Chuang Tzu or Zhuangzi (369—298 BCE) was one of the earliest, and arguably the most influential, Taoist philosophers.  He was a superb writer and his thought had an impact on the whole of Chinese philosophy, including Buddhism.

Lin Yutang (1895-1976), also a influential writer, and a translator of classic Chinese texts, called Autumn Floods “the most beautifully written” of all Chuang Tzu’s many writings. This excerpt is essentially his translation. I have replaced some words and sentences with those from Burton Watson’s where I feel that the latter’s phrasing is clearer. Links to both translations follow the excerpt.

Autumn Floods

In the time of autumn floods, a hundred streams poured into the Yellow River. Its racing current swelled to such proportions that it was impossible to tell a cow from a horse on the opposite banks or on the islets. Then the Lord of the River laughed for joy,  believing that all the beauty in the world belonged to him alone. Following the stream he journeyed east, until he reached the North Sea. There, looking eastwards and seeing see no end to the water, his countenance began to change.

And as he gazed over the ocean, he sighed and said to North-Sea Jo (the Spirit of the Ocean), “They say, `He has heard the Way a mere hundred times but he thinks he’s better than anyone else.’ It applies to me. Formerly when I heard people detracting from the learning of Confucius or underrating the heroism of Po Yi, I did not believe it. Now, however, I have seen your unfathomable vastness. If I hadn’t come to your gate, I should have been forever a laughing stock to those of great enlightenment!”

To this North-Sea Jo replied, “You cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog, which is limited by his abode. You cannot speak of ice to a summer insect, which is limited by his short life. You cannot speak of Tao to a pedagogue, who is limited in his knowledge. But now that you have emerged from your narrow sphere and have seen the great ocean, you know your own insignificance, and I can speak to you of great principles.

“There is no body of water beneath the canopy of heaven which is greater than the ocean. All streams pour into it without cease, yet it does not overflow. It is being continually drained off at Wei-lu yet it is never empty. Spring and autumn bring no change; floods and droughts are equally unknown. And thus it is immeasurably superior to mere rivers and streams. Yet I have never ventured to boast on this account. For I count myself, among the things that take shape from the universe and receive life from the yin and yang, but as a pebble or a small tree on a vast mountain. Only too conscious of my own insignificance, how can I presume to boast of my greatness?

“Are not the Four Seas to the universe but like ant-hills in a great marsh? Is not the Middle Kingdom to the surrounding ocean like one tiny grain in a great storehouse? Of all the myriad created things, man is but one. And of all those who inhabit the Nine Provinces, live on the fruit of the earth, and move about in cart and boat, an individual man is but one. Is not he, as compared with all creation, but as the tip of a hair upon a horse’s body?

“What the Five Emperors passed along, what the Three Kings fought over, what the benevolent man grieves about, what the responsible man labors over – all is no more than this! Po Yi refused the throne for fame. Confucius discoursed to get a reputation for learning. This over-estimation of self on their part — was it not very much like your own previous self-estimation in reference to water?”

. . .

“Therefore, the truly great man does not injure others and does not credit himself with charity and mercy. He seeks not gain, but does not despise the servants who do. He struggles not for wealth, but does not lay great value on his modesty. He asks for help from no man, but is not proud of his self-reliance, neither does he despise the greedy. . His actions differ from those of the mob, but he makes no show of uniqueness or eccentricity. He is content to stay behind with the crowd, but he does not despise those who run forward to flatter and fawn. The titles and stipends of the world are to him no cause for joy; its punishments and shame no cause for disgrace. He knows that no line can be drawn between right and wrong, no border can be fixed between great and small.

“I have heard said, ‘The man of Tao has no concern for reputation; the truly virtuous has no concern for for possessions; the truly great man ignores self.’ This is the height of self-discipline.”

Lin Yutang translation

Burton Watson translation

I know some people are reading this blog on a fairly regular basis and I want to thank you for that. I’m not the world greatest book reviewer. But I didn’t claim to be. I don’t claim anything. You’ll notice along the way I qualify my statements: from what I see, from my understanding, etc. That’s all it is. As a comedian I used to like used to say, “That’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.”

Warner’s book was a pretty fast read. I have to admit there were parts of the other book I skimmed through. Frankly, I find some of that stuff boring. For one thing, a lot of it was material I’ve read elsewhere in some form or another, and then I’m not really into psychic powers arising spontaneously in the such and such stage or that in subsequent attainments of Fruition during some other stage something or other is not called this or that.  There’s an awful lot of that stuff in Mahayana literature and I have a tough time with it these days too.

Maybe it’s because there is just too much to try to take in, in all areas and on all levels, and so much to do, and not do, and so little time. I feel time closing in sometimes. I’m old, dammit. Maybe my mind can’t handle it all. I want to make it simpler. Less complicated. Thich Nhat Hanh said all we need is mindfulness and I’m taking him at his word. I just do mindfulness, the Heart Sutra, some mantras. That’s it. I don’t think about it. I just do it. I’ve found that trying to think about it just gets in the way. I’m in the letting go stage of life. Letting things go, fall off, drop away . . . That to me is emptiness. The emptiness of conceptual thinking. Just being in the present moment.

