Interesting item in last Thursday’s Guardian.
At last someone is beginning to get the message.
Shame it won’t happen — yet.
Category Archives: beliefs
Frustration and Greed
I was reading the latest on Brad Warner’s Hardcore Zen blog last evening — always worthwhile as Brad is eminently sensible and a Zen master.
He was writing about greed, especially greed for good.
And he nailed why it is that so many of us get frustrated that, while we can make a difference, we can’t make the huge difference that we know is needed. We are being greedy for the goodness we are striving after, and in Zen greed (any greed) is one of the “three poisons”.
Here’s the key extract of what Brad had to say. [My explanations in brackets.]
Greed … does not differentiate between good and bad. We’re used to the term greed being applied to things that are either bad for us or to things that are good or neutral except when over-indulged in … greed doesn’t just get directed towards bad things. You can also be just as greedy for good stuff, for things no one would ever say you shouldn’t want …
Back when I was an employee of Tsuburaya Productions [Japanese company who made the Godzilla films], I found myself getting really frustrated with how things were going. I was very dedicated to the company and I knew we could be doing much better than we were. I saw great opportunities for us internationally that we were just passing by because our management refused to see them or take steps to realize them.
During this time I went and saw Nishijima Roshi [his Zen teacher] and complained bitterly about the situation. Nishijima had been a businessperson most of his working life. He understood that side of things very well. I recall once telling him that Tsuburaya Productions was wasting its opportunities because it had no goals. I caught myself and said that I knew Zen was supposed to be goalless. He said, “Yes. But in business you must have a goal”.
So he got what I was saying that day about my frustrations with the company. But he said I needed to be satisfied with making small changes. Those small changes were important and eventually could lead to greater things. He didn’t exactly tell me not to be greedy, but that’s what he was saying.
The same attitude can be applied to the kinds of noble and important work a lot of people I meet are involved in. A lot of these people are terribly frustrated because they can’t seem to make the sweeping changes they know need to be made in order to fix the problems they’re working on. But many of these problems are global in scale …
It’s unrealistic to expect great changes to happen quickly. Getting greedy for good things only makes matters worse. We start getting angry and depressed, leading us to be unable to be effective in our important efforts to do what needs to be done.
This is something which hadn’t struck me before but on reflection is both correct and important. And it is something I (and probably many others) need to take on board.
Don’t be greedy for change. Yes, have a goal, but be prepared to progress towards it one small step at a time. “Softly, softly, catchee monkey.”
Oddity of the Week: Approved Reincarnation
China is notorious for its efforts to control things in Tibet but the law that the Chinese government passed in 2007 was beyond absurd. According to the law it’s illegal for Tibetan Buddhist monks to reincarnate without the government´s permission.
On 3 August 2007 China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs issued a decree that all reincarnations of Tibetan Buddhist monks must have government approval, otherwise they are “illegal or invalid”. The decree states
It is an important move to institutionalize management on reincarnation of living Buddhas. The selection of reincarnates must preserve national unity and solidarity of all ethnic groups and the selection process cannot be influenced by any group or individual from outside the country.
It also requires that temples which apply for reincarnation of a living Buddha must be
legally-registered venues for Tibetan Buddhism activities and are capable of fostering and offering proper means of support for the living Buddha.
Reincarnation applications have to be submitted to four governmental bodies for approval: the religious affairs department of the provincial-level government; the provincial-level government; State Administration for Religious Affairs; and the State Council.
All of which is sadly part of China’s efforts to sideline the current Dalai Lama and take control of the selection (when the time comes) of both the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama.
For more see http://humansarefree.com/2011/02/china-bans-reincarnation-without.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Religious_Affairs_Bureau_Order_No._5.
Lessons for Life
Spread all across the intertubes there are hundreds of sites which suggest a vast number of supposed “lessons for life”. Many, of course, are nothing of the sort but merely personal predilection or religious proselytising. However there are some which seem to me to be much more universally useful and which would serve us well if included in our modus operandi. Here then are my top ten tips for surviving life on an even keel.
My Top Ten Lessons for Life
- Life isn’t fair — deal with it.
- If it harm no-one, do as you will.
- Treat others as you would wish them to treat you.
- Be open and honest in all that you do.
- You can never have all the information you want to make a decision; every decision is the best you can make at the time with the information available.
