that I've got a lot of work to do. I can learn from people, and especially to look towards people who are ahead of you can be one way to learn what is possible. 

This incident will of course bring out a wide variety of opinions. We don't do mental health very well in America. For one, you can't see mental illness the way you can see a broken arm. If someone gets cancer, people pour out sympathy. When someone gets schizophrenia, we stay away like we're going to get mental germs. Our policies reflect our ignorances, and we spend a lot of money on ER visits instead of saving money with a good solid system. You don't hear the save money, don't expand government republicans ever talking about that one, because they have a preconception that government involvement is inherently bad. In my opinion our country has swung towards the far right, and we are in an era of callousness and greed. Greed, hatred, delusion and ignorance. You could say all eras are in a phase of that. I know a lot about mental health, and I can tell you, we don't really do it right in the good old USA. A lot of that has to do with our medical insurance system.

We get so afraid that if we give people benefits without working, even if it's in our own best interest, then people will become dependent on the government. Forget that some people don't have family to fall back on. Forget it that there are many structural inequalities that reinforce inequality. Why are guns and drugs so available in poor neighborhoods, and medical care, good schools and housing are not available. We like to blame the poor instead of work towards social justice, because of our fear of dependence. We don't like to talk about dependency issues in the golden parachutes of ineffective managers. We don't like to talk about dependency of the military welfare queens. Being greedy is good when you exploit others successfully, but not when you're just poor. We don't like to talk about personal responsibility as we bail out corporations. Then we can see the larger picture.

Second is the issue of gun control in the USA. I was in rural North Carolina and I saw a bumper sticker that said "Charlton Heston is my president". He was the president of the NRA, and an actor. We have a twisted gun culture that is very well organized around the investment of not impinging on our "freedom" to own a gun. 

You're going to need a lot of guns to enforce the inequalities of our system. Like prisons, guns are big business, and they pay lobbyists to keep things the same. Our alienated and disaffected population is too apathetic to rise up and conquer with common sense. You can manufacture all the statistics you want, and say guns don't kill people, people kill people, but taking guns out of people's hands causes less violence. I don't think the solution is that everyone else has a gun and they shoot Mr. Alexis before he gets too far. That just doesn't work for me.

So, as I say, the murder of 13 people, including Mr. Alexis, is going to bring out a lot of opinions. I am among the people with opinions.  

Quote from Living Wisely

"We fear fearlessness in the same way that we fear nonviolence. To act non-violently certainly appears to make one more vulnerable. You are dropping your defensiveness, leaving yourself more open, more exposed. However, this very vulnerability can be disarming, and even when it doesn't succeed in disarming aggression, the lack of desire for retaliation and security renders you much less vulnerable at a mental and emotional level. You do not feed the escalating verbal aggression out of which most physical violence issues. At its most developed, non-violence is equivalent to non-ego, there is no fixed identification with the threatened self, and therefore no fear for it, and no violence in defense of it." (p. 37-38)

violence and Buddhism

There have been a slew of articles asking interesting questions. The first one I saw was Raymond Ibraham's questioning of why the Muslims in Myanmar are getting no criticism, why do we assume that the Buddhists are over reacting? The Economist notes that conflict between Muslims and Buddhists is escalating. M. Sophie Newman asks if Buddhist are opposed to self defense? Bombs are going off in Buddhist sacred sites.  Michael Jerryson is a scholar of Buddhist violence and people accuse him of being anti-Buddhist even though he is a historian. I have even written a blog post about the hope of peace.

I'm not sure what to make of it. Does might make right? Is life just an eye for an eye? I hope for something different, but I also want to keep my eyes open and see what's really going on.

I remember when I would visit my father. He lived in a town that was a days bus ride away. I would go for holidays occasionally and for some time in the summer. He married a woman who had 3 daughters. I was older. The oldest daughter was used to being in charge. So the first half of the visit she would challenge my authority, and the second half, she would like having an older brother.

One visit, she was intent on challenging my commitment to non-violence by hitting her sisters, and seeing what I would do. The only thing that would stop her was to whack her back. So she exposed my lack of commitment to non-violence. I was willing to use violence to stop violence.

Now that's an artificial setup, and I'm not saying that's what going on in Myanmar. But what if the only response is violence. Tit for tat is the second best strategy. The best occasionally throws in some good, just to break any cycles, because if everyone is tit for tat, then the cycle of violence never ends. I can't remember where I read that stuff, but I believe in it to a certain level. I think often though, it's better to not strike back. The annoying thing with being more evolved, is that you overlook annoying and upsetting things because striking back won't solve any thing. Communication is the best way to resolve differences. And that's what peace workers do, they open dialogues and work to resolve conflict through communication and negotiation.