I don’t get why anyone would want to claim they are enlightened and I guess I don’t have the skill with words to be able to communicate that properly, or maybe that’s the problem. We really can’t communicate it. It’s beyond our words, beyond our concepts. That’s what Nagarjuna (who is never boring) and those Zen guys were trying to tell us and what they warned about.

It’s what the Heart and Diamond sutras are saying: “no path, no wisdom and no attainment with nothing to attain,” and “I do not see that dharma Bodhisattva, nor a Dharma called Prajna-paramita.” It’s what the Tao Te Ching means: “The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.”

But we have to communicate. We have to talk about things and in order to do so we must give them names, designations. Karl Jasper explaining Nagarjuna: “With the resources of language there is no escape from speech through significations (signs). Every sentence ensnares me anew in what I was trying to escape from.”

Non-attachment is the key. Easier said than done.

Enlightenment? I don’t know what it is. It’s not even a goal for me anymore. I’m just trying to get through the day. I’m just trying to maintain some wholesome thoughts and not grasp at every emotion that comes up. Don’t look down your nose at it. It ain’t easy.

I’d like to think that after you have been practicing for almost thirty years, you come full circle. You start with simplicity and end with it. I’d like to think that, but probably it’s just me getting old.

Here’s something the Dalai Lama said at UCLA in 1997 that really turned my head around about this enlightenment business. I’ve posted it before, but a good teaching can’t be repeated too many times. He’s talking about a passage in Nagarjuna’s Precious Garland that deals with feeling discouraged over the length of time required to become “enlightened”:

If, as a result of one’s commitment to the principles of the Bodhisattva ideal, one sees that the purpose of one’s life is to be of benefit to others, and from the depths of one’s heart there is a real sense of dedication of one’s entire life for the benefit of other sentient beings, and that kind of strong courage and principle – for that kind of person, then time doesn’t seem to matter much. Whether or not that person becomes enlightened, as far as he or she is concerned, it doesn’t make any difference, because the purpose of existence is to be of benefit to others, and if the person is able to be of service to others, then that person is really able to fulfill his or her true purpose. Such is the kind of courage and determination to altruistic principles that bodhisattvas should adopt.

I was sorely tempted to use either “crap” or “sucks” in the title of this post because I have a feeling those words translate into lots of blog hits. However, it seems sort of juvenile to me and I am not that desperate for hits, or attention. Sex, sin, and some spicy photos, should suffice.

Like a number of other Buddhist bloggers, I was contacted by Kim Corbin, Senior Publicist at New World Library, who inquired if I was interested in a free, advance copy of one of their books. Now, I understood she was not sending me a free book out of the goodness of her heart, but rather with the expectation that I would review or at least mention it, which doesn’t bother me since I also know that’s how the publishing business works. Despite the fact that I need another book like I need a hole in the head (I have over 1000 in my living room alone), I am such a book nut that I said yeah, sure, send it.

Bloggers and professional writers far more skillful than I at reviewing will no doubt subject this tome (Sex, Sin, and Zen by Brad Warner) to their scrutiny over the coming days and weeks. I am going to muddle through anyway, partly out of a sense of obligation, but mainly because it gives me an excuse to also discuss Mastering the Core by Daniel M. Ingram, which has created some buzz in recent years, although I had not heard of it until a couple of months ago.

I want to talk a little about the authors, and I have to tell you that I don’t know either of them, never met them or heard them speak. So while I don’t have any first-hand knowledge, neither do I have any preconceptions. I’m just calling it as I see it, from afar.

Warner and Ingram may not want to be grouped together, but they both identify themselves with “Hardcore” Zen (a term I think Warner coined), which is perhaps only tangential to “Dharma Punx,” I’m not sure. From what little I’ve been exposed to (strictly on the net), this hardcore/punx approach strikes me as mostly striking an attitude which may resonate with some, and might have with me years ago, but not now.

My impression of Brad Warner, though, is that he’s probably a sincere guy. At least, that’s what many people say. But a personality cult of sorts has sprouted up around him, and I feel he might regret cultivating this rock star like persona later on when, and if, he finds a real voice, because I think ultimately it will interfere with his message.

What is his message? Well, in this book it seems to be: sex is good, porn is cool, it’s okay to masturbate, remember to be responsible, be compassionate. Speaking only for myself, I don’t need a 282 page book to tell me that.

I’m glad I got the book for free, because I would sure regret forking over $14.95 to read something like this passage, where he discusses Gene Simmon’s sex tape:

Don’t get me wrong, I love Gene Simmons, and I’ll be a KISS fan till I die. And its really not for me to comment on Gene’s personal life. But I will anyway, because it’s fun. That video is just sad. I mean, the guy moistens his lady friend up by licking his fingers and then rubbing them on her. What is that world-famous seven-inch tongue for? If I had a tongue like that you better believe I’d put it to good use every chance I got! Plus, he is chewing gum throughout the proceedings.

