was Thich Nhat Hanh a secular Buddhist?

Interesting post in r/Buddhism: "was Thich Nhat Hanh a secular Buddhist?"

First off what is secular Buddhism?

To me it means you don't have to believe in the 33 god realms, you don't have to believe in any metaphysics, and you can still love mythological thinking but not take it literally, and you can still respect the tradition and culture that Buddhism came from. I can also respect my modern outlook, my modern education, and my modern worldview, that says gods don't exist, exceptionalism is wrong and multiculturalism is right. That governments should be secular, have freedom of religion and freedom from religion, and shouldn't follow wackos even if they claim to be of my religion, or other religions. It's a modern sophisticated world view, that doesn't mean you have to pretend you believe things to belong to the tribe. I don't have to believe in reincarnation even if it's important to many traditions and the new sanghas that don't require it haven't existed for long.

Secular Buddhism doesn't mean you have to believe any modern thinking as Buddhism. Know what you think and where it comes from. If it come from the enlightenment or Thomas Jefferson, then that is where it comes from. Secular Buddhism isn't new age fuzzy thinking, you have be exacting and precise in what you think. You can also be influenced by Ram Das if you've read his book, but you know he's a Hindu, and that's not Buddhism. (I haven't read his book.) You can be influenced by whatever, just know where everything comes from. 

I don't think psychedelics help the spiritual life but if you imagine you've gotten insight through drug use, whatever, good for you. Secular Buddhists can be aware of the Theravadan traditions and respect them greatly, but we're not fundamentalists or traditionalists, or think only Asians can be Buddhists, that heritage Buddhists are superior somehow. I am willing to listen to critiques of colonialism and whiteness because we're interested in everyone's opinion. I'm not afraid of people having their experience, and I want to be inclusive and understanding. Not "anything goes," but willing to listen.

Syncretism is the blending of ideas and thought worlds. So in China you can blend Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. In America in 2022 you can blend multiculturalism and make sense of the world through whatever cobbled together worldview you have. 

I think when the Buddha whisked a fellow to the realm of the 33 gods, he was telling him not to renounce the robes, and keep up the spiritual life, and we can get lessons from the mythology without committing to 33 realms. I used to say the 33 Hindu realms but supposedly these realms predate even Hinduism. 

Whatever the indigenous times the Buddha created his Dharma, we don't have to literally now think about the 33 god realms as real outside the psychology of the time. They could be a useful and colorful mythology, and they're not false just because they were not the mythology I grew up with, but they're also not automatically true. The way in which they exist is probably psychological and up for debate. Just embracing the 33 realms of the gods because the Buddha mentioned them, in the teachings that come down to us from 2,500 years ago, doesn't make you a better Buddhist. I'm disinclined to say a certain way of being is less Buddhist. I do have judgements and discernment but I'll use that for my practice. I come from a meditation emphasizing biased society, and you don't have to meditate to be a Buddhist, though anyone on the path will want to engage in what the Buddha was doing when he crossed over, at least a little bit. You can lay the groundwork for walking the path and put eggs in the next life basket if you wish. I don't put any eggs in that basket. That's my worldview and it would violate me to say I had to believe that. I could be wrong, I know I'm wrong quite a lot of the time, but I have to really believe something and I don't get a feeling for other lives. That's just me being honest and authentic. One of the great things about the sangha is that you meet all kinds of people who believe all kinds of things.

For me, as a refuge from Christian America, I don't want to have to believe in anything and I like the Buddhism that is more about practice, doesn't get out the sticks to enforce right view, though right view would come in handy and is the first step in the 8 fold path of Buddhism. Theological hair splitting to me is about branding of a sect, and sects are about giving someone credit, and flows of money, and while that is important to some, I'm not into that. I prefer the forest traditions, the hermit traditions, and I'll go off and be a hard working and devout as I can be based on my understanding. I can think for myself. That is where I'm coming from. I do need the sangha, I can be wrong. I'm grateful for the traditions and the developments and elaborations of the traditions. I appreciate another synthesis. At the end of the day I have to work it out for me in my mind.

I don't like it that people come onto r/Buddhism and say, "this and that is making me not believe in Buddhism." You have a responsibility to make it work out for you, and you can always abandon the Dharma. You can't embrace the Dharma if you can't reject it. Obedience isn't primary. You own your own spiritual life. Make it make sense however you want. If that makes people feel uncomfortable, well that's probably not the only thing that makes them feel uncomfortable. 

Stephen Batchelor's secular Buddhism is a version of secular Buddhism, and his Buddhism Without Belief is inspiring to me. His biography is interesting. He was involved in a Tibetan sangha, but went to a Korean Zen (Soen) sangha. I liked his book Living With The Devil. I liked his first book Along with Others. I liked his memoirs and his book about new traditions. He's an interesting person and a good writer. 

When I first encounter Thich Nhat Hanh's teachings, I honestly didn't like the Christian language he uses sometimes. That actually put me off when I first started reading him. I think he's trying to communicate in the Christian centric English language. USA is 65% Christian, and 0.7% Buddhist.

The other thing is he's a Zen teacher in the Rinzai tradition, so with the perfection of wisdom teachings, there is a sophisticated outlook. He's on the lookout for duality.

Reading Thay's wikipedia page isn't without his controversy in his monastic life and conforming to the traditions in his country. He was fired from teaching and he was taken off the books. He's not hyper-orthodox, he could think for himself. He was banished from his country and had to live in exile. He was ordained and he went to school, but he switched around some. 

He's the leader of a movement. His movement was started 1964. He's less controversial than Triratna (1967) or NKT (1991), Hannah or Tri Dao. All these people are vilified on r/Buddhism as not Buddhism by some. There's a witch hunt against new Buddhists. 

I'm not unsympathetic. I don't like Shambhala, with Trungpa sending for teenage girls to be sent to his room or 8 year olds snorting coke at the party, Trungpa dying of alcoholism and his successor teacher spreading HIV under the guise of spirituality. 

Or Ole Nydahl or Tri Dao, from what I've heard. Go investigate for yourself, make up your own mind. What I've heard can be wrong, but supposedly Tri Dao hasn't been ordained no matter how many followers he has on Tik Tok. Tri Dao supposedly was caught impersonating a security guard 5 years ago, and has a past of fraudulent and impersonating behavior. He could adopt a police officer persona, and this is suggestive about his present behavior, that he's adopting a monk's behavior without actually ordaining. The signs aren't good.

Time will tell. Insincere movements fizzle out or swerve towards cultism. But there's also something there. Hannah started a bunch of sanghas, I admire that. Triratna has taught a lot of people to meditate and has a lot of Buddhist centers in England. Sangharakshita is my teacher. I've met a lot of people in NYC who have been to NKT and feel they have gotten something positive from it.

Of all the new movements, I feel like Thich Nhat Hanh feels kind, feels centered, feels maybe popularizing and modern, but I don't know what goes on behind the monks closed doors in the monastery. I haven't been yet. 

Many Zen teachers are obsessed with lineage, and I haven't gotten that from Thay.

Anyway, upshot, it's not clear to me what secular Buddhism is, and I'm not an expert of Thay, but I think it's an interesting question. At this stage in my life, I like the questions more than the answers I can give. It leads to more questions. The Thay sangha I participate in has a lot of Christians in it. So it's flexible enough to accept that.

Poem by Thay.

Effective Altruism

Lovely profile of William MacAskill in the New Yorker by Gideon Lewis-Kraus.

Peter Singer and Toby Ord are mentioned as influences. "Ord’s ideal beneficiary was the Fred Hollows Foundation, which treats blindness in poor countries for as little as twenty-five dollars a person." Derek Parfit is mentioned.

"“My first big win was convincing him about deworming charities.” It may seem impossible to compare the eradication of blindness with the elimination of intestinal parasites, but health economists had developed rough methods. MacAskill estimated that the relief of intestinal parasites, when measured in “quality-adjusted life years,” or qalys, would be a hundred times more cost-effective than a sight-saving eye operation.