Violence and Buddhism

One of the Buddhist precepts is: abstention from killing of living beings. Another is: abstention from taking the non-given. Another is: abstention from covetousness. Another is: abstention from hatred.

Now these precepts are suggestions from the enlightened one, as handed down by the tradition, on how to move towards enlightenment. Can you be a Buddhist if you're not trying to move towards enlightenment? Perhaps you just want to make merit by supporting the monks. In America, the lay/monk split doesn't play as well, and seeing merit literally seems wrong. But perhaps you can be a Buddhist if you try to be kind to people, and try to be mindful, even if you don't have the confidence or resources to actually try for enlightenment. In the TBC going to refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha is seen as the defining act of Buddhism. Now there are levels of going for refuge, which I don't want to go into. But someone can see themselves as a cultural Buddhist or a nominal Buddhist because the just adopt the local culture, which is Buddhist.

I thought Genghis Kahn was a Buddhist, but it seems he was more of a waring and political beast, who consulted with many religions, and grew up in a Buddhist Mongolia, though it's by no means a monolithic culture. That was when I first got involved and saw anyone who might be labeled a Buddhist as really being Buddhist. Also I didn't know that much about Genghis Kahn, who it turns out, after his death, had begun what would be the largest empire on earth. Did you know that? But I digress.

So what does a Buddhist do with a history of violence by Buddhists? I have not read Buddhist Warfare. Nor have I read Buddhism and Violence (Publications of the Lumbini International Research Institute, Nepal). The first one is new and in print, but these books don't seem to be about spirituality, more about history and culture.

I don't know if reading about Buddhist culture moves you on the path towards enlightenment, but I think an understanding of causes and conditions is never wrongheaded. If I was enlightened, I think this blog would be different, but since I'm not, I do write about culture. A way of keeping me in the game sometimes is to just do anything buddhisty, even if it's tangental.

Obama was in Myanmar and said recently, "What we’ve learned in the United States is that there are certain principles that are universal, apply to everybody no matter what you look like, no matter where you come from, no matter what religion you practice.” In Myanmar they have pushed out ethnic Muslims for fear of Islamization. This has been going on for a while. This seems to go against the Buddhist precepts listed in the first paragraph. I believe in religious freedom and tolerance.

A state or culture can't prescribe one's spirituality. And yet what do you do when someone says their child can't have a simple operation because it's against the family's spiritual belief? There are limits. I would force the family to accept an operation that saves a child's life even if it goes against a religion, though I wouldn't do it lightly or easily, and there might be some rather negative consequences to that course of action. There are many complicated issues here.

But what would I do if someone told me I couldn't be a Buddhist? What if the price to be a Buddhist was too high? There's lots of books about that kind of situation, horrifying novels, history and memoirs. There is also subtle ways of prejudice and are just as unacceptable to me, and yet I've said negative things about other religions. I confess to hatred and false views (ie lack of tolerance). I hereby wish to move forward with religious tolerance.

You can read about violence done by nominal cultural Buddhists, and you don't want to tell someone what their designation is, but then again you can be wrong about what you think you are. It's possible you think you believe in creationism and evolution, but if you understand them both, it's impossible to believe in both (DARWIN'S DANGEROUS IDEA: EVOLUTION AND THE MEANINGS OF LIFE). And yet when I took an informal survey at the school I worked at, the majority of the people claimed to believe both. So what do you do with a group who sees themselves as Buddhists, but doesn't really follow the teachings of the Buddha? Do we say they are not Buddhist by virtue of the violence?

My solution is that a nominal or cultural Buddhist can commit violence, but that anyone moving past a superficial level of Buddhism can not engage in violence. And a self proclaimed Buddhist did some violence, the would see in meditation, reflection and discussion, that it wasn't the way towards enlightenment. I have agonized over my own personal mistakes, confessed them, done pujas to them, and in general work to evolve past them, with admittedly mixed results at times. Violence is not a way to become enlightened. Now you can concoct some weird scenario where you have to kill one person to save millions and billions (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine nailed that.). Even then it's not a slam dunk, that it's obvious.

The dean in the school I once worked in said he thought there would always be war. And I think that it's pretty much evident that war is constantly happening on this earth, and to say it's not happening is a weird kind of digging your head into the sands. But the idea that we can't, as a species, evolve past it, is a kind of pessimism. Maybe you'll see aggression in the playground of children, but there's always adults there to break it up. We have violence inside us, maybe that will always be there till we get into the higher evolution. I hope we can evolve past state violence, at least, even if, like Spock, it takes a while to master our turbulent emotions. Even if you're not a Buddhist, a world without state violence is an appealing idea.