my college has had the honor of holding meditation sessions led by bhante sathi, theravadan buddhist from Subhodaramaya monastry in kandy, sri Lanka, and counselor and teacher of meditation in sri lanka, britain, and the united states.
the following is a paraphrased synopsis by yours truly of sathi's teachings shared with a session group on february 21 (posted with permission of Triple Gem of the North, "a non-profit organization dedicated to the study and practice of the teachings of the Buddha" ):
Meditation comes in many forms -- in fact, there are at least 40 different groups of meditation techniques. Despite that there are techniques that serve a wide range of paranormal utilities -- e.g., extra-sensitivity to light and sound, telepathic communication, consciousness transgression, and so on -- many of today's technologies eliminate any common need for them. Yet, breathing meditation is one that still offers substantial benefits for which modern technology is unable to substitute. Through breathing meditation we autonomously attend to the matter of the ego, of the self, and come to understand the extent of control 'outside' influences have over us. This is the puppet concept. Once we recognize the nature of our ego, we understand the innecessity for control -- puppeteering -- by 'other' forces.
When we sit, our body for the most part does not move. However, our minds appear to travel everywhere, riddled with thoughts, of sounds we are hearing or of the past or future. Yet there is one moving 'bodily' thing that we can attend to as our sanctuary for awareness: our breathing. The breath reminds us of what is in the now, and we are called by it to return our attention away from the animated distractions of the 'mindlessly driven' mind. Once refocused, we recall this practice, this mindful breathing, as a manifestation of our intention for personal development.
We needn't wait for a formal group meeting time to practice breathing meditation. Although group meditation can be an excellent form of support for our cause, to take even five minutes out of our day to bypass other endless exercises (excuses) and perform breathing meditation independently can make a substantive difference in the long-term effects of this practice and awareness within our lives. ◊
...and as bhikku bodhi says in conversation with sathi concerning the nature of buddhism:
"Buddhism is not a matter of a particular culture, but of the truth. We should actually distinguish between 'Buddhism' and the Dhamma. Buddhism is a cultural, historical, and social phenomena; thus we can speak about Sri Lankan Buddhism, Japanese Buddhism, Thai Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism. Or we can speak about Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana Buddhism, etc. But Dhamma/Dharma is not about a culture, or about social phenomena, or about history, but about the truth."
william cronon from Uncommon Ground, "The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature": ...[W]ilderness serves as the unexamined foundation on which so many of the quasi-religious values of modern environmentalism rest. The critique of modernity that is one of environmentalism's most important contributions to the moral and political discourse of our time more often than not appeals, explicitly or implicitly, to wilderness as the standard against which to measure the failings of our human world. Wilderness is the natural, unfallen antithesis of an unnatural civilization that has lost its soul. It is a place of freedom in which we can recover the true selves we have lost to the corrupting influences of our artificial lives. Most of all, it is the ultimate landscape of authenticity. Combining the sacred grandeur of the sublime with the primitive simplicity of the frontier, it is the place where we can see the world as it really is, and so know ourselves as we really are -- or ought to be. But the trouble with wilderness is that it quietly expresses and reproduces the very values its devotees seek to reject. The flight from history that is very nearly the core of wilderness represents the false hope of an escape from responsibility, the illusion that we can somhow wipe clean the slate of our past and return to the tabula rasa that supposedly existed before we began to leave our marks on the world. The dream of an unworked natural landscape is very much the fantasy of people who have never themselves had to work the land to make a living -- urban folk for whom food comes from a supermarket or a restaurant instead of a field, and for whom the wooden houses in which they live and work apparently have no meaningful connection to the forests in which trees grow and die. Only people whose relation to the land was already alienated could hold up wilderness as a model for human life in nature, for the romantic ideology of wilderness leaves precisely nowhere for human beings actually to make their living from the land. This, then, is the central paradox: wilderness embodies a dualistic vision in which the human is entirely outside the natural. If we allow ourselves to believe that nature, to be true, must also be wild, then our very presence in nature represents its fall. The place where we are is the place where nature is not. If this is so -- if by definition wilderness leaves no place for human beings, save perhaps as contemplative sojourners enjoying their leisurely reverie in God's natural cathedral -- then also by definition it can offer no solution to the environmental and other problems that confront us. To the extent that we celebrate wilderness as the measure with which we judge civilization, we reproduce the dualism that sets humanity and nature at opposite poles. We thereby leave ourselves little hope of discovering what an ethical, sustainable, honorable human place in nature might actually look like. Worse: the extent that we live in an urban-industrial civilization but at the same time pretend to ourselves that our real home is in the wilderness, to just that extent we give ourselves permission to evade responsibility for the lives we actually lead. ... ◊
...furthermore, here's a link to a most fantastic essay by pramod parajuli concerning a brief history of, what he calls, the "rational" versus "relational" modes of approaching nature, ecosystems, and the economics thereof.
"The whole problem is basically one of lifestyle. There can be no solution unless the conflict between lifestyles, between immediate and future interests, are resolved. Because even when a certain section of the population says the wildlife and forest should be preserved, they have not changed their basic vision of life."
terms and concept he refers to here include
- agro-ecology (such as by wendel berry) -- searches for "a golden mean of stewardship and sustainable use" -- ramachandra guha)
- bioregional consciousness
- deep ecology (arne naess)
- ecological anthropology vs. cultural anthropology
- ecosystem & agro-ecosystem - ecological ethnicity - ethno-ecology?