Quote: “He was at dinner in Oxford—some sort of practical-ethics conference—and he was just deeply shocked that almost none of the attendees were vegetarians, because he thought that was the most basic application of ethical ideas.”

"If Peter Singer’s theory—that any expenditure beyond basic survival was akin to letting someone die—was simply too taxing to gain wide adherence, it seemed modest to ask people to give ten per cent of their income. This number also had a long-standing religious precedent."

"A kind of no-hard-feelings, debate-me gladiatorialism was seen as a crucial part of good “epistemic hygiene,” and a common social overture was to tell someone that her numbers were wrong."

"We passed Queen’s Lane Coffee House. “That’s where Bentham discovered utilitarianism,”"

"Against Malaria Foundation alone estimates that its work to date will save a hundred and sixty-five thousand lives."

Criticism: "Rob Reich wrote, “Plato identified the best city as that in which philosophers were the rulers. Effective altruists see the best state of affairs, I think, as that in which good-maximizing technocrats are in charge. Perhaps it is possible to call this a politics: technocracy. But this politics is suspicious of, or rejects, the form of politics to which most people attach enormous value: democracy.” The Ethiopian American A.I. scientist Timnit Gebru has condemned E.A.s for acting as though they are above such structural issues as racism and colonialism." 

Also, "Bernard Williams, who noted that utilitarianism might, in certain historical moments, look like “the only coherent alternative to a dilapidated set of values,” but that it was ultimately bloodless and simpleminded. Williams held that the philosophy alienated a person “from the source of his actions in his own convictions”—from what we think of as moral integrity." Someone who seeks justification for the impulse to save the life of a spouse instead of that of a stranger, Williams famously wrote, has had “one thought too many.”"

"Some E.A.s felt that one of the best features of their movement—that, in the context of near-total political sclerosis, they had found a way to do something—had been recast as a bug."

I found the very thought provoking, and like all lovely New Yorker articles, it pushed the subject further and further, while circling around the original questions. Loved it. Reminded me of intro to ethics that I took with Claudia Card at UW. And it feels like what it says, so vital and somehow a little something not quite right.

My impression was that it was kind of Prayer for Jabez. Permission to earn a lot of money, albeit set in Oxford, and then spread to Silicon Valley and financial markets, for the elite. My grandfather, who was a minister, thought it was about increasing his ministry, seemed harmless. Wanting to do the most good. But people use it for other purposes. I think about the ministers in Texas who wouldn't open up their mansions when there were floods and people lost their housing.

I'm also thinking of the evil guy in Don't Look Up. This all could just be another grift.

"Carla Zoe Cremer and Luke Kemp published a paper called “Democratising Risk,” which criticized the “techno-utopian approach” of longtermists."

"Last year, the Centre for Effective Altruism bought Wytham Abbey, a palatial estate near Oxford, built in 1480. Money, which no longer seemed an object, was increasingly being reinvested in the community itself. The math could work out: it was a canny investment to spend thousands of dollars to recruit the next Sam Bankman-Fried. But the logic of the exponential downstream had some kinship with a multilevel-marketing ploy. Similarly, if you assigned an arbitrarily high value to an E.A.’s hourly output, it was easy to justify luxuries such as laundry services for undergraduate groups, or, as one person put it to me, wincing, “retreats to teach people how to run retreats.” Josh Morrison, a kidney donor and the founder of a pandemic-response organization, commented on the forum, “The Ponzi-ishness of the whole thing doesn’t quite sit well.”"

"In “What We Owe the Future,” he is careful to sidestep the notion that efforts on behalf of trillions of theoretical future humans might be fundamentally irreconcilable with the neartermist world-on-fire agenda."

In the end it feels like highly sophisticated fund raising. It feels a little Andrew Yang: Candidate who never served in government. Wants to hang out with the bigwigs, be in the room. But being headed by a philosophy professor is slightly more impressive, though he clearly wants out and doesn't want to be the intellectual face of the organizations. 

The conflict between longtermism and concrete nows isn't really, we can do both.

"Open Philanthropy has embraced an ethic of “worldview diversification,” whereby we might give up on perfect commensurability and acknowledge it is O.K. that some money be reserved to address the suffering of chickens, some for the suffering of the poor, and some for a computational eschatology. After almost a decade of first-principles reasoning, E.A.s had effectively reinvented the mixed-portfolio model of many philanthropic foundations."

Links:

“Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” by Peter Singer

GiveWell (Wikipedia) "Since its inception, GiveWell has directed the donation of more than a billion dollars." (New Yorker

Give What We Can (Wikipedia)

Open Philanthropy (Wikipedia)

Give Directly (direct link)

Democratising Risk

Lead Exposure Elimination Project

The Case for Longtermism by William MacAskill in NY Times. I'm not convinced. If you knew for sure an asteroid wasn't going to hit earth in 5 years and wipe us out, then maybe, but I don't think you can know some catastrophic event won't happen. The galaxy is big, who knows if a rogue sun comes into our solar system and smashes everything up. I mean I think you should think about the future but there is a possibility of nuclear war that kills most of humanity, so there's just too many questions about the future. And knowing something would pay dividends 500 years from now seems dodgy. Taking care of things in the moment seems more likely to keep things better for the future. But I take his point, and I think it mostly applies to global warming and doing things to stop global warming.

I think Buddhism is a kind of longtermism. 

Further discussion:

Freddie deBoer Is Wrong About Effective Altruism

Solon article by Emile Torres

12/10/22 update: I went to effective altruism’s first post-Sam Bankman-Fried conference. Here’s what I saw. (Vox)

11/22/23 How a Fervent Belief Split Silicon Valley—and Fueled the Blowup at OpenAI

Sam Altman’s firing showed the influence of effective altruism and its view that AI development must slow down; his return marked its limits (Wall Street Journal)

What to read?

Reddit has the information already there, people just don't look for it, and then ask, and people refer them to the sidebar. You couldn't go too wrong with their book list.

I personally would not put any Chogyam Trungpa on the list because he did not exemplify the discipline. I do think about his idea of idiot compassion, and the critique of materialism is OK. I hope someone can come along and update that book.

I stumbled on Jack Kornfield, Pema Chodron, Lama Surya Das, Charlotte Joko Beck, Ayya Khema, and Thich Nhat Hanh. Those were not bad writers, and I really think what you stumble upon will be good enough. The process of finding books should be one you own. There's enough information out there. If you don't have good book reading habits and don't have book lists around you, then putting it on other people isn't really developing the habit yourself. Take responsibility. 

Even so here is my first thoughts:

Breath By Breath. There are many good books about anapanasati, but I think this is a good first book on it. Already I'm showing my bias towards meditation. The Buddha became enlightened through many circumstances, but one of them was that he was meditating. 

You should start meditating on the breath, with this as a guide about the full eventual possibilities. Human face to face support in meditation is very important. It's easy to skitter off. Take a class first and then if you think you're going to go in this direction, then read this one. Already you're going to be connected to a sangha by taking a meditation class. Maybe your entry is by a talk. Or going to a drop in. Maybe you met with someone. Maybe you attended a zoom meeting. 

I like to have a deep ancient book to pair with modern interpretations. So I would also recommend reading the Dhammapada, then the Udana, then the Saṃyutta Nikāya, then Dīgha Nikāya, then Majjhima Nikāya.  You could linger on those those books for the rest of your life. 

The Mahayana sutras, Perfection of Wisdom and Pure Land sutras are also amazing. There is a book about Buddhist literature, The Eternal Legacy by Sangharakshita. There are a million books about Buddhist history but every book make a choice about what to focus on. You have to make a choice about what you are interested in. You have to pick a sect that will also narrow your choices.

Tuning in and trying to change will help you to realize you need to work on yourself. That is when I would next read Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach. I think that the pairing of modern psychology can really lay the groundwork for sorting yourself out, and cultivating a growing mentality. There are people who think that's watered down, or bringing in something that isn't traditionally Buddhism into Buddhism. The fantasy that we don't have modern ideas, and can just live off ancient ideas 2,500 years ago is appealing to me. Cuts down on a lot of reading to eliminate the enlightenment and modern psychology.