Heavy stuff. I hear he’s tackling Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakakarika next. Can’t wait. Also coming soon, the inevitable  Brad Warner sex tape. It’s just a matter of time because I’m willing to bet the farm that this guy is getting laid like crazy. Which brings up another point. He calls himself a monk. He’s not. Monks are monastic, which he isn’t, and they are usually celibate, which he . . . well, I already covered that.

I am being facetious. Actually Warner has a pretty good handle on Buddha-dharma, and there are sections of the book that aren’t bad. The problem is that there are too many sections that are, which makes for a very uneven read. He has been called “a refreshing new voice,” but that’s only because he is looser with his language and his style is very informal, almost to the point of being rather juvenile at times. Too many exclamation points, too!

Seriously, if he had concentrated on being more explicit in a meaningful way, rather than in a titillating one, or his editor had trimmed it, removing the high school like passages and asides, this would be a much better book.

I think Brad Warner has potential. I don’t know if he needs to get over himself, grow up, or whether it has something to do with the role he’s put himself into, the drama, or what it is, but something is missing. Even when he tries not to take himself too seriously, it comes off as a contrivance.

For me, the best part of Sex, Sin, and Zen is the interview with Nina Hartley, a porn actress who was big in the 1980’s and is still going strong (Both of her parents were ordained Zen priests). In fact, if I had been his editor or publisher, I would have suggested an entire book of interviews. I think dialogues with Buddhist teachers, practitioners and others with Buddhist connections about this subject would have been far more interesting and illuminating. Sex is personal. Once you have handled the few big issues, it gets pretty subjective.

By the way, the best book on sex I’ve ever read was The Hite Report on Female Sexuality by Shere Hite (1976), a nationwide study that contained many interviews with women discussing their feelings and thoughts about sex. For a typical self-involved male who at that time really didn’t have a clue about women, it opened my eyes.

In martial arts there is a maxim that a true warrior does not go around telling everyone what a great warrior he or she is. This is something you either get or you don’t. Daniel M.Ingram, author of  Mastering the Core, apparently doesn’t. And I need to make a correction, that’s The Arahat Daniel M.Ingram. He claims to be enlightened and what raises red flags for me is a) he claims he became enlightened at the age of 15 and b) his enlightenment is something outside of any traditional spiritual context. that he claims to have had an intense spiritual/meditational experience which corresponds with an early stage of enlightenment without an formal training, which I feel is a subtle way of suggesting that ultimately his “enlightenment” is something outside of any traditional spiritual context.

Ingham says “I crossed the Arising and Passing Away when I was about 15 and did it again about 4 more times by my recollection over the next 10 years without formal practice, technique or guidance.”

I’ve seen this before. Messianic gurus often claim to have had an intense spiritual experience or awakening at a very early age, and without the aid of a prescribed spiritual discipline. They did it on their own, because they’re special, unique, and teachers like themselves come along only once or twice in a millennium, so come with them, they will take you higher, etc. This way, later on, they can take their followers out of the tradition they have initially taught in and establish their own tradition. Nothing wrong with that per se, but they usually end up becoming cults.

Now, I am just an average person with average intelligence, talents and so on. One thing I feel I have that is above average, however, is a BS meter, and what also sends this meter all the way into the red is the question of Ingram’s credentials as a dharma teacher. From what I can tell, he has none. Zip. Zero. He attended a few meditation retreats. He mentions Sayadaw U Pandita, Junior but doesn’t indicate the nature of the relationship. One would think if it was a teacher-student relationship, he would not hesitate to say so. This vagueness is just another warning sign. He doesn’t say so in so many words, but the implication is that he doesn’t need any credentials or qualifications, because he is a self-empowered teacher and his enlightenment is superior .

Mastering the Core is subtitled “An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book.” Yet, all he offers here is fairly standard stuff. Most of this ideas are based on Mahasi Sayadaw’s Progress of Insight, with a little watered-down Ken Wilber thrown in. Ingram paraphrases a lot of traditional Buddhist teachings. That’s fine. We all do that to a certain extent. But I think you need to try a little harder when you are writing a book, especially one that claims to be revolutionary or ground-breaking.

He says that you can become enlightened in this lifetime. Well, Mahayana Buddhism has been saying that for at least a thousand years, so nothing new there.

Ingram also tries to couch his book as some sort of generational manifesto:

It is the unrestrained voice of one from a generation whose radicals wore spikes and combat boots rather than beads and sandals, listened to the Sex Pistols rather than the Moody Blues, wouldn’t know a beat poet or early ‘60s dharma bum from a hole in the ground, and thought the hippies were pretty friggin’ naïve, not that we don’t owe them a lot. It is also the unrestrained voice of one whose practice has been dedicated to complete and unexcelled mastery of the traditional and hardcore stages of the path rather than some sort of vapid New Age fluff or pop psychological head-trip. If that ain’t you, consider reading something else.