- Don’t be afraid to admit you were wrong or you don’t know; be prepared to change your mind.
- No one is responsible for your happiness, your emotions, your opinions or your orgasms except you.
- No regrets — just things you now know weren’t the best.
- If you’re faced with a problem, don’t delay trying to resolve it; problems ignored only multiply.
- There is no point worrying about things outside your control or which you cannot change.
Of all the rest I’ve seen over the years I have collected some more of what I consider to be the most generally useful on my website at Lessons for Life.
Non, Papa Francesco!
A few weeks ago, Pope Francis stated as his opinion that couples who choose not to have children were selfish.
A society with a greedy generation, that doesn’t want to surround itself with children, that considers them above all worrisome, a weight, a risk, is a depressed society. The choice to not have children is selfish. Life rejuvenates and acquires energy when it multiplies: It is enriched, not impoverished.
[Guardian; 11 February 2015]
No. Absolutely not. I cannot agree. In fact the opposite is true: couples who have children are the selfish ones.
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Even leaving aside the cost of raising children, they are an environmental disaster. Right from the off parents have to provide nappies, where the choice is between two very un-green options: washable cotton terry towelling or disposables. Noreen looked at this from a professional standpoint and came to the conclusion there was little to choose, environmentally, between the options.
And from then on there is an ever increasing requirement for clothing, food, warmth, entertainment, schooling and all manner of other plastic toot. Very little of which is at all environmentally friendly.
Children are really not very green.
Which, I’m sorry to say, seems to mean that couples who have children do so essentially for their own gratification. What is that if it isn’t selfish? Especially on a planet which is already over-populated.
Noreen and I made a deliberate decision, some 30 years ago, not to have children. We were neither of us sure we wanted children and we both had (some approximation to) a career: me earning money and Noreen in a relatively poorly paid public service job giving back to the community.
In making the decision we committed to be there for our friends; their children; their grand-children; and even their parents. Why? Because at some time everyone is going to need some support.
However good a parent — and most parents do a fantastic job — they can never provide everything a child needs. There will always come a time when there will be something a child will not wish to discuss with their parents, but for which they might value unbiased support: boy/girl-friend problems; job worries; study concerns; money worries; having done something stupid and needing bailing out of the police station; or just needing a bed for the night. And adults can need these things too, of course.
Over the years we have been rung at 3AM by a friend wanting support because they’re in court the following day. We’ve helped friends through divorce. We’ve provided a contact point for the teenage daughters of American friends travelling alone through London. We’ve talked to teenagers about study options and going to university. We’ve connected parts of both our families back together. And so on …
How is this selfish?
OK, so from a biological point of view we aren’t propagating our genes. So what? Does it matter? If it doesn’t matter to us, then it matters not at all. And it is no-one else’s concern. But yes, we are lucky to have had the choice.
We’ve given up the option of passing on our genes and increasing the population in favour of helping other people who are already here, and most of whom are completely unrelated.
None of that sounds selfish to me — precisely the opposite.
So, no, Papa Francesco, on this you aren’t even wrong.
Social Nudity is a State of Mind
Social nudity (often called nudism or naturism) is poorly accepted by a large percentage of the people; something I explore on the On Nudity and Naturism page on my main website, as I have from time to time here.
This poor acceptance of social nudity seems to be because people do not understand social nudity, and curiously that seems to be a philosophical question; one that revolves around one’s mental imagery and state of mind. An interesting, but quite lengthy, article over at Naturist Philosopher looks at this question in detail.
It turns out that the problem is that most people do not have the right schema (mental context/image) to understand because they have no experience of social nudity on which to build this understanding. Their only experience of nudity is generally in a sexual context so this is the image they use to (mis)understand social nudity. And because social sex is (mostly) taboo everyone runs scared of social nudity — and indeed often private nudity within a contained, safe, family setting — thinking it can be nothing but sexual, and therefore “not nice”.
But social nudity isn’t sexual. Or at least no more (actually probably less) sexual than socialising clothed is. And we don’t generally worry about that!
However we aren’t going to change the popular misconceptions without giving people an alternative on which they can build a new schema. So we need some new paradigms and metaphors to explain social nudity to the uninitiated.
One such metaphor might be that clothes are like body armour: providing a barrier to protect me from the environment, the supposed ill-intentions of others and removing any vulnerability I might feel.