To further the positive mentality I would then work on the Brahma Viharas. Christine Feldman's Boundless Heart hasn't been surpassed yet to my knowledge, I hope to find more books on this amazing meditation.

I like pairing meditation technique with Dharma and history. There's a natural synergy to that pairing in reading. Whether it's Pali Canon, or Mahayana sutras, or modern histories. There's a lot of directions you could go here, and in a way it depends on your sect. At this point you should be engaged in a sangha, and they should be telling you what to consider reading. 

Many people on r/Buddhism disparage Triratna and NKT, but if I'm really honest, the most people I've met who were Buddhists were from these sanghas. What does it mean to be popular but scored by traditionalist Buddhists who want you to go to an established sangha? You could almost say that it takes a pervert like Chogyam Trungpa to bring Buddhism to America. You could almost say you need a uncharismatic victorian to bring Buddhism to England in Sangharakshita. You could almost say you need a weird egomaniac like Kelsang Gyatso to imagine we needed a new Tibetan order. I actually like his books. Hannah founded many sanghas, and her husband isn't the one who did it, but took over her sanghas when she died. Ambedkar converted to Buddhism, encouraging the Dalits to do so too, and then he died in 1956. Nobody as dynamic has harnessed his people. Daniel Ingram has broken the taboo of saying you're enlightened. There are plenty of figures who open up the Dharma to people, but then are heavily criticized for being imperfect and not traditional. IMS has a kind of heresy to deny the lay monk split. 

You can't recommend books without stepping into this controversy. 

I would almost say you need some kind of charismatic person to transmit the Dharma to the west. We like our hucksters, snake oil salesmen. Humans have clay feet. People go onto r/Buddhism and ask who is enlightened right now? Who is the best teacher? What is the best sect? How do I get a valid teacher?

Those questions and those journeys are the spiritual life. They even split you at the point whether you go Mahayana or Theravadan. To recommend the Lotus Sutra over the Udana is a choice. To recommend Milarepa over Pali Canon is a choice. How do you make that choice? 

There was a person who was shot in the head, and it severed the part of his brain connected to his emotions. He seemed OK, and they sent him back to work. What do you want to have for lunch? He could not stop considering all the possibilities. You need your emotions to eliminate options. There are lots of options. Making a choice is maybe more complicated than it appears to be to those who have found a sangha. 

Connecting to a sangha can be hard. Some countries don't have a sangha. Some places don't have a sangha close by. Some cities are filled with ethnic sanghas that make people weird if they don't look like everyone else. It's a kind of turning of the tables, white people aren't too concerned when black people walk in, but there are cases where people who aren't white don't feel comfortable going to a Buddhist sangha in America. White fragility makes it hard to discuss that experience. Some people have psychological problems going to new places, risking new experiences. For me online experiences aren't very gratifying, but something is better than nothing. 

Reading books can make you develop the motivation to find a sangha, but it can also further reinforce the rugged individualism and irregular steps on the path. Take regular steps. Connect with a sangha. That is a choice that eliminates other options but not making a choice is a choice that eliminates other choices too.

For me, A Survey of Buddhism by Sangharakshita is the amazing classic from 1947 that nobody talks about enough. He has so many amazing books. That's coming from someone who was raised in the Triratna sangha. 

There are other Buddhists who don't consider Triratna a real sangha. We could talk about calling people in a sangha wrongheaded, but the fact is we do judge other people's sanghas, and do have ideas about which ones are good and bad. I think Shambala is irredeemable. R/Buddhism has a list teacher to avoid. Sex and the Spiritual Teacher by Scott Edelstein is an essential classic that teaches the spiritual seeker some important things. That might make someone think everyone is a sham when there are plenty of teachers out there who want to teach people. The model of friendship and taking responsibility for your spiritual life is the best. That developing spiritual friendships isn't easy in this day and age, doesn't take away the fact that friends can really help us. Authors and books can give some one way communication that is a kind of sharing of minds. Shoes Outside The Door is another book about scandal in the sangha. 

I've mentioned history of Buddhism. A Short History of Buddhism by Andrew Skilton is interesting, really specific about early schools. Mahayana Buddhism by Paul Williams. The Circle of the Way by Barbara O'Brien. Zen Baggage by Bill Porter is his pilgrimage to various Chinese Chan sites.

I really like memoirs and biographies of Buddhist lives. Nanamoli's The Life of the Buddha is a good start.

There's a really good blog about Buddhist fiction. Buddha Da by Anne Donovan was my favorite novel.

I really like reading. Reading is a spiritual practice. Soaking up the culture from around the world through words is in a way a miracle to me. 

I don't think you have to take an intellectual approach and many teachers would say being mindful and kind is more important that reading.

Links:

I tried to answer the question once before.

I've tried to express which books helped me how.

As usual Sam Littlefair has a good answer

Reporting in

8th century rock carving from Pakistan.

I heard the phrase "pattern of hindrances," and that was evocative for me. I start off restless. It's a rag and bone shop and a maelstrom. Doubt crops up when things get hard, the boredom or just misguided expectations, the idea that discipline doesn't yield results. My anger is lurking, I fancy I'm a highly spiritually evolved master, and then bing, there it is. Why would they... not conform to my expectations. I open my eyes when I'm tired, but I also open my eyes for sense stimulation. I love stimulation, I love distractions. I'm doing one now by blogging. 

Spending some time with the Green Island Sangha I'm enjoying the positivity, the kindness and the idea that coming home to oneself in meditation, home in the body, home in the mind. The world is telling me all sorts of important things if I would just listen.

Underneath the restlessness is content I'm trying to avoid. I need to get over the feeling that I'm rubbing my face in my own shit, and really truly process my mistakes, gafs, harmful actions, selfishness, limitations. 

I got really inspired by reading in Zen Baggage by Bill Porter that on the 3 month retreat at the Rinzai temple he was at, the monks meditate 90 minutes 11 times. There are 1440 minutes in a day. That amount of meditation is 990 minutes. That leaves 7.5 hours of sleep if you just meditate and sleep, which isn't going to happen. I need to step up my meditation game. 

Sat for 40 minutes today for the first time in a long time.

I asked r/Buddhism why garlic, onions and tomatoes are considered aphrodisiacs and to be avoided. At the Rinzai temple Porter visits, this is a held belief. I got a reference to Śūraṅgama Sūtra, the Heroic March sutra. Current consensus is that the text is a compilation of Indic materials with extensive editing in China, rather than a translation of a single text from Sanskrit. It is first spoken about in the 8th century in China. It has been wondered whether the sutra was apocrypha, and is categorized as esoterica. Some think it comes from Nalanda. The Śūraṅgama Sūtra is one of the seminal texts of Chán Buddhism. The Śūraṅgama Sūtra is one of the seminal texts of Chán Buddhism. I'm not sure I want to make this sutra the center of my study, but I always like looking around and seeing what's available. Perhaps to a fault. Anyway, there is a translation available. (Translation with commentary.)

The list gets longer, "Beings who seek samadhi should refrain from eating five pungent plants of this world. The first step is to get rid of contributing causes. The five pungent plants have been described already. They are onions, garlic, leeks, scallions, and shallots."

So when you have reverence for Buddhist texts, that doesn't mean you have to automatically believe the translated and written word. As already noted, this isn't a central or essential text, but it is popular in the Chan sect in China. I don't experience foods as changing my meditation, but I'm not enlightened yet. I wonder if what I eat does cause subtle changes, I think that's my takeaway. To listen to see if that information comes to me.

I've always wondered when I've seen "Buddhist friendly" food for Chinese, I always wondered what the thoughts were, where they came from.

It does feel like a cultural belief that isn't essential. Even so, a cultural belief isn't a false belief, it just means with a whole wide world, other cultures didn't come up with the same results. But the Queen of England has banned garlic in her palace! Does she just not like the smell or does she imagine it impedes spiritual progress?

I wonder if there's some placebo effect, if you do things, you think, "I'm doing all the right things." I recently wondered if disabusing someone of the idea that a certain image was the image of the Buddha was the right thing to do, if it was helpful.