This seems to have been lifted directly from Tom Hayden’s Port Huron Statement and JFK’s Inaugural Address, and I don’t buy it. The generations that have followed the boomers have been on a quest to find something to be about, only to find that meaning has eluded them. I have run across quite a number of younger people who have echoed this sentiment, so I don’t think I am off base. It reminds me of Marlon Brando in The Wild One:  “What’re you rebelling against, Johnny?” “Whaddya got?”

I don’t know how old Ingram is but I have some news for him: the Sex Pistols were my generation. I was 23 when the Sex Pistols were formed in 1975. By that time I had already been through my teenybopper period, my hippie period, my anti-hippie-pre-punk-Velvet Underground period, my heavy metal period, and my glitter period. My post-Velvet Underground-Patti Smith-Clash-punk period was fairly short. By then I had realized there was more to life than affecting an attitude and trying to be cool.

I don’t mind anyone appropriating icons from my generation so much, but Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious?  Being rude, odious and vile is not that cool. And even at their mushiest, the Moody Blues were ten times the musicians the Sex Pistols ever were.

In my opinion, the future of Buddhism in the West is something that is going to unfold naturally. Movements will come and go, that’s natural too. Trying to force things in a certain direction just because the direction is different is a shallow approach, and to me, at this stage of the game, rather boring.

Hedy Lamarr once said, “I can excuse everything but boredom. Boring people don’t have to stay that way.”

And like I said, Warner has potential. Ingram: Proceed with caution.

Ghost Dog is a film by Jim Jarmusch. Forest Whitaker plays the title character, a lone wolf hit man who follows the ancient code of the samurai. He lives in a homemade cabin on the roof of an abandoned tenement building where he keeps a flock of pigeons. Ghost Dog is cold-blooded but he also has warmth and humanity, something that was already a bit of a cliche by 1999 when the film was made, but it works. Ghost Dog broods a lot and in voice overs, frequently quotes from the Hagakure, a book of commentaries by a 18th century samurai, Yamamoto Tsunetomo:

Our bodies are given life from the midst of nothingness. Existing where there is nothing is the meaning of the phrase “Form is emptiness.” That all things are provided for by nothingness is the meaning of the phrase “Emptiness is form.” One should not think that these are two separate things.

“Form is emptiness, emptiness is form . . .” comes from the Heart Sutra, of course. It has been called the most famous statement in Mahayana Buddhism.

Boiled down from the much larger Maha-Prajnaparamita Sutra, the Heart Sutra not only touches upon every major concept in Buddhism, but I would say that of religion and philosophy as a whole. There’s even a shorter version of what is already the shortest Buddhist sutra, which in any of the Asian languages amounts to a mere paragraph, and it’s not much longer in English. Recited daily by Buddhists all over world, the Heart Sutra transcends sectarianism. I think the Pure Land, Nichiren and Theravada are probably the only mainstream schools that do not use the Heart Sutra in one way or another.

Interpretations of this famous phrase, “form is emptiness . . .”, might be as numerous as the sands of the Ganges. It is not my intention today to add another one, but rather present some words by a few contemporary Buddhist teachers.

The Five Skandhas are the components of existence. Buddhism holds that an individual is a combination of the skandhas, or aggregates, listed here in the passage that contains the statement under discussion:

Kuan Yin Bodhisattva, while practicing deep Prajna-Paramita, clearly saw that all five Skandhas are empty and thus crossed over all suffering. O Shariputra, form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Form does not differ from emptiness; emptiness does not differ from form. Sensation, perception, volition, and consciousness are also like this.

Thich Nhat Hanh, contemporary Zen Master, from The Heart of Understanding:

Form is the wave and emptiness is the water. You can understand through that image. The Indians speak in a language that can scare us, but we have to understand their way of expression in order to really understand them. In the West, when we draw a circle, we consider it to be zero, nothingness. But in India, a circle means totality, wholeness. The meaning is the opposite. So ‘form is emptiness, emptiness is form,’ is like wave is water, water is wave. ‘Form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form. The same is true with feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness,’ because these five contain each other. Because one exists, everything exists.

Sheng-yen, (1930-2009) Chinese Ch’an monk, from There is No Suffering:

Indeed, everything is empty, but emptiness is wonderful existence. It is precisely because our existence is illusory that we can experience enlightenment and help others to do the same. For this reason, “emptiness is not other than form” is more important to understand than “form is not other than emptiness,” in that the workings of the five skandhas are the full display of emptiness. The five skandhas do have a conventional existence. Our bodies are illusory, but we will suffer if we do not care for them. Food is illusory, but we will starve if we do not eat. Our activities are illusory, but only through activity can we help others. For this reason, there is action in the midst of emptiness, and because of this, we should remain active and positive, and avoid nihilism.

