Peridyd's Progress

On this day, during which our warrior culture, my culture, valorizes those who have fallen on the battlefield, I think it is important to offer a reminder that there are other possible epistemes than this one, which posits that war is an inevitable consequence of the human condition.

We are, none of us, fated to be killers. Each of us chooses to continue war; we could, instead, choose peace. The ideology that supports war is quite assiduous in policing the boundaries of what is thinkable. It has become unthinkable, for most, to consider a world without war.

Claude Anshin Thomas, in his memoir, At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey from War to Peace, reminds us just what's at stake here:

Peace is not an idea. Peace in not a political movement, not a theory or a dogma. Peace is a way of life: living mindfully in the present moment.... It is not a question of politics, but of actions. It is not a matter of improving a political system or even taking care of homeless people alone. These are valuable but will not alone end war and suffering. We must simply stop the endless wars that rage within.... Imagine, if everyone stopped the war in themselves--there would be no seeds from which war could grow. (qtd. in Mindful Politics, Melvin McLeod, editor)

It's not a coincidence that it's our culture--so focused on externalizing happiness, on locating it in the pursuit of material objects--which lacks a vocabulary for discussing the inner landscape and how the conflicts; dramas; and, yes, the peace of our inner lives become manifest in the material world. War within--especially when it is unacknowledged--yields conflict in our interactions with the material world.

Better one moment spent remembering/discovering that internal war than a thousand days honoring those who have fallen on the battlefields of our ignorance.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been following this conversation in Salon as it's progressed. Basically, B. Alan Wallace of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies is responding to positivist/materialist critics regarding a Salon article a few months ago that profiled his field of inquiry. (You'll need to watch a brief commercial if you're not a Salon subscriber.)

As a novice meditator and fledgling Buddhist who finds that he's run head on into the limits of positivist/materialist inquiry when he investigates the self, I think Wallace has deftly and logically argued for expanding the limits of what we can and should consider when we investigate consciousness.

As we do so investigate (and I think it's inevitable that we will), it's interesting to consider how post-structuralism might inform our meta-analysis of our inquiries. Ultimately, there is no place to stand, no Archimedes lever giving us the objectivity that science seeks.

It's all impermanent, it's all suffering, and it's all consciousness. Sarvam duhkham.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 09:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In confusion, clarity is possible....

It is your own awareness right now.
It is simple, natural, and clear.
Why say "I don't understand what the mind is"?
There is nothing to think about,
just permanent clear Consciousness.
Why say "I don't see the reality of the mind"?
The mind is the thinker of these thoughts.
Why say "When I look I can't find it"?
No looking is necessary.
Why say "Whatever I try doesn't work"?
It is enough to remain simple.
Why say "How can I do nothing?"
It is good to be a non-doer.
Why say "I can't achieve this"?
The void of pure Consciousness is naturally present.
Why say "Spiritual practice doesn't reveal it"?
It is spontaneous and free from cause and effect.
Why say "The search is futile"?
Thought and liberation exist simultaneously.
Why say "All medicines are impotent"?
This awareness is the medicine.
Why say "I don't know"?

--Padma Sambhava

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 06:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The most powerful myths are about extremity; they force us to go beyond our experience. There are moments when we all, in one way or another, have to go to a place that we have never seen, and do what we have never done before. Myth is about the unknown; it is about that for which initially we have no words. Myth therefore looks into the heart of a great silence.... [M]yth is not a story told for its own sake. It shows us how we should behave.
--A Short History of Myth, Karen Armstrong

For the past few months, I've been reading Robert Jordan's fantasy series, The Wheel of Time. I began reading book one, Eye of the World in April. I finished book seven, A Crown of Swords, just the other evening. That's several thousand pages in a few months. I've read other, more serious and traditionally academic texts interspersed with the Jordan, but Jordan's constituted the bulk of my reading during this time.