I have Christian friend who doesn't like swearing. I try to not swear. Turns out I swear a little bit, every once in a while, to express emotion. Do I need to express that emotion? Speech should be kindly, helpful, timely and truthful. Extreme emotion isn't always kindly, but it could be more truthful. Striving for maximum articulation and truth, with kindness is important and not easy, not trivial.  

Start where you are is a kind of broken record for Pema Chodron, but I think maybe it's a necessary broken record. People try to act enlightened, under the principle of fake it till you make it. I mean that can work a bit with ethics and communication and other things, but in a way it only gets you so far. I think the combination of meditation, study, fellowship and devotion gets you to grow up and you don't have to fake it, some of the craziness drops away. It's not hard to lay down obsessions and addictions, it's not as hard to be kind and communicate if you've been working the spiritual program.

Yesterday was Ashura, a Muslim holiday of mourning. I think a lot about the loss of my grandparents. I used to spend my summers with them growing up, one month with one set, one month with the other set. Pretty shocking to the system, but as I get older and older, I feel the love from them. It resonates through the decades. There are other gone too. A gay uncle. Another uncle. Great aunts. Even my best friend from high school. Buddhist acquaintances that passed. 

Today is the day Walden came out. Sangharakshita didn't like the transcendentalists, but it's a big part of the intellectual history of America. I find their writings hard, but I do like reading biographies of the people. And Amos Walcott was an early vegan, survived on apple sauce and potatoes when he crossed the ocean to visit England. Mostly like to read Emily Dickinson of the people from that period, and Whitman. 

Bill Porter visits Ch’an sites

Bill Porter (Red Pine) went to China in March 2006 to visit Chan sites, and the book came out in 2009. I count 23 books on his Wikipedia page, among other publications. I've read 6 of his books, this will be my 7th. Porter starts in Beijing. Lots of good Chinese Buddhism history in this book. I like that he’s authentic and not a poser. He prefers Zen to Ch'an, he likes the Z and feels all the words are pointing to the same Dharma. He interviewed abbots and China is really just beginning to recover from the cultural revolution. The smart monks head to the mountains during the Cultural Revolution. Porter has a book about that: Road to Heaven. This book is about the recovery of Buddhism in China in 2006 after the Cultural Revolution from 1966-76.

If you only read one of Porter's travel books, I'd read this one. There are tons of great stories and interesting characters, great historical summaries, and stories about Zen and poetry. I've been picking up a little about Porter through reading all his works, and I really like him. I know some people are jerks in real life when you meet them, but I can imagine sitting on a porch with Miles Davis in the background sipping tea with him. 

My favorite story is that just before Tiananmen Square Protests and Massacre, he was in Wuhan after seeking out the hermits, and people asked him for money for some pro-democracy protests. Porter thought he was giving 10 yuan, but accidentally gave 100 yuan. They were so excited the got him to speak in front of everyone. Back in Taiwan later, he was talking to someone in the CIA and they'd heard about it, the Chinese leaders were saying the protests were led by a foreigner. His reluctant words after accidentally giving too much were cast as him being a ringleader. I'm surprised they let him travel in the country after that, except that it wasn't true. Yikes. It's nice to read stories about Wuhan, when we have the negative association now as somehow the birthplace for Covid. Supposedly Porter's book about the Hermits was translated into Chinese and is a great source of national pride, so maybe he's seen more as a hero than a ringleader for democracy.

Quotes:

“No one knows when the Buddha's followers began making images of their teacher. According to an account attributed to the early Buddhist sect known as the Mahasanghikas, when Shakyamuni left this earthly realm for a few months to teach his mother in the heavens atop Mount Sumeru, two kings from neighboring regions had their artisans fashion statues of the Buddha so that his followers wouldn't be distressed by his sudden disappearance. One of the statues was carved from sandalwood, and the other was made of burnished gold, and both were said to be life-size. (Cf. Ekottara-agama-sutra: 28)

This account was compiled within two or three hundred years of the Buddha's Nirvana, which occurred in 383 BC, and it may or may not be true, but it suggests how important the Buddha's image was to his followers. According to the archaeological evidence currently available, the earliest representations of the Buddha were not statues but shadow images suggesting his presence: the fig tree beneath which he sat at Bodhgaya, the lion seat from which he delivered his sermons, the eight-spoked wheel that represented his teaching of the Noble Eightfold Path, a stupa that held his remains, or his footprints, which showed he had left the dust of delusion and its karmic wake behind. It wasn't until the first century BC and the first century AD that artisans in Gandhara (Pakistan) and Bactria (Afghanistan) - and slightly later in Mathura (Uttar Pradesh) - worked their way up from footprints to a human figure.” (P35)

“He didn't think much of Thich Nhat Hanh's Buddhism. By the time we left, he made it clear he didn't think much of my understanding of the Dharma either. But I had met so many accommodating Zen masters, it was somehow refreshing to meet a jerk. And a jerk who served such fine tea was worth enduring.” (P222, and what follows is a fun narrative about the jerk monk).

“When I asked her how she gauged the level of understanding among the students, she said, "There's no one way of determining how much someone understands. But we can usually tell when we give them a task they've never done before. Someone whose practice is good isn't easily upset when things go wrong. Someone who doesn't practice or who doesn't practice correctly is constantly upset. Just because you sit in the meditation hall doesn't mean you're making progress. This is why we watch and listen to the nuns who study and practice here to decide how best to help them. Some of them understand right away. Others seem to take forever. In any case, we tell them to be patient. Zen isn't for people in a hurry.” (P237)

Fascinating sites he visits (incomplete):

Yunju Temple contains the world's largest collection of stone Buddhist sutra steles in the world.

Yungang Grottoes are ancient Chinese Buddhist temple grottoes near the city of Datong in the province of Shanxi. They are excellent examples of rock-cut architecture and one of the three most famous ancient Buddhist sculptural sites of China. The others are Longmen and Mogao.

Huayan Temple (Datong): After the founding of the Communist State, the government provided great protection for the temple.

Nine Dragon Wall: At least 7 versions of this, but this one was near Datong, which Porter calls Tatung. He has a different system than the one used on Wikipedia so it's hard to look up his stuff.

White Horse Temple: Considered the first temple in China.

Bodhidharma’s stupa: 

Daxingshan Temple: The temple had reached unprecedented heyday in the Tang dynasty (618–907), when Śubhakarasiṃha, Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra taught Chinese Esoteric Buddhism in the temple. Daxingshan Temple was completely damaged in the Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution, after the fall of the Tang dynasty in 907, most parts of the temple were ruined in wars and natural disasters, and gradually it became unknown to public. Most of the present structures in the temple were repaired or built in the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) and modern China. (Not sure if this is the same temple, when Porter visits it's because it's the only women's monastery for Zen in China. There are a few others but they are Pure Land. The entry doesn't mention that, so I think I've got the wrong temple, but I thought it was interesting anyway. The jerk monk thought it was inherently false that it was the one zen women's monastery. I have to think Porter is correct, and either this is the wrong temple and I was redirected there by mistake, or it's just not widely known in English language. The language barrier makes Porter's travels that much more interesting.)

There was nothing on google for “tsangfoken hidden buddha gully”

Some past Porter and Red Pine book and movies links on Going For Refuge:

Red Pine travel to south China

Road To Heaven by Bill Porter

Chinese Monks

Hanshan, Fenggan and Shide

Chinese Buddhist Poetry

Shiwu

Thoughts on the inspiration of hermit monks.

Fanshan doesn't raise above society's sexism.

Did Hanshan do magic mushrooms?

Pickup

Road To Heaven quote

Modern images for Buddhism

The image of Hope Harlingen throwing up, squirting poop out her butt, and then getting together with a guy with the sluices open like that, of course all while on drugs, using drugs, and then getting involved with a man also in the stall in a gross bathroom. She describes it in the 2014 movie Inherent Vice, it's gestured at in the book. Really imagine the dirty stall, the poop and vomit being ignored. 