Tenzin Gyatso, The 14th Dalai Lama, from Essence of the Heart Sutra:

It is important for us to avoid the misapprehension that emptiness is an absolute reality or independent truth. Emptiness must be understood as the true nature of things and events. Thus we read, “Form is emptiness; emptiness is from. Emptiness is no other than form; form too is no other than emptiness.” This does not refer to some kind of Great Emptiness out there somewhere, but to the emptiness of a specific phenomenon, in this case form, or matter.

The statement that “apart from form there is no emptiness” suggests that the emptiness of form is nothing other than the form’s ultimate nature. Form lacks intrinsic or independent existence; thus, its nature is emptiness. This nature – emptiness – is not independent of form, but rather is a characteristic of form; emptiness is form’s mode of being. One must understand form and its emptiness in unity; there are not two independent realities.

Mu Soeng Sunim, Korean Zen teacher, from Heart Sutra: Ancient Buddhist Wisdom in the Light of Quantum Reality:

The sutra insists that form is emptiness. There is a critical difference between form being empty and form being emptiness. Sunyata [emptiness], in Prajna-paramita sutras, is the ultimate nature of reality; at the same time it does not exist apart from the phenomena but permeates each phenomenon. Therefore, sunyata cannot be sought apart from the totality of all forms. And, although all forms are qualified at their core by sunyata, its presence does not negate the conventional appearance of form. In this sense, emptiness is dependent upon the form it qualifies, as much as form is dependent on emptiness for its qualification. Thus form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. At its core level, form does not differ from emptiness nor does emptiness differ with form.

Shunryu Suzuki (1904-1971), Soto Zen Master, from Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind:

We say our practice should be without gaining ideas, without any expectations, even of enlightenment. This does not mean, however, just to sit without any purpose. This practice free from gaining ideas is based on the Prajna Paramita Sutra. However, if you are not careful the sutra itself will give you a gaining idea. It says, “Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.” But if you attach to that statement, you are liable to be involved in dualistic ideas: here is you, form, and here is emptiness, which you are trying to realize through your form. So “form is emptiness, and emptiness is form” is still dualistic. But fortunately, our teaching goes on to say, “Form is form and emptiness is emptiness.” Here there is no dualism.

When you find it difficult to stop your mind while you are sitting [in meditation] and when you are still trying to stop your mind, this is the stage of “form is emptiness and emptiness is form.” But while you are practicing in this dualistic way, more and more you will have oneness with your goal. And when your practice becomes effortless, you can stop your mind. This is the stage of “form is form and emptiness is emptiness.”

Understand?

If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you’ve probably figured out by now that I love poetry. The first poem I read that gave me a real sense of how wonderful poetry could be was e.e. cumming’s “in-Just spring.” I was either in the 3rd or 4th grade and the poem just bowled me over because it was so simple and it was so different from any other poem I had read and it made you feel what he was writing about. “When the world is mud-lucious . . . puddle wonderful . . . eddieandbill” – I remember it was cold outside but as I read the poem, I felt I was touching spring.

Since then I have always preferred poets whose styles are similar in some way to cummings. People like William Carlos Williams, Aram Saroyan, and Charles Bukowski to name a few. For me, the best poets use as few words as possible. That’s one reason why I also like Chinese and Japanese poetry so much. Saroyan once wrote a poem that consisted of just one word – crickets – typed repeatedly down the center of the page. You can see that poem and more of his minimalist word experiments here.

Langston Hughes is another poet I admire.  He’s best known for the work he did during the Harlem Renaissance, a literary and intellectual cultural movement of the 1920s and 1930s and he was one of the first poets to experiment with blues and jazz rhythms.

Saturday’s post featured one of Hughes’ poems and I thought that some readers might not be too familiar with him or his work. You can read about Hughes here, while today, I present another of his poems. I think it’s one of the best pieces of poetry ever written.

Hughes wrote “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” while riding a train on his way to Mexico to visit his father. He was just 18 years old. Short and spare, yet containing powerful imagery, the poem manages to tell the story of human civilization in a mere 60 words.

I am not African-American, but this poem speaks to me. I, too, am familiar with rivers and very familiar with the last one he mentions, along with that city, and I’ve seen the river just as he describes.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

The word “freedom” is often used to refer to an absence of restraint or control of a person’s physical and mental activities.  This kind of freedom is always limited by conditions that prevent individuals from doing certain things. These conditions may be natural or human-made laws, or they may be physical or mental limitations.

Different people feel free in different ways. Everyone has a somewhat unique sense of personal freedom. Some persons may feel that one way to be free is to be entirely unconnected with anything else. However, this sense of freedom is only an illusion because in truth there is nothing that is unconnected with anything else.

As far as Buddhism is concerned, spiritual freedom is release from suffering. Buddhism teaches that an understanding of interdependency is crucial to attaining this kind of freedom.

The Indian term for this relativity is Pratitya-Samutpada, rendered in English variously as dependent origination, inter-dependent origination, dependent arising, conditioned co-becoming, co-dependent production, etc. I like interdependency. It’s short and to the point.