All social nudity is doing is removing the barrier — the packaging, if you like — between me and the environment, allowing me to feel the sun and the breeze on my skin and have the freedom I don’t have wearing clothes. And that’s actually fine because in general others don’t stare or make unwanted physical contact, and vulnerability is but a construct of my mind. This surely has to be goodness.
Social nudity is distinct from private nudity (as many of us indulge in at home) in that it emphasises the non-necessity or non-desirability of clothing in normal, everyday, non-sexual human relations. What the naturist movement has to do is to find ways of explaining this paradigm to people. And explaining it in such a way that it starts to give them some semblance of the experience they need to change their mental schema and become more accepting of social nudity.
Maybe, Naturist Philosopher suggests, the key is freedom. After all food free from pesticides is seen as goodness. So why shouldn’t a lifestyle incorporating freedom from clothes be equally desirable?
On Eating Animals
A week or two ago Virginia Hughes wrote a series of blog posts on personhood for National Geographic. One of them was about our relationship with our pets. In it she says:
When it comes to animals, my choices are full of contradictions and hypocrisies. I eat meat, wear leather, and endorse the use of animal models in medical research. On the other hand, I’m totally taken with the growing body of research demonstrating that non-human animals have cognitive skills once thought to be uniquely human. I believe animal cruelty is wrong and, as regular readers know all too well, I consider my dog part of the family.
Yes, in general I agree with this, although I’m not so happy about the use of animals in medical research. I can see that it is necessary to do some initial drug testing using animals and that behavioural studies could be useful, but these have to be well controlled and strictly necessary. Which is why research institutions have Ethics Committees. That doesn’t necessarily mean I like it. But we must not be using animals for testing things like cosmetics, household cleaners etc.
I fully admit that it is hypocritical of me to eat meat and wear leather when I expect others to rear, slaughter and butcher the animals for me. This is not a comfortable position.
I know that were I to have to procure my own meat then I would never eat beef, pork, lamb etc. again. I could despatch a fish. I could probably smack a bunny on the head, or top a chicken, but couldn’t deal with anything bigger. And I would have to be driven to even this by real, real hunger.
There are few, if any, things I can kill with a clear conscience. Even things I detest, like maggots, I still dislike killing. We gaily believe that these “lower animals” are not sentient. But are they? We have no way of knowing. And if some are, where is the line to be drawn between those that are and those that aren’t. As Virginia Hughes says, the more we learn about animals the more we realise is going on in their heads.
It is a perennial moral and philosophical dilemma.
While I wouldn’t go as far as some Hindu sects who won’t eat meat or eggs because they may be the reincarnation of an ancestor, I do feel that all living creatures deserve respect and have as much right to life as humans. If this is so, who can blame a tiger for killing and eating a man, when we will kill and eat a sheep, cow or pig?
Where I do draw the line is the gratuitous killing of animals, for example hunting or angling as a fun pastime. Hunting animals for food, done as humanely as possible, is one thing. Killing for the sake of it is, in my book, well out of order.
If we are going to eat meat then the least we can do is to try our best to ensure the animals have our respect in life (eg. good farming etc.) and a humane end. There is much to be said for the traditions in some ancient cultures of honouring the meat one is eating. Something which has been perpetuated in Christian circles as the saying of grace before meals. To this end we usually, at least at main meals, drink a toast to whatever noble beast we are eating.
Honour your enemies, for they too are humans beings. And similarly honour the animals you eat for they have given their lives to give you life.
Basically, respect all life. Indeed respect the whole of Nature.
Book Review: There is No God …
Brad Warner
There is No God and He is Always with You: A Search for God in Odd Places
New World Library, 2013
Brad Warner is an American Sōtō** Zen master, and monk, who lives in the world. He has been practising and studying Zen since 1983 in America and Japan. This is his fifth book looking at various aspects of Zen, what it is and how it works for him in the world rather than in an enclosed monastery.
Zen does not require belief in a god, or gods, or an afterlife, or any of the trappings of the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam), Hinduism or many of the other Buddhist traditions. Warner’s assertion is that Buddhism, as a philosophy and way of life rather than a religion requiring faith, has no need of god(s); those “mainstream Buddhism” has have been bolted on over the centuries. In this sense the Zen schools are truer to the original way taught by Gautama Buddha.