It reminds me of Parasite (2019) when the girl is high up on the toilet, while shit water squirts out because of the flooding in her neighborhood, enjoying a cigarette. 

That reminds me of a Zen Flesh, Zen Bones image. A man is chased by an elephant and falls off a cliff, but catches a vine. Stomping elephants above him, tigers down below, a mouse gnawing on the vine, and he jostles a beehive, and the bees are stinging him, but a little drop of honey falls into his mouth. 

From the Lotus Sutra, the house is on fire, and the children are playing. It's hard to get them to leave the house. So the king suggests there are even better toys outside. The children eventually come outside and the toys aren't what they thought they would be but they are somehow good enough. 

The path is difficult, you don't just have to pretend you believe in something, like in Christianity, to be saved. Pure Land Buddhism tries this angle, the hope that if you really want to be born into a pure land you can be reborn there, and then you can go for enlightenment in that pureland where the circumstances are better. Nice literature, but I wouldn't put any eggs in that basket. Metaphorically speaking, I'm vegan, so no real eggs. Go watch a vegan documentary on how animals are treated. There's some torture.

karmic thermals

The culture of Triratna doesn't talk too much about karma, samsara and nirvana, attachments, and a lot of other probably unhelpful Buddhist buzzwords. I found being grounded in the sangha, I have adopted the distaste for these vague words that certain people who aren't really interested use to play around. I'm thinking about writing a post about questions I dislike on Reddit r/Buddhism. Instead usually I just skip on by and say, "philosophical quibbling without practice." I have an intellectual approach to Buddhism, but I don't think that is the best door to go through without meditation, sangha and retreats. 

I was rewatching Inherent Vice (2014) for the 3rd time, and I came across the phrase "karmic thermals". I do like that phrase. The kid who's killed by a stray bullet didn't deserve it, but got caught in the karmic thermals of others. We're caught up in the karmic thermals of right wing christofascist here in America. 

Mostly conditionality is what is to be talked about, but the 12 nidanas is a teaching, and just observing conditions isn't easy. It's hard to talk about conditions, consequences and courses of actions, because in the USA we've become hyper partisan, and there is no objective reality any more. Women can't get abortions for life threatening conditions because doctors are afraid of breaking the law, losing their license, or otherwise rocking the powers that be. Meanwhile republican politicians are breaking the law all over the place like they're some weird anti-woke woke contradiction of living their best selves by destroying the country's democracy out of spite.

I'm not saying you can't have the personality that wishes for conservative approach to politics. That's not what causes and conditions is all about. I'm talking about the norm breaking, the rule breaking, the law breaking power grabs and hate mongering going on. Power built on racism and anti-democratic sore losing is not power at all, and history will look unkindly on them.

The karmic thermals of the USA are quite heinous for 10 year old incest victims, women who have to carry dead babies because abortion is no longer legal. The imposition of traveling to another state is the penalty, and of course the poor suffer more, not the rich. Politicians are openly questioning the founding fathers ideas of separation of church and state. Either some people didn't go to school and learn about America, or they just want their way no matter how they get it, forget American ideas of separation of church and state. Let's empower the American taliban, the Christofascist. /s

When you adopt the love mode over the power mode in the spiritual life, you can't steamroll people. In fact you focus on your own spiritual life. You consider others subjectivity, what they want. I would never impose the Buddhist text that you don't get an abortion onto people who were not Buddhist, not is it clear to me that you can't support a secular state beyond specific religions. So don't get an abortion, but don't impose your idea of religion on others. That's not American unless you're an asshole. And the amount of assholes in America seems to be going up. Karmic thermals, wish they were blowing down.

I have to keep reminding myself. This isn't happening to my male body, but I'm interconnected to everyone else, so it is happening to me. But to maintain equanimity to focus on what is in front of me, I allow myself to forget how interconnected I am to cope with the karmic thermals of America. 

McMann has an interesting essay about the modern conceptions of self in Secularizing Buddhism, referencing Gergen's Saturated Self.

Taylor Swift's plane taking 171 flights. The poor will bear the brunt of the climate change crisis that the rich bring about with their selfish ways. Time for some more vigorous class war in this country. For a fraction of Bezos' wealth he could save and improve a lot of lives. Musk joked about curing hunger if someone could show him a good plan, but if course he didn't pay enough attention to really find one he liked, his attention wandered. He needs all his money to pay for the children he's having. Meanwhile his father says he doesn't like him, he's fat, and his father is having children with his stepdaughter. Quality family. Perhaps it's gossip I've descended into in the culture wars, but these cases exemplify what is going on and the karmic thermals. "We should have met cute, but we met squalid." Hope Harlingen in Inherent Vice movie.

Evan Thompson quote

 “it’s not the case that the experience of bare attention independently establishes the descriptive truth of the Buddhist mind-doctrine; rather, the Buddhist mind-doctrine is needed to give meaning to the experience of bare attention.” (Why I Am Not a Buddhist by Thompson)

Red Pine travel to south China

I’ve met people from Nanchang and Yantai in the park recently. Their children play with my daughter. That's not in south China, which is where this travel book explores. This area isn’t even that much studied by the Chinese, let alone in the English language. In south China there are over 50 ethnic groups.

I’m reading Red Pine’s book about South China travel that came out in 2015. But it’s based on his audio recording from his trip in 1992. 

It’s not really Dharma but I also enjoy culture and you can pick up bits when a Buddhist writes. He visits temples. I feel like the more I know about different cultures, the better. The better to understand people around me, and the better to understand the Dharma styles those areas, in the south of China. I also got this book with his traveling to the spots of the Zen Patriarchs. Thought I would read this book first because it's shorter. An I learned about the Tai ethnic group in China that follow Theravada Buddhism.

If I wasn't vegan I'd want to travel to the frog festival of Pingan. The mythology of locations is interesting. There are two tribes that descend from tree stumps, and all manner of dragon coupling. It feels like conditions create different cultures. Mythological thinking is so fascinating. I like the god of literature. Mythology is messy. Abraham is important in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The Four Guardians are in Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. 

I’ve read too many fantasy novels, where the author’s experiences seem fantastic. Black rice and river moss. Women who play music tea leaves. History lost and found about great explorers with huge boats that sail the seasonal winds east and west. I want a new novel from Shelly Parker-Chan. Accidentally giving cultural signals for love, Porter has a woman coming to his room. He must politely decline an offer of love, after accidentally giving the signals. The Ani women don't hide their breasts and genitals. Two tribes descend from stumps and two tribes descend from union between humans and dogs, after a dog tricks the king into giving his daughter in marriage. The myths are so good other tribes co-opt them. Back through the mist of time they didn't worry about appropriation. These fantastical myths and stories are fun, some local color in Bill Porter's travels.

I read the book in the park and talk about it in with the Chinese whose English isn't so good. It's better than my Mandarin.

Quotes

 “My friend Gary Snyder once told me that two most important questions friends of the earth should ask are, Where does my water come from? Where does my garbage go?” (P. 159)

“It was Hsishuangbanna's most famous pagoda, and it was known far and wide as the White Pagoda. It was first built in 1204, and it had been rebuilt many times since then. It looked like the last time hadn't been very long ago. As with the Black Pagoda, the main ingredients were cement and white paint, with yellow and red trim. There was also a shrine hall, but pilgrims did their bowing outside at the base of the pagoda. On closer inspection, I discovered why. The pagoda was built on a huge boulder, and when I walked over to the southwest corner of the boulder, I noticed a small niche at the base. The niche was covered with glass, and there was a slot for people to insert donations. I looked inside and saw the reason for their veneration. It was the Buddha's foot-prints. Yes, the Buddha's footprints. By some mysterious power the Buddha had traveled here from India and left his footprints on the surface of the boulder. Buddhist pilgrims came here from all over China, as well as from Burma and Laos and Thailand, to pay homage to the footprints, which, according to the sign, the Buddha left when he visited that part of the world at the age of 62.

