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Poem

Nothing is Enough // Or everything is not enough. // I have a hunger... //// The hunger is me. // If I feed it, it wants more. // Mostly, it wants something else. //// A wise person, said STOP. //

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Edward Bellamy and Looking Backward, the book

 In the 1880's, there was a blockbuster book that I have heard mentioned only once when talking to others: Looking Backward.

Here's what Wikipedia says about it:

Looking Backward: 2000–1887 is a utopian novel by Edward Bellamy, a journalist and writer from Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts; it was first published in 1888. It was the third largest bestseller of its time, after Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.

It's a Utopian novel, where a guy from the 1880's falls asleep and wakes up in the year 2000, where society has solved the issues of greed, corporations, war, poverty, crime, and starvation.


I read this book in my 20's, and it made an impact. It was logical. It was comprehensive. It discussed how society could function. I also liked a few things it predicted. That music would be available to anyone at the flip of a switch. That food preparation would mostly be outside the home. How to equalize the attractiveness of labor by adjusting hours worked per week rather than wages. It dealt with oversupply of some things, undersupply in others. A wholly reasonable work.


I'm halfway through treading it again at 40. A lot still rings true. There is enough productivity in 1/10th of America to give adequate food, housing, shelter and safety to every person on earth. Maybe add another 1/10th of America to give everyone basic health care and education. The elimination of crime and conflict would cover that 20% needed to provide it. And, since everyone is conscripted to be a general laborer for 3 years, everyone knows and understands what it's like to be in other people's shoes.

I love that the book has put choices and individual choice central to how society functions. Also, there are objective standards (Confuscianistic) and competency tests to get out of general laboring. One assumes they are fair.

However, there are some shortcomings. So far, there isn't much mention of race and gender relations. It doesn't touch on modern conflicts like the 2nd amendment or Abortion. It kinda assumes away tribalism and tribal conflict, tracing nine-tenths of crime to poverty or inequality or lust for money. They conveniently got rid of lust for money and replaced it with lust/competition for prizes.

From the Buddhism perspective, there isn't too much given to greed, anger, or wishful thinking. Equality gets rid of it in the book, but I have never known equality to solve much on an elementary school playfield, let alone in the arenas of adult competition. Even people who play baseball cheat and self-delude. Such is the rapacious nature of desire that two gold mountains could not satisfy.


I'm interested in finishing the book, but my memory so far tells me why I liked it before and am more skeptical now. It is true that things could work this way if people worked together. But such an equilibrium is unstable and rife for a demagogue of the Octavia Butler or Margaret Atwood dreamed of variety to take over the reigns of power. Manifest destiny shines brightly to those who see it least clearly. Or, there is the phrase, "this is why we can't have nice things".... something always messes it up.

There are also the problems of the left or of liberals. I've met many lefties who write eloquently and fight for justice. But then you find out their idea of justice is sometimes filled with alternate injustices. From the buddhism perspective, an example is that they want to get rid of racism but are okay with non-racist greed, anger, and delusion.



In any case, I do recommend the book. It's good reading and free to read (Project Gutenberg). UUDR.

Monday, September 21, 2020

Your bad habits will always give consent to your bad actions

For most of my life, I have been like a card carrying member of the left. And I still believe in a lot of the principles of the left. But I've always had an uncomfortable relationship with the ideas of political correctness, and needing things to follow a script about what is and isn't allowed.

One of the suspect concepts is the concept of consent, especially the broader concepts of consent.

This criticism that I'm lobbing is not against the whole idea of consent, but is really about the boundaries of when consent is helpful and when consent is not helpful. 

The straw man that I would beat up is the idea:
  giving consent is good. And anytime consent isn't given, it is bad.

Insert here the common example where in general the patient consenting to a procedure is a good idea. But there may be times, maybe 90% maybe you just 5%, where consent isn't helpful. There could be times where a doctor can highly recommend a procedure but the patient or medical proxy doesn't want to give consent because of fear or confusion or delusion. And there could be times where a patient wants to do something that isn't medically advised; consent is not really enough in this case.

But this is a blog about Buddhism, and the most important transgression where consent isn't useful because around our bad habits and our confusion.

 Imagine there is a magic little worm that lives in your brain and is generally very very painless. But it's hungry for certain types of experiences, experiences that wear us down, cause stress. If that magic little worm can somehow hijack your brain and generate consent, we would consider that little worm to be a little bugger and not a friend. But suppose that magic little worm is just able to whisper to your brain, to your consciousness. And the choice is still yours. But through sweet talk and hormones and neurotransmitters, that magic little worm convinces you to give consent. And it's not really that harmful, not at first. You actually kind of like those nice experiences. But when you're not in a hot states of craving, you admit to yourself that you don't really want to follow the magic little worm.

That magic little worm, in buddhism, is sometimes called our defilements. I never liked the word, defilements, because it sounds very weird. Borrowing from my upbringing and pop culture, there is the storytelling trope of the troublemaker. I like troublemaker better. Thanissaro Bhikkhu has called them something like fake friends. These are friends that get you into trouble and then disappear when the trouble shows up, so that you are holding the bag when the cops or danger appear.

I don't know your individual circumstance but I know patterns that I've seen and I know my own brain. In my own brain is a few hundred devilish little magic worms. And they have a very strong survival instinct. They'll let me have my calmness for a little while . But if I starve them, that's when they'll start fighting hard. And those little worms will whisper and lie however they can to get the consent and the assent of my mind.