Interdependency is often explained with the formula of “because of this, that arises; because of that, this arises.” Nothing exists by itself because everything is inter-connected and nothing can arise or come into being without be produced by causes operating under various conditions.

Since the Buddha was primarily concerned with the problem of human suffering, he used interdependency to trace the causes of suffering, which he ultimately attributed to ignorance. This resulted in a reverse formula: “because this is not, that ceases; because that is not; this ceases.” According to this reverse formula, if ignorance is not then suffering is not. The Buddha taught that if we remove ignorance and replace it with wisdom, suffering can be transcended.

What do we mean by ignorance? In 1997, while giving teachings on Nagarjuna’s Precious Garland, the Dalai Lama offered these words:

The very word avidya or ignorance in itself shows a state that one cannot really endorse as positive. It is said to be fundamentally confused, so, surely it cannot be a state that is desirable. The point is that if our existence  is said to be completely determined and conditioned by that fundamentally flawed way of viewing the world, how can there be scope for lasting freedom or lasting peace? Therefore, it becomes crucial to see whether avidya or fundamental ignorance can be eliminated.

Some schools of Buddhism consider the root of ignorance to be self-grasping; the mind grasping at self-existence on one hand and ignorance on the other. In the Madhyamaka (Middle Way) school, ignorance is understood as a state of mis-knowing, viewing the world in a distorted way, and this arises from non-comprehension of the interdependency of all things.

I feel that interdependency is a key word for the future. As our world keeps shrinking though advances in technology, we are seeing more and more how things are truly interrelated. Each day, science provides us with new examples of how life and our environment are both like fabrics woven into a complex pattern of causes and effects. In medicine, recognition of the mind-body connection is now more commonplace than ever. If, in the future, we human beings can ever begin to cultivate a deep understanding of interdependency, we might be able to turn the world around and establish some measure of lasting peace.

This last point is the great benefit of the concept of interdependency because it leads us to a true understanding of equality. Owing to the fact that we are interconnected and because we are subject to the same causes and conditions, we are all equal.

Seeing ourselves as unconnected to other things, particularly other beings, is not freedom. Here again the reverse applies in that true freedom is embracing inter-connectedness. It’s seeing the world as it really is.

The person who thinks that freedom means being unconnected is just grasping after a “self” which does not exist. A self that is independent, permanent, and unchanging, and nowhere can such a thing be found. We like to feel we are a self that is different in both appearance and substance from other beings, which is true, but only in relative terms. Science tells us that the components which make us different from other beings constitute only a percent or two of our total being, so ultimately the rest is the same as every other being.

If nothing else, here lies freedom from hatred and racism, for it makes no sense to hate another person because one or two percent of difference. Not to mention that for any reason, hate is not cool.

Nagarjuna said, “Everything stands in harmony for the person who is in harmony with interdependency.” He taught that peace and harmony in the world is possible when we reject the idea of the unconnected self, and further, that anyone who comprehends interdependency deeply can help all beings realize freedom. Such a person is called a buddha, one who has awakened.

On this date, 47 years ago:

Some 200,000 people were gathered for “The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” an event that was more of a rally than a march. They stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial, where the great man in white marble looked down upon them, and where the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, uttered these historic words:

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

According to biographer Anthony Scaduto, young folksinger Bob Dylan, who was to perform that day along with Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, Peter, Paul, and Mary, and others, while in a private moment, looked over to the Capitol with a skeptical eye and said, “Think they’re listening? No, they ain’t listening at all.”

Hope and optimism was in the air. The times they were a’changin’. Yet, Dylan had already sensed the dark days ahead.

Only some listened and the country paid a heavy price: riots ignited in cities across the country and the cities went up in flames to the chants of “Burn, Baby, Burn!”, assassinations, student protests over the war in Vietnam turned into violent melees -- unrest was as much the tenor of the times as peace and love.

In 1951, the great African-American poet, Langston Hughes wrote:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

I remember a day in April of 1992: I stood on the roof of my building which offers a panoramic view of the Los Angeles basin. The sky to the east was a solid wall of black cloud. Smoke. Plumes of smoke rose from locations all over the city. I went downstairs and on TV was Rodney King, the man savagely beat by the policemen whose acquittals had sparked the riots. Rodney King was speaking to a group of reporters. He looked confused, overwhelmed, like a man caught in a Kafkaesque nightmare. He said, “Can’t we all . . . just . . . get along?”

It seems so simple. If we could just get along . . .

Another Buddhist blogger, Adam, at Fly Like A Crow, wrote yesterday that he was tired of talking about race. I left a comment on his blog, agreeing. I am tired of talking about race. I am tired of racism. I am tired of everything having to be an issue. Tired of no one listening and everyone shouting. I am tired of young people dying in wars that should not be waged. I am tired of terrorism, and really tired of what it has done to our lives and our politics. I’m tired of the way that we can’t get along.