- environmentalism ("what environmentalists defend is the environment but not nature..." -- pramod parajuli) - foodshed
- restoration and renewal (shiva visvanathan)
- voluntary agrarian simplicity (mahatma gandhi)
i also highly recommend getting a good look at the rest of terrain.org while you're there.
the transcultural antagonism that enters into the ring, where colonialist marginalizations had left many of us feeling safe, must not be taken lightly. we may hold the moneybags, but the tools of service are in fact not tools at all; far from means for humans, they are human beings, and many of them are starving, broke, or flailing helplessly by the undertoe of capitalism towards a maelstrom collapse. the first clues of degeneration appear in the misunderstanding that (once the pocketbooks are closed) comes over the faces of those whose mental images of wilderness aren't accompanied by indigenous conception (as we so often grant them to be). the clues appear in the uprise of empty hands whose only long-term hope for survival now might only lie in a local concession of agro-ecological sustainability. to investigate the clues, we communicate -- and to reverse the process for regeneration, we reflect.
upon reflection, we can see that divisions among the fields, e.g., environmentalism, economics, science, politics, etc., have been conceptually integral to our culture for centuries now, products of our cognitive evolution. now that we must think globally, however, we must face the reality of our limitations, still under the influence of a momentous (mostly still unconscious) colonialist development agenda that has avoided memetic extinction. we must redesign ourselves -- better yet: be redesigned collectively, intra- and interculturally both, by the process that we can call formal learning. (this is the heart of the fight for education.) awareness and mindfulness make us better communicators and reflectors. this is, after all, our only hope as well for a meaningful future.
'egological' is a term i picked up from mark sacks' Objectivity and Insight (2003). briefly, it represents the logic of perspectivism 'inherent' to the human condition of the self. "the egological conception [of the subject] regards the subject as one whose core normative structures are autonomous -- independent of contextual features -- and so attributes rational autonomy to the subject" [146]. a downfall (among many): the objective world can't be really known by the subject, nor by the world at large (thus, varying degrees of a disappointing skepticism). so, why did i pick such a drab and apparently pessimistic title?
the subject/object divide remains one of the longest-standing disputes in philosophy. it's approach seems most often irrefutable (at the very least, but modern sciences), yet it has failed for some time now to deliver any appropriate results for a developing and reconceptualizing community now coming to terms with spirituality, intimate sociality, and even quantum mechanics. yes, we westerners are cognitively different -- there's no sidestepping that -- and one of the obstacles that we have 'made for ourselves' through our memetic evolution includes this trap, a gut reaction to how the world surely must be. but it is turning up empty more often than not nowadays. fortunately, the divide has found its overlaps too many times, as brave thinkers carefully step over the gulf edge to find the distance between edges supported by a glass flooring. looking through the glass, and abandoning our rational objectives for even a moment, we can see the nature of our condition and forgive (again, for even a moment) the inequity of its calibre.
do we forgive this through ignorance? avoidance? i don't think so. one can't see the condition until after having acknowledged the metaphysical divide we've posited. those who are willing to be mindful of it and not give up can experience the effect.
the monk knows this experience, or desires to. the monk buries himself in the occupation of contemplation and surrender. were s/he already God, already the Buddha, already the Way, s/he would cease to be the monk -- s/he would disappear right there in an instant into the unbounded conscious immanence of Being. as yet, though, his logic still revolves around his isolated ego, his ideas and words still emanate from some 'self,' his thoughts are still in some way 'his.' thus, the monk continues to breathe and reflect, even without thought by some scarce moments of grace, sometimes without a goal or a desire, until...
an introduction to an apparently amazing human being, hyun kyung chung (if the link doesn't work, look at today's comments). her recent visit to, and conference in, japan, despite her conditioned biases against it, demonstrates a courage that the international warrior must model for our globalizing societies.
if integrationism is the manner and method, sycretism is the expected result. knowing this, we needn't fear it.
this is another past journal entry, composed during the throes of thesis writing. it's a bit esoteric, but hopefully some of the links (and later posts) will clarify it some for now. at some point, i will also figure out a way to publish (or link to a published version of) the thesis for more precise reference.
it's not so much the what of technology that should concern us (of western cultural descent) -- but the how and why.
granting that the natural meta-evolution of replicators includes a propensity towards a digitally-encoded replication stage -- an 'immortality' such that the most information transmitted with the smoothest efficiency is attained --, we must be prepared to deal with the possibility of an 'enhanced consciousness' -- that is, a merging of human and computer memetic-replicative capabilities to comprise a digitally-encoded medium via electronica with a strong biological and spiritually meaningful base. it's severely difficult for me to imagine anything less "natural" ('Natural,' if you will) than what would consist of a complete reformation of our technological progress (perhaps including at least a little technological abolishment even) to where Nature could regain a dominant role and influence, as it does in 'less developed' communities. however, i'm thinking that i also need to seriously consider the power and signficance of this forming integrationist philosophy, and reflect on more 'leftitst' perspectives concerning the environmental movement. for the non-environmentalist and the extreme (or at least maybe conservative) environmentalist have directly opposed agendas and views -- but this opposition best manifests the dichotomous argument therein. one sees environmental issue as an obligated requirement, and the other sees it as a necessary and avoidable standard. while i obviously lean towards