Be careful of consent that doesn't really take into consideration your overall well-being or the well-being of the world. It is true that the world is full of tough decisions and weighing of competing needs: our needs, our friend's needs and the rest of the world's needs. What wise people do is make decisions and take actions knowing those causes and the consequences. What fools do is make decisions quickly and then turn the justification dial up to 11, pretending that the causes and consequences don't exist.

So I'm a little wary of the notion that people by virtue of being people always make good decisions when they're giving consent to things. That was a clumsy and long sentence. The sharper, and less precise, way of saying it is that I don't believe that people know what's best for them.

A skilled debater would retort, if they don't know who's best, who should know what's best period? do you think you know what's best for them? There's another blog post about that, based on a quote from Gore Vidal, maybe. The gist of it is: no, I don't know what is best for them. And it is very important that people have choice. Without choices, people are forced to be good, and they don't build up their motivation, understanding, or watchering muscle. And then when you give them a choice, it's very very messy socially and psychologically. 

The way to resolve this is to take a middle path. And that middle path can be characterized by being careful. Careful that the biggest dangers are sometimes the blind spots that we hold on to for years or lifetimes. And often with our consent, if not complicity.

Saturday, September 19, 2020

the opposite of entanglement

Entanglement. It is the process of getting tangled, caught up in, trapped or limited by. We know physical entanglement; a mess of wires or walking into a giant cobweb. We also know social entanglement; getting swept up in the storylines of others. Or ourselves. Like going with a friend to a party and one thing leads to another and it's 3am and you are in the desert in a sticky situation.

There is a lot of entanglement in the world. And we like to pretend it is hidden, keeping it in our blindspot. Or we reason with it. Maybe this is as good as it gets. There is no escaping it, so might as well enjoy the ride. Maybe even the ride in the desert at 3am. Admittedly, there is a lot of fun in unreserved revelry. There is also a lot of fun in psychedelics and opiates.

Suppose we could make an opiate or psychedelic that had no drawbacks. No addiction. You could turn it on and off like a switch. Would that mean no entanglement?

In a way, yes; but in a more important way, no. Entanglements, in my old view, was always associated with the negative elements of an activity. Like love and relationships were possible in a pure form without entanglements, but it was because of my lack of skill but I kept on getting the entanglements. Same with physical pleasure. Same with money.

 But there's another sense of the word entanglements, which is how it gets me all caught up in or all tied up in some situation. And a situation is just a mental state really. Those are the dangerous entanglements.

So, as a ponder what the opposite of entanglement is, my old self would say that the opposite of entanglement is getting away with it. Partying all night but waking up without the hangover.

But my new self is much more broad in my understanding of entanglements. And that broadening viewpoint is beneficial because it keeps my nose clean and my mind out of trouble. So there are entanglements that I didn't think were entanglements before. And there are also things I thought were entanglements, that I no longer think of as entanglements. Putting an effort to develop skills is not fun. It takes a lot of work, and a lot of practice, to learn to play the piano or to rule one's own mind. But the difficulty of the work is (surprisingly) not an entanglement when the end goal is clear and worthwhile.

The opposite of entanglement isn't escape from entanglement in the old me view. The opposite of entanglement is seclusion. And its basis is heedfulness.

UUDR

Friday, September 18, 2020

Don't skip desire on the path

Reading my Wings Of Awakening, and I read the first bases of power (out of the four bases of power.


Developing
The basis of power
Of concentration
Founded on DESIRE
And fabrications of exertion.

It may not look like much, but I took a few gems from the teaching. First, I used to think that I needed to get rid of all desire. And here, it pays bare that sometimes desire is useful and helpful for developing concentration.

The second thing is to to really put in effort. The effort is white knuckling and parting for the outcome. It's a lot of putting in the inputs and really noticing. I am reminded of learning to play the piano.  Being impatient is not the way to go about it, nor is it good to be too patient and say, "well, maybe tomorrow."

I think it was a story told by Ajahn Fuang (?) about an actor going to Hollywood. The Ajahn asked, "what happens if they say you're no good. The aspiring actor said, well maybe I'll give up. "No!" replied Ajahn Fuang. Have some grit and get back up and try harder and be ingenious and resourceful.


For several years, I thought I needed to chill out more. And, in a sense, I did need to chill out more. But as I decreased the neuroses, I needed to amp up the watcher and the alertness, determination and endurance. I had endure the tough facing of my own bad habits, and endure the inner voice trying to make excuses.


Our bad habits fight to stay with us, like a banacle. It takes a lot of scrubbing to break free.

SHORTY: renaming GAD

It is sometimes helpful to take GAD (greed, anger, and delusion) and rename it. Renaming it makes it more personal, and hence more at the tip of your tongue.


I want it! I want it!
I don't want it. No, I. Don't. Want. It.
Spinning thoughts

(Not mutually exclusive. often appearing alone. Sometimes in pairs. Even sometimes all 3 at once.)

It is helpful because what you rename it will have more emotional stickiness. It will be in your own words and have a chance to seep into the marrow.

Sunday, September 13, 2020

SEPI: some tricks to stay with the breath (audio)

I find staying with the breath super hard. And so, I would force it.  It works a bit, but not that well. I develop a resistance.

There is sometimes a place for forcing things, but not here. In meditation, forcing the breath is usually successful for that instance, but it doesn't build concentration or  wise effort or wise mindfulness. Forcing is imbued with impatience and reinforces impatience.

So, I've found a way to take a gentler approach:  SEPI

  • Stay with the breath (~60%)
  • Enjoy the breath (20-30%)
  • Play with the breath (~10%)
  • Investigate the breath (~10%)
The details of this are on my podcast, episode #3. (about 20 minutes)


UUDR.

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