I changed my mind about that comment. I realize now that I can’t stop talking. We can’t be silent when there is injustice in the world. No matter how weary we may be, we can’t give in to complacency. We are interdependent, so when one dream is deferred, all of our dreams are deferred.

The former Mayor of Los Angeles, the late Tom Bradley (an African-American) once proposed the rather controversial idea of taking kids out of the ghettos and barrios and putting them into camps where they could get the kind of education and exposure to positive thinking they deserved. The problem he said was that many children, African-American youth especially, didn’t know how to dream. After being beat down for so many generations, they had lost the ability to dream. Their parents didn’t teach it to them because their parents had not taught it to them.

Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream and almost fifty years later the dream is still deferred for too many Americans. Hate crimes are on the rise. The nation is a battleground and the ominous signs of violent confrontations once again are on the horizon.

Yesterday I also read a piece by Katie Loncke at The Buddhist Channel who said she disagreed with the notion that smiling at strangers on the subway is resisting militarism. But that is just the sort of thing that many people can do in the midst of their busy lives to keep talking. We don’t have to open our mouths to communicate. It seems to me, from my experience, that a smile can be a pretty powerful thing.

Loncke talked about inner work and outer work. I don’t know what that means. The work is both. There is no duality. In Buddhism we call it esho funi – self and environment are two but not two. However, the environment itself is really one. We all share the same environment, this world. When we strive to make it better for others, we’re making it better for ourselves, too.

We need to keep talking, but even more importantly, we need to listen. We should be like Kuan Yin, the Bodhisattva of compassion, the Hearer of the Cries of the World. We need to lay down our soldier arms, lay down our barbs and jabs, our hate and selfishness – lay down these arms so that we can embrace our brothers and sisters, so that we can smile and hold them close, and hear their cries, and smother those cries with our understanding and compassion.

First smile, then listen, and then talk . . .We cannot continue to defer this universal dream.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream . . .

If you have never watched or heard the complete speech delivered by Dr. King on August 28, 1963, here it is:

This is Bob Dylan with Joan Baez at the March singing “When The Ship Comes In” along with a snippet of Dylan doing “Only A Pawn in Their Game” (both songs introduced by the late actor and social activist, Ozzie Davis):

“To be or not to be – that is the question” is, of course, one of Shakespeare most famous lines. Hamlet is contemplation suicide, and this phrase, according to Schopenhauer “is, in condensed form, that our state is so wretched that complete non-existence would be decidedly preferable to it.”

However, this assumes that there is existence and non-existence, being and non-being. Within the Buddhist tradition, there are divergent opinions on the subject of being and non-being. Nagarjuna rejected both the notions that ‘being is and nothing is not’ and ‘nothing exists.’ In considering this matter, he set up a formula of four possibilities, each one of which he rejected: something is, it is not, it both is and is not, and it neither is nor is not.

What Nagarjuna was really refuting were modes of thought, opinions, views, statements, and so on. As an antidote to the disease of clinging to either being or non-being, he took a middle path between the two. He taught that the tendency to cling to concepts and views was the root of suffering. His Middle Way is to see things as they truly are and to understand that nothing in the world actually exists absolutely, just as nothing perishes completely.

Here is an excerpt from a dharma talk given by Thich Nhat Hanh in Plum Village, France, in which he discusses this ‘question’ of to be or not to be:

Descartes said: “I think therefore I am.” He was caught in a notion of existence, clinging to it to overcome the fear of non-existence. Because he did not look deeply enough, he was fearful of being nothing especially when he was confronted with the death of someone, or with his own death. If we are caught in the notion of being we will also be caught in the notion of non-being. From the perspective of life span, we think we start to exist at the point of time we call birth; and we think we continue to exist until the point of time we call death, after which we think we cease to exist. Thus the notions of birth and death form the basis of the notions of being and non-being. Both of these notions have their roots in the fundamental notion of life span. The Buddha has taught that when conditions are sufficient things manifest, but to label that manifestation as being is wrong. Also when conditions are not sufficient, things do not manifest, but to label that as non-being is also wrong. Reality is beyond being and non-being, we need to overcome those notions. Hamlet said: “To be or not to be, that is the question.” We can see that he was caught by these notions. But according to this teaching, “to be or not to be”, is not the question. Because reality is beyond the notion of being or non-being, birth or death, coming or going. Where do we come from and where do we go to? Those are philosophical questions. But if we understand suchness then we know that we don’t come from anywhere and we don’t go anywhere.

I had another post planned for today, but I read something yesterday that rather disturbed me. Actually a couple of things, but I will deal with only one today. I’m just going to write this off the cuff, so to speak, so it might be a bit disjointed, and may seem like a rant, but so be it.

If you think of yourself as a Buddhist then as far as I am concerned you have an obligation to try to practice and behave as one. This is not a free for all party. There are some standards, and sorry to say, they are not really subject to your interpretation. At least not until you have had some real years of practice, or you are a qualified teacher.