According to historical records, the pagoda itself wasn't erected until 1,700 years after the Buddha's visit. It wasn't surprising, though, to see footprints at a Theravadin Buddhist shrine. When Buddhism first developed as an organized religion, there were no statues of the Buddha, because it was felt that the human form somehow misrepresented the Buddha's message of liberation from all form. Instead, his disciples used his footprints to represent his transcendence from this world of dust. A pair of footprints was the only thing in the way of symbolism that early Buddhist shrines contained. I joined half a dozen other pilgrims in paying my respects before the niche, while a hundred flags flapped their prayers above us.” (P168-9)

“ Kashyapa was one of the Buddha's greatest disciples, and he reportedly came to Chickenfoot Mountain 2,400 years ago. To understand Kashyapa's importance, it's necessary to go back to when Brahma, the Lord of Creation, offered the Buddha a flower and asked him to preach the Dharma. The Buddha took the flower and held it up. His devotees and disciples were puzzled-all except Kashyapa, who smiled. This marked the beginning of Zen: the direct transmission of understanding with a flower and a smile. Kashyapa thus became the First Patriarch of Zen in India. Though there are no records attesting to it, Kashyapa was said to have come to Chickenfoot Mountain following the Buddha's Nirvana. And he took up residence in a cave below Huashoumen.” (P204)

Links:

Kirkus review "As satisfying as any trip by Paul Theroux but with a much less prickly and much more forgiving narrator."

Moon Hill

Frog Festival

Huating Temple

Stone Forest

Cheng Ho which Wikipedia says is spelled Zheng He. Fascinating fellow who was castrated and became a great diplomat and sea explorer, seven journeys to India. In a weird way the history of his life wasn't really taken up, China is weird in some ways in that at times they seem indifferent to their history. He seems like an interesting fellow but this is the first time I've ever heard about him. He was muslim and went to Mecca. 

Chickenfoot Mountain

Which class in line with Buddhist ideals?

 

Secular/traditional

I don’t like the intro so far. I experience it as not dharma. Maybe it’s clearing the brush around the Dharma. Interesting dichotomies: traditional/secular, modern/traditional, east/west.


The first chapter by Sarah Shaw of Oxford is about Ashoka so far, which if fascinating to me. I like how after killing a hundred thousand people he found Buddhism. I guess it's never too late. His edict quoted preached a multiculturalism and tolerance of other sects which I liked.


She has a good list of ruler virtues:


1. dana: generosity
2. sila: the moral or ethical behavior of keeping the five precepts
(of not killing, stealing, practicing sexual conduct likely to cause
harm, lying, or letting oneself become intoxicated)
3. pariccaga: renunciation
4. ajjava: straightness (Skt. arjava, to rju, to uju in Pali)
5. maddava: softness; often, with straightness, found related to
mudutà, the softness of mind and body present in skillful
consciousness
6. tapa: self-restraint
7. akkodha: the absence of anger; loving-kindness
8. avihimsa: the absence of harm; compassion59
9. khanti: forbearance
10. avirodhana/ avirodha: gentleness; the absence of obstruction

I like it in the essay by McMahan referencing Gergen’s Saturated Self. Articulation of modern selfhood is complex. The buffered self is a phrase that runs through my mind. 

The third essay by Funie Hsu is a deft takedown of the American implications to secular Buddhism.


Links:


Secular Buddhist Network Review.

Amazing statue

 More/source Bangkok Thailand.

Pickup

29

Silver stars dot the beam

green silk marks the weight

buyers move it forward

sellers move it back

never mind the other's anger

just as long as you prevail

when you die and meet Old Yama

up your butt he'll stick a broom

(P285, translation Red Pine)

36

Those who leave home leave to be free

and pity the suffering masses

they proselytize for the Buddha

telling others to choose a path

but who can they possibly save

doing whatever they please

descending with everyone else

into the same abyss

(P288)

37

Drunk on delusion greed and anger

dazed and unaware

you turn money into a dream

a dream that becomes an iron jail

using one pain to get rid of another

you never get rid of pain

unless you learn before it's too late

you learn to turn to yourself

(P291)

41

Those who leave home nowadays

turn out to be fools at heurt

at first they seek liberation

then run errand instead

visiting laymen all day long

chanting and acting solemn

earning money for wine

funkies in the end

(P293)

43

By and large the monks I meet

love their meat and wine

instead of climbing to Heaven

they slip back down to Hell

they chant a sutra or two

to fool the laymen in town

unaware the laymen in town

are more perceptive than them

(P295)

48

For a mud ball dropped in water

big plans make no sense

for a fragile dreamlike body

a hundred years are rare

unable to ponder deeply

and claiming they're immortal

people steal a ton of gold

then leave it all behind

(P297)

Did Hanshan do magic mushrooms,

290

Relaxing below Cold Cliff

the surprises are quite special

taking a basket to gather wild plants

bringing it back loaded with fruit

spreading fresh grass for a simple meal

nibbling on magic mushrooms

rinsing my ladle and bowl in a pool

making a stew from scraps

sitting in sunshine wrapped in a robe

reading the poems of the ancients

Pickup has a poem about it too

33

We slip into Tientai caves

we visit people unseen

me and my friend Cold Mountain

eat magic mushrooms under the pines

we talk about the past and present

and sigh at the world gone mad

everyone going to Hell

and going for a long long time

(P286, Red Pine translation)

Reddit 

Devotion

What is the queasy feeling I feel when I look at the rupa I've meditated in front of for almost 20 years? The Buddha got up and bowed to the tree he was sitting under. I love imagining the Buddha beckoning me to come meditate with him.

Anandi gave me the mala. I leave it on the rupa. The Tibetan elements have dropped away from my practice, but I do love mantra and puja. 

The feeling I feel when I look at the representation of the refuge tree for Triratna, with its teachers of the past, it's bodhisattvas and arhants. The archetypal Buddhas.

All coming out of the void.

One time I was at a Chicago museum and when I saw a statue of the Buddha (rupa) I wanted to throw myself down onto the ground and prostrate, lay down and put my hands over my head and back again, like the prostration practice I've done visualizing the refuge tree. 

It's so easy to just learn the vocabulary of Buddhism and just keep doing what you want. The bite of trying to be more, different, can have uneven results. I'm mostly screwed up my life, but there are some things I'm proud of. 

I get a feeling when I read sometimes, like I'm looking at Indra's net as clearly as my foggy vision will allow me.

So many memories of fellowship along the way, conversation, discussion, listening, sharing. 

I'm having a practice day. My daughter is going camping and I'm freed of the responsibility of caring for her. I haven't meditated this much in a long time. I feel very grateful and hope I can put this mindfulness to good use with others. 

My outdoor meditation spot:

Dhamapada 131

Whoever torments with the stick (danda)

creatures desirous of happiness, he himself

thereafter, seeking happiness, will not obtain

happiness.

Hanshan 265

When hermits hide from society

most retire to the hills

where green vines veil the slopes

and jade streams echo unbroken

where happiness reigns

and contentment lasts

where pure white lotus minds

aren't stained by the muddy world

Cold Mountain

"No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!"

I love Futurama and I thought of this quote from Dr. Farnsworth after I read the following:

“How are these two ways of thinking about bare attention—as disinterested disclosure of how the mind truly is versus as shaping it according to a valued standard—supposed to be related? They seem to be in tension. To disclose something requires not changing it as you disclose it. To shape the mind is to change it. How can bare attention reveal the mind if it also changes it?” (Why I Am Not a Buddhist)

Evan Thompson

 “Buddhism is one of humanity’s great religious and intellectual traditions. It is, and deserves to be, a participant in the secular and liberal democratic societies of our modern world. It is, and deserves to be, a contributor to a cosmopolitan community, one in which people participate in relationships of mutual respect and cooperation, despite their differing beliefs.”

Above are the first sentences from Why I Am Not a Buddhist by Evan Thompson. 

Why do I feel like he's going to spend the rest of the book dismissing it?

It's good to explore the opposite case. I have a lot of hope for this book, hope that I don't renounce Buddhism. But it has to be a real possibility to engage honestly. 