For those of us who are academics—I run the Writing Center at Oregon State University and have a Masters Degree in English Literature—being seen with a fantasy novel, especially more than once, will sometimes engender “the look,” wherein a student or a colleague calls you to task for reading something lighter than, say, Andrew Delbanco's new Melville bio (which by the way, is on my shelf of books to read, and I will read it, but only after I finish book eleven of The Wheel of Time).

Although I usually respond to these well-intentioned quasi indictments about how far my reading has fallen with a semi-pat answer about needing to read for enjoyment (and although it's true that I do enjoy reading the Jordan series), there's another reason that I relish the Jordan series (but which I'm less sanguine sharing with my colleagues and associates at the university): reading the Rand books will occasionally induce a very powerful spiritual experience, often accompanied by important spiritual insight(s). Experiences and insights that rival some of my deeper meditations.

How is such a thing possible? In addition to being great stories, the Wheel of Time series borrows heavily from the mythic. In my experience, there are times when mythic tales resonate with a spiritual issue that I'm attending to in my practice, and when that happens, dislodging me from the mundane and entering a place where insight can occur is a natural by-product of reading.

I don't mean to suggest that everyone who reads fantasy will experience spiritual states or achieve spiritual insight. However, for those of us for whom spiritual states are a reality, the mythic elements in fantasy, their ability to defamiliarize commonplace experience can trigger states which then, in turn, trigger insight.

I bring this up as a way of beginning a conversation (hopefully not just a monologue) on the possibilities of reading beyond logos, logic, and reason, each of which can give us the how of our daily lives, but which will not provide much depth or discovery into who we are. In my experience, it's the mythic, the contemplative, and the meditative that provide the latter. Though it might be controversial for some, I want to suggest that reading can be a vehicle for the latter as well as for the former.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 09:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This, a very chilling article from the Washington Post. Andrew Tilghman writes bravely and honestly about an incident back in February in which he met Private Steven D. Green, a young solider who one month after he interviewed him would allegedly rape and murder a fourteen-year-old Iraqi girl and her family.

The article is moving for several reasons.

First there's Pvt. Green's sense of pointlessness. He's seen through the façade of the war, and his response to the futility is to dehumanize his enemy—not the politicos—but the other victims of the politicians' actions, the Iraqi people:

"We're pawns for the [expletive] politicians, for people that don't give a [expletive] about us and don't know anything about what it's like to be out here on the line."

Second, there's reporter Tilghman's unstated but subtly acknowledged responsibility for the subsequent actions of Private Green. I know it's terrible to have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and lay blame on anyone. And I don't intend to do that. However, Mr. Tilghman is, I believe, bringing up questions regarding reportorial responsibility. Is this a case in which it would be right to lose objectivity and go up the chain of command to relay what he's heard to Pvt. Green's superiors? It likely wouldn't have done any good. It seems as if Pvt. Green is only looking for a way to cope with the unthinkable. Tilghman writes,

In the end, I never included Green's comments in any of the handful of stories I wrote from Mahmudiyah for Stars and Stripes. When he said he was inured to death and killing, it seemed to me -- in that place and at that time -- a reasonable thing to say. While in Iraq, I also saw people bleed and die. And there was something unspeakably underwhelming about it. It's not a Hollywood action movie -- there are no rapid edits, no adrenaline-pumping soundtracks, no logical narratives that help make sense of it. Bits of lead fly through the air, put holes in people and their bodily fluids leak out and they die. Those who knew them mourn and move on.

But no level of combat stress is an excuse for the kind of brutal acts Green allegedly committed. I suppose I will always look back on our conversations in Mahmudiyah and wonder: Just what did he mean?

Finally, the pacifist and Buddhist in me feel compelled to pose an issue. This and the previous Vietnam generation are the first in which we've truly attended to the psychological consequences of war. As we see, with increasing frequency, soldiers returning from the battlefield with severe enough psychological scars that they're unable to live a normal life without intense therapeutic intervention, is it possible that we will discover that war is not only insane but that it is an insanity-making enterprise? If we learn that, will it be possible to argue (with any integrity) that war is a normal component of the human condition? Is it normal for one's “natural” activities to drive oneself insane?