Some people think Buddhism has nothing to do with morality or ethics. They’re wrong. Ethics is one of the cornerstones of Buddhism. And one thing I’ve noticed in the Buddhist Blogosphere is that some people also seem to be under the impression that when we switch on our computers, the reasons for why we should engage in ethical behavior somehow magically vanish. Ethics has no on or off switch.

If you are going to identify your blog as Buddhist then I believe that your blogging should reflect Buddhist values. That means more than just blogging about compassion and peace and stuff. Your blogging should be ethical and compassionate. It is neither ethical or compassionate to mislead people.

Most blogs are about opinions, and as such, they have a limited value. But whether it’s opinion or some sort of factual reporting, blogging falls under the category of journalism. It’s very true that people believe what they read. People forget that it’s merely opinion, especially when there are so-called facts thrown into the mix.

When mixing opinion with fact, I think one has to be very careful to make sure that somehow they stay separated or duly noted for what they are. When representing something as a fact, it should be a clear fact that is verifiable and linked to a source. To use hearsay or someone’s opinion and represent them as facts is, I believe, unethical.

If I were to write something like “In Zen Buddhism the practice of hitting people with sticks is widespread,” I would have to call this a misleading fact. Yes, it is true, it’s a fact, but if I don’t provide the context and some explanation, readers could get the wrong impression. If I want to be ethical, fair and balanced, then I should either mention that this is just something I’ve heard and since I have no personal experience with it, it should not be taken as a hard fact, or I should write that this only occurs within the context of formal meditation sessions and only with the consent of the practitioner. Otherwise, people might think that Zennies are just a bunch of stick-wielding abusers going berserk.

If I say that I am going to offer my opinion and then present what appears to be layers of facts that are not linked to any sources beyond a vague mention of some individuals I know, this is the same thing. Misleading and unethical.

As Buddhists we should try to rise above the fray, not sink to the lowest common denominator. We should try to set an example for others, not follow their misguided examples. Just because everyone else in this crazy world today seems to have forgotten about fair play and the importance of having some integrity, we should to? No way.

I think we should have the spirit that as Buddhists we will hold ourselves to a higher standard than anyone else. Why so? Well, I’ll have an explanation for that and more on the subject of ethical blogging when I’ve had time to sort out my thoughts. Had to get this off my chest for now.

Growing up I loved the “funnies” in the newspaper, especially the Sunday Funnies when the comic strips had big panels and were in color. My favorites were the usual suspects for that time: Peanuts, Blondie, Dennis the Menace, Steve Roper, Tarzan, Flash Gordon and so on. I really liked Milton Caniff’s illustrating in Steve Canyon and Hal Foster’s in Prince Valiant, but I usually found the story lines in those two strips rather boring.

Pogo was a strip I didn’t appreciate until I was a bit older. That’s because it often contained more mature humor and references that were way over my head. In this way, Pogo was like the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, which I didn’t get a lot of until later on either, and then in the 1990’s, Pinky and the Brain. Both of those shows included some very dry and sometimes, sophisticated humor. A lot of bad puns, too, but that’s beside the point.

Pogo was the creation of Walt Kelly, whose birthday it is today. He’s not around to celebrate because he died in 1973 at the age of sixty. Kelly was an animator and cartoonist who worked for the Walt Disney studio from 1935 to 1940.  After that, he drew for Dell Comics, where in 1941 he created the characters of Pogo the possum and Albert the alligator.

In 1948, while drawing political cartoons for the New York Star, he decided to use Pogo and Albert in a daily strip and thus Pogo was born on October 4, 1948. In syndication, it became one of the most popular strips in the country, appearing in over 400 newspapers and it continued running until a few years after Kelly’s death.

Pogo was a real mixed bag, a combination of wit and broad humor: sometimes it was just silly, sometimes it was social and political satire. It would take too long to describe Pogo – the setting, the characters, etc. I recommend you check out the official Pogo website here to learn about all that.

Even if you’ve never heard of Pogo, chances are you’re familiar with one very famous phrase from the strip. It was a parody of a message received during the War of 1812 by Army General William Henry Harrison from U.S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry after the Battle of Lake Erie: “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.” Kelly first used it in the forward to a Pogo book in 1953, in which he defended his attacks on McCarthyism. The best known version of the phrase appeared on a anti-pollution poster for Earth Day 1970.

First, here is the comic strip version featured in daily newspapers a year after that initial Earth Day, and then the passage from the forward of The Pogo Papers.

By the way, today’s comic strips don’t do much for me. The humor is more contemporary, but the artwork is nothing near the quality of old masters like Walt Kelly.

Traces of nobility, gentleness and courage persist in all people, do what we will to stamp out the trend. So, too, do those characteristics which are ugly. It is just unfortunate that in the clumsy hands of a cartoonist all traits become ridiculous, leading to a certain amount of self-conscious expostulation and the desire to join battle.

There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blast on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.

Forward!

Walt Kelly, 1953

Happy Birthday, Walt. Long live Pogo.