I've been playing a lot of chess. When you make a bad move, inaccurate, it ruins a game, you lose. I hope I can get through the book without quitting too early. If I'd quit Buddhism because I made some bad moves, I would have regretted it. I keep playing.

Lindisfarne Association (1972–2012) was not something I knew about. 

Thompson's experience when the zen of Reb Anderson joins the community:

“My sister, Hilary, and I were not so impressed. The other kids weren’t either. We were used to running all over our ten-acre property doing whatever we liked. Now we had to take off our shoes and keep quiet whenever we entered the main lodge. There were more dinners with mushy brown rice and overcooked steamed vegetables that not even huge gobs of ketchup could fix. A weird formality seemed to have taken over many people in the community. The occasional silent meals were the worst. To get anyone to pass you anything you had to make hand gestures and bow afterward. Of course, we made faces at each other trying to get someone to break down and laugh. Then we’d run around imitating the pious expressions and silly gestures of the adults. I was the oldest kid, and sometimes I would go to the daily group meditation at five-thirty in the afternoon before we ate dinner at six o’clock. My father thought the presence of Zen made the meditation room’s atmosphere thick and weighty, but the Zen demeanor seemed forced to me.”

He went on to study with Thurman, and did his senior thesis on Keiji Nishitani and his first published article was comparing Nishitani and Heidegger. “Thurman had taught me that critical reasoning was itself a form of meditation.” In his explorations in mediation, “I kept encountering anti-intellectualism, sanctimoniousness, naïve reverence, and downright fetishism.” I've seen that word a lot lately. Feishism's non-sexual meaning is "worship of an inanimate object for its supposed magical powers or because it is considered to be inhabited by a spirit."(Oxford Languages)

He references this article regarding the sexual misconduct of Buddhists, and others. He's referenced so many interesting books I want to read, including Ann Gleig's American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity. He writes, “I mention the scandals because people I know have suffered as a result of them. These events and their harmful effects need to be acknowledged in any book on modern Buddhism. They’re also one reason why I was unwilling to join the Buddhist communities I encountered.” 

Wow. I respect his decision but I don't expect teachers or gurus to be perfect. Sexual misconduct is a huge problem in the sangha, true, but only because perhaps we expect to renounce sexuality in pursuit of the goals. And as everyone knows making things forbidden can ramp up the excitement. 

He takes a turn into neuroscience that I'm afraid loses me. But he asks some interesting questions: “Can scientists who are personally invested in meditation practice be objective and impartial in their research on meditation? Why is there so much antecedent commitment to establishing that meditation is beneficial when many people also report experiencing negative effects?” He starts to define Buddhist exceptionalism: “Buddhism was seen as superior to other religions, or as not really a religion but rather as a kind of “mind science.”

“From a philosophical perspective, the problem with Buddhist exceptionalism is that it presents Buddhist theories of the mind as if they’re value-neutral descriptions, when they’re based on value judgments about how to cultivate or shape the mind to realize the supreme Buddhist goal of nirvana. In philosophical terms, the theories are normative—they’re based on ethical value judgments—and soteriological—they’re concerned with salvation or liberation. Buddhist theories of the mind lose their point if they’re extracted from the Buddhist normative and soteriological frameworks.”

He goes on to describe Buddhist modernism: “This is the modern and transnational form of Buddhism that downplays the metaphysical and ritual elements of traditional Asian Buddhism, while emphasizing personal meditative experience and scientific rationality. Buddhist modernism presents itself as if it were Buddhism’s original and essential core, when in fact it’s historically recent.”

He gives his answer as to why he wasn't a Buddhist: “Since I didn’t want to join a traditional Theravāda, Zen, or Tibetan Buddhist monastery, the only way to be a Buddhist was to be a Buddhist modernist. But Buddhist modernism is riddled with philosophical problems.” (p.22)

“Buddhist modernism encourages a kind of false consciousness: it makes people think that if they embrace Buddhism or just pick out its supposedly nonreligious parts, they’re being “spiritual but not religious,” when unbeknownst to them religious forces are impelling them.” (p.24)

He references an article: Spirituality as Privatized Experience-Oriented Religion: Empirical and Conceptual Perspectives

At a certain point I see that I'm quoting too much and I just suggest you read the interesting book, and indeed I hope I can follow up on some of the interesting stuff he refers to as well.

I’ll be looking for a path between Buddhist exceptionalism and modernism without being a mother mastic which Thompson doesn’t think possible.

I'm reading Reddit too much

I'm an imperfect western practitioner of 20 plus years, read a million books but did not always display virtue, at times, had some deep experiences on retreat, make no claims, not a teacher, never been perfect.

I don't read posts with the following words in them "attachment", "no self", "nirvana", "no desire", "Reincarnation", or people who trumpet Alan Watts as a great teacher. I hope his books can give some money to his 7 children and their descendants, and can appreciate his wit at times. 

The path is about ethics, community, fellowship, study, meditation, devotion. Quibblers are too superficial for me. We think and talk because we have brains but to me Buddhism not a philosophy, it's a religion, and religion is about organizing the world psychologically, with deep and difficult to express feelings of devotion. Zizek seeing the religious as fetishist is offensive, but I'm OK with people who don't have any deep experiences spouting off at the mouth, that seems to be how the internet fills out it's content. 

I'm a little wary of people who are from the east and can cite books about 2500 years ago, and the similarities with what became Hinduism and Jainism. That may be true, and a historical understanding is important, but I don't think you're somehow more clear or perceptive if you're from the east, you have to express clarity and perceptions. Westerners are often pretty superficial and underestimate the depth of Buddhism, but again we must treat people based on their actions, what they say.

I have a skeptical mind, when I read about gods, I imagine them as psychological projections and not literally true, but recognize that psychology makes them feel literally true. People have corrected me that the gods of the Buddha's times were not Hindu gods, that wasn't a religion yet. The Buddha was operating in the time before Hinduism I'm not sure how to characterize the gods of those times, but I'm disinclined to say it's literally true because the Buddha was speaking the vernacular of the times. Part of being a Buddhist is understanding contingency. I respect the traditions that see reincarnation as essential Buddhism. As an American fleeing the oppressions of Christianity, the constant proselytizing I'm wary of arbitrary metaphysics to prove I'm part of the tribe, but I somehow do want to be considered a Buddhist, even if it's in my own imperfect western way.

Reincarnation is an idea that can be perverted or exaggerated. I'd rather just stick to conditionality. This being that becomes, imasmim sati idam hoti. If personalities are transferred beyond one life, then it will be evident. If it's a metaphysic of the times, and isn't necessary, that will be proven out by time. Secular Buddhism isn't a sangha but it's possible in another 2500 years it could be considered one. Time will tell. I think it's a cultural belief of those times, and I don't mean any disrespect. I have considered it for my entire life as a Buddhist out of respect. I'm still open to it. I don't think I'm colonizing Buddhism as a white man, but if I inevitably do that, then I guess I have to. That doesn't mean I don't have to be more sensitive and learn things, and listen to others. The idea that stealing eastern gold, and not caring about the people isn't true of me, I do care about everyone, we are interconnected, but I am puny and limited. I have great reverence for the cultures that passed on the tradition even if it doesn't seem so to some. I know Native Americans feel burned and are more reserved now, guard their wisdoms, and that happens in Buddhism some but the translations of the Pali Canon, which I read every day, are the most amazing resources, and I hope I respect these great texts, hold reverence for them. I hope to be forgiven by the context of Christian America to be more empirical, and my efforts and sincerity will be appreciated, but I understand victims like to reverse the script and victimize, I have no special rights beyond just being another human. 

I really just need to focus on my practice, but I am sensitive to the circumstances and want to understand the circumstances to support others, if that is even appropriate, and I'll be honest that sometimes I've wished to help and it was unwanted, and even worse, I've given unwanted feedback to others. My zeal and excitement is often misplaced, confused, and not appropriate. Nobody likes being projected on, not seen as a subject. I never really understood Buber's metaphysics, but I really like the idea of strive to treat others as a thou. I have been crap at spiritual friendship, but I still like friends, and live off the memories of past friendships. I make mistakes but I want to keep trying.