No one, I would argue, not even the perpetrators of violence, is immune to its effects. Violence takes its toll on everyone. Even those of us who sit in our comfortable middle class homes, thousands of miles from the battlefields. Resist violence. Resist the insane actions of our government.

Shanti.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

World Honored One! It is as if some man goes to an intimate friend's house, gets drunk, and falls asleep. Meanwhile, his friend, having to go forth on official duty, ties a priceless jewel within his garment as a present, and departs. The man, being drunk and asleep, knows nothing of it. On arising he travels onward 'til he reaches some other country, where for food and clothing he expends much labor and effort, and undergoes exceedingly great hardship, and is content even if he can obtain but little. Later, his friend happens to meet him and speaks thus: “Tut! Sir, how is it you have come to this for the sake of food and clothing? Wishing you to be in comfort and able to satisfy all your five senses, I formerly in such a year and on such a day tied a priceless jewel within your garment. Now as of old it is present there and you in ignorance are slaving and worrying to keep yourself alive. How very stupid! Go you now and exchange that jewel for what you need and do whatever you will, free from all poverty and shortage.”

--from the Lotus Sutra, translated by Bunno Kato and W.E. Soothill

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 08:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So the Israeli civilian deaths at the hands of "terrorists" are more morally problematic than the Lebanese civilian deaths because the Lebanese deaths are part of war's collateral damage? Israel is acting in "self-defense," and so their actions are permissible?

I'm trying to understand the rationale, but I'm failing to. Setting aside the problematic of whether or not this is actually self-defense on Israel's part, one must begin with the premise that violence is an appropriate response to violence. Yet, I question the premise. Does violence, in fact, stop violence? Or does it beget more violence?

And then there's the whole question of scale. This recent onslaught of violence is ostensibly in retaliation against the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. Two. How many Lebanese civilians have died? Rather than self-defense, this smacks more of a tactic one might use to control a weak, though implacable, foe: intimidation. Again I ask, when has violence ever, in fact, stopped violence? What violent organization willing to attack an enemy with overwhelmingly superior firepower has ever backed down when that enemy has responded with brute force? This is not a nation that Israel is fighting. It's Hezbollah. There's no enemy's back to be broken here. Each terrorist death, each civilian death, will spawn more terrorists--an order of magnitude more.

That this rationale for Israeli violence comes from our nation's ambassador to the U.N. is so problematic. It's not surprising, of course, especially since our nation is largely silent vis-a-vis the Israeli acts of aggression against its neighbors. We should not be surprised when the region erupts in a transnational Intifada--though one might well argue that Al Qaeda is just such an eruption. It is most certainly the "logical" extension of the premises the combatants--including our government--share.

These opponents are locked in a death match. Bound by their hatred and desire for revenge, they have fought and died, fight and die, and will continue to fight and die, not because they are strong men, but because they not strong enough to respond with what will actually stem the bloodshed and heal the grief: compassion, empathy, and love.

Don't fall for the rhetoric of common sense that would have you believe that violence is the rational response to conflict. It is irrational, and it is so precisely because it doesn't work.

--Peridyd


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Posted by Dennis Bennett at 02:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Subhuti, someone who has set out in the vehicle of a Bodhisattva should produce a thought in this manner: "As many beings as there are in the universe of beings, comprehended under the term beings--either egg-born, or born from a womb, or moisture-born, or miraculously born; with or without form; with perception, without perception, or with neither perception nor non-perceptions--as far as any conceivable universe of beings is concerned: all these should by me be led to Nirvana, into that Realm of Nirvana which leaves nothing behind. And yet, although innumerable beings have thus been led to Nirvana, no being at all has been lead to Nirvana." And why? If in a Bodhisattva the perception of a "being" should take place, he could not be called a "Bodhi-being." And why? He is not to be called a Bodhi-being in whom the perception of a self or a being would take place, or the perception of a living soul or a person.

translated by Edward Conze

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 05:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)