And yet Warner says there is a god. Not the Santa Claus figure sitting on a white cloud of the Abrahamic religions; nor the pantheon of Hinduism. God is much more nebulous, not really there at all, certainly not an identifiable figure, and yet is everything and always. To me this seems an essentially pantheistic view, but one emanating from much deeper: from Warner’s enlightenment.
This book looks at a variety of aspects of this god; at what some of the Zen teachings say; and where Warner says they have hitherto been poorly interpreted. The book also looks at the ways and times Warner has encountered this god in the world. He also touches on the philosophical concepts of the meaning of life and the afterlife. Unsurprisingly there is a lot of Brad Warner in the book as he develops nearly all the 22 short chapters from a real worldly experience.
Warner has a light, readable style, which means you can read this book quickly and at a superficial level, as I admit I have mostly done. While the book is an easy read I didn’t find it as captivating as his previous books. That’s not to say it doesn’t make one stop and think from time to time, and I feel sure it would repay another, deeper, reading as Warner packs a lot into just under 200 pages.
If you’re interested in Buddhism, Zen or comparative religion this is worth a read. Who knows, it may even lead you to enlightenment.
Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆
** Forget about the tricks of Zen koans; these are the teaching methods of the Rinzai school of Zen. Sōtō Zen (founded by Dōgen in the 13th century) is more about using pure meditation to discover things for oneself.
Oddity of the Week: Broomsticks
A few days ago I came across this most excellent news cutting from the South African Star, 7 May 2013 …
You can find the text of the full article here.
Thoughts on Nudity
I recently came across a couple of pieces by writer Nick Alimonos on his blog The Writer’s Disease. And given a number of things which have been happening recently they make some sense (although I don’t agree with everything he says).
These first two quotes are from the article Nudity is the Future from April 2013.
I recently had the fortune to read an article in Cracked, “The Five Craziest Ways Men Have Censored Female Sexuality” … what really stood out for me was how Islamist countries like Iran fight to repress human nature. Censors paste cartoon shirts on all of the female characters on the show Lost, because tank-tops are just too arousing. Even things we would never consider sexual, like a man and a woman sitting on a couch or the bulge of a woman’s blouse, is deemed unacceptable. Iranian censors will even blur a closeup of a woman’s face. No matter how many things the Iranian government tries to omit from TV and movies, boys will find something to be aroused by, because sexual desire comes from within … Trying to repress this instinct is a lost cause. It’s plugging up a pressure cooker bound to explode. The irony is that, by making everything taboo, everything becomes a forbidden fruit. Essentially, Iranian censors are creating the sex crazed society they are trying so desperately to prevent … The battle against free information cannot be won, as history has proven again and again. The only recourse is acceptance, and acceptance is a good thing, because human nature is in the right. Honest, open, free information results in the good of any society. As nudists, we find nothing inherently sexual … so that the act of sex develops naturally, by getting to know a person as a person.
The Internet is changing more than Islamic society, however; it’s changing ours as well. The last irrational, moralistic taboo in America is that of public nudity. There is no difference between an Iranian woman being arrested for going out in the streets without her hair covered and an American woman being arrested for stepping out her front door without a top on. Nobody can give a rational explanation for anti-nudity laws. The government uses, instead, abstract terminology like “disturbing the peace” or “public indecency”. Without realizing it, we criminalize nudity on strictly moral grounds, based on ancient and outdated religious biases that have no place in a modern society.
And these three are from a piece on Alimonos’s philosophy of Naturism.
As Americans, we live in an insane world, where you can legally carry and conceal a gun, but risk imprisonment should anyone see your genitals.
I reject the notion that men and women cannot live in sight of one another without clothes. I reject the belief that bodies are inherently sexual and must be hidden from view. And I know, with certainty, that nudity is not harmful to children — in fact, quite the opposite is true — shaming our kids, making them believe that their bodies are sinful, harms their self-esteem and their sense of identity.
For tens of thousands, if not more than a hundred thousand years, mankind was oblivious to nakedness. After the Ice Age, we adopted textiles to retain heat, but at some point in our history, an invention of necessity became a global neurosis, a hatred for our own bodies.
It seems to me that there is a large amount of common sense there even if some of Alimonos’s views (not really represented here) do support the patriarchy more than one might like.