I'm not a hermit because you can't be a hermit and read the internet. I love Hanshan's poetry:

238

We hear about the ministers of state

their red and purple ornaments of rank

their limitless wealth and countless honors

their quest for glory their resistance to shame

their courtyards of slaves and stables of horses

their vaults full of silver and gold

but a fool's paradise is brief consolation

for someone who blindly builds his own hell

he suddenly dies and all plans stop

sons and daughters gather to cry

unaware of approaching disaster

what was his headlong hurry

his family is ruined and scattered

without any food to eat

cold and hungry and wretched

and all because of ignorance

Mating Mind

Living single for the first time in 40 years, I've become aware of what I guess I'll call the mating mind. I have a book about the mating mind, and in it I learned that the human brain is the peacock feathers of humans, unnecessary ornament. We don't need the minds we have to survive really, it's overclocked. 

What to do with this mind? I think that is why the Dharma is so important. It's good to understand it and all, but the development, the literature, the ideas, the sharing of the tradition, the history is all something to put that peacock mind to. When you simplify life, what do you think about? 

I listen for metta, positive welling up, warm feelings about relationships. What is the equivalent in mindfulness of breathing? It's the rapture, the positivity in following the breath. It's as much about seeing what's blocking these things as it is feeling these things.

How light my body!
Touched by abundant
rapture & bliss,
—like a cotton tuft
borne on the breeze—
it seems to be floating
—my body!

Thag 1:104

Sound of Music

I love the movie Sound of Music. I saw it in middle school, the whole school took a bus to the theater and we watched it at school. At the time I was just glad to watch a movie instead of have school, but I really appreciate the movie now. 

The struggle of a new novice who loves life, is interesting. It has me thinking how renunciation has been scrubbed out of the western version of Buddhism, and why there are subreddits like r/goldenswastika, which inter alia contrasts western versus eastern followers, converts versus heritage followers. Mostly it's Theravadan against the rest, but that is almost something ashamed they hide. Some ancient lineages try to jump onto bandwagon. In general communication between strangers isn't always polite. And it's also an opportunity to show your true face. That the sangha has many divisions is nothing new.

My root guru Sangharakshita, though the joy of aesthetic appreciation was essential to the spiritual life. These modern exceptions might be why he thought it was OK to experiment sexually, that got him into trouble, and delegitimize his movement started in 1967, what is now called Triratna. I'm not convinced that much of the vilifying is anti-gayness. There's always going to be tension in updating and modernizing Buddhism. What is essential and what is of the times?  

The Mahayana path of living in the world and striving for the high ideals of Buddhism is what Maria chooses in the Sound of Music. She marries into a Jewish family who must flee during the Holocaust. I don't really understand what sides of a story need to be taught about the Holocaust. People who deny it happening are quacks, and you don't have to entertain every quack who comes along. There are holocausts going on now, I'm sensitive to the ones going on in so called Buddhist countries, against the Rohingya and the Uyghur. Genocide is the name now.

I like New York City where Muslim and Buddhist get along, where Russian and Ukrainian get along. The conflict here is between those who don't value life and pretend to, and those who really value life. I suppose it's the same conflict. People can decide it's OK to kill certain people for various reasons everywhere. I can only cut down the murderousness in my life. I had a hankering for an egg sandwich the other day, and gave into it. My moral slips are around food these days, but I believe corporations need to do more for the global warming crisis. I'm a drop in the bucket. I think the excessive moral preoccupation with individual choices are because the group doesn't seem to be making the right choices and that feeds into the guilt of the individual, passing off blame the corporations really deserve. How long will it take for humanity to work out these kinks? The world is changing so rapidly but humans still seem to be a mixture of good and not quite as good. 

One fascinating aspect of the movie Sound of Music is that Jewishness seems to be totally scrubbed from the movie. No Yiddishisms or Jewish food, or mention of anything Jewish. On the one had that seems weird, on the other perhaps it's saying there are no differences between human beings, and a little cultural difference isn't even noticeable. That's the hope of America not inspired by MAGA anyway. Economic tensions bring out intolerance, and when politicians use it to get into office, hate crimes go up. Growing up naive in Wisconsin, I didn't really know about Judaism or the context, and I didn't really get the movie when I first saw it.

You know each time you see an old classic movie there's a song you didn't notice before. I thought this one was interesting for some reason, the way it's both pushing and pulling on confidence. 

I Have Confidence

What will this day be like?

I wonder

What will my future be?

I wonder

It could be so exciting

To be out in the world

To be free

My heart should be wildly rejoicing

Oh, what's the matter with me?

I've always longed for adventure

To do the things I've never dared

Now here I'm facing adventure

Then why am I so scared?

A captain with seven children

What's so fearsome about that?

Oh, I must stop these doubts

All these worries

If I don't I just know I'll turn back

I must dream of the things I am seeking

I am seeking the courage I lack

The courage to serve them with reliance

Face my mistakes without defiance

Show them I'm worthy

And while I show them

I'll show me

So let them bring on all their problems

I'll do better than my best

I have confidence

They'll put me to the test

But I'll make them see

I have confidence in me

Somehow I will impress them

I will be firm, but kind

And all those children

Heaven bless them

They will look up to me

And mind me

With each step I am more certain

Everything will turn out fine

I have confidence

The world can all be mine

They'll have to agree

I have confidence in me

I have confidence in sunshine

I have confidence in rain

I have confidence that spring will come again

Besides, which you see

I have confidence in me

Strength doesn't lie in numbers

Strength doesn't lie in wealth

Strength lies in nights of peaceful slumbers

When you wake up

Wake up!

It's healthy

All I trust I leave my heart to

All I trust becomes my own

I have confidence in confidence alone

(Oh, help)

I have confidence in confidence alone

Besides, which you see

I have confidence in me

Hanshan poem 229 & 230

229

All of you are priceless gems

aboard a rotting ship at sea

in front the mast is gone

in back there is no rudder

heading wherever the wind may blow

moving with the waves

how will you reach shore

don't just sit there stiff

230

All I see are fools

piling higher gold and grain

getting drunk and eating creatures

imagining they're well-to-do

unaware of Hell's abyss

seeking only Heaven's bliss

but with karma like Vipula

how can they escape disaster

suddenly the rich man dies

people crowd around in tears

then they hire some monks to chant

though such ghostly pay is void

and provides no future blessings

why support the hairless bunch

better to wake up in time

don't create a hell of darkness

be a tree that fears no wind

steadfast and unmoved by fate

tell the blockheads you might meet

read this over once or twice

I had not seen this

 "A monk who has been accepted should not deprive a living being of life, even if it is only a black or white ant. Any monk who purposely deprives a human being of life, even to the extent of causing an abortion, is not a contemplative, not a son of the Sakyan.

"Just as a solid block of stone broken in two cannot be joined together again, in the same way a monk who has purposely deprived a human being of life is not a contemplative, not a son of the Sakyan. You are not to do this for the rest of your life."

— Mv I.78.2

Some of the practices of endangering the life of the mother because we’re swinging too far towards pro-birthers of low chances in highly compromised and deformed fetuses. And the dangers of botched illegal abortions, plus the rise in crime as abortion becomes illegal doesn’t make it so clean. It’s a religious stance that doesn’t necessarily mean to be imposed on those who don’t follow. Not everyone aspires to be a Theravada monk.

If some sects aren’t vegetarian, then ahimsa doesn’t always carry the day. The culture and context matter. I’m not sure about the translation.

I wouldn’t personally ask a woman to have one, but I feel it’s important not to impose my religion on those who don’t believe it. For me the frame of taking away the choice and autonomy of women’s bodies for non-believers doesn’t feel right in this day and age.

There are all sorts of complicated scenarios, and I think when you're in them, the medical setting should be guided by people who understand the medicine and don't have an ideological idea one way or the other. These political judgements from a distance are not really necessary. The political situation is that people who don’t take life preciously are interested in control.

Quotes and Memes not Buddhism, but around the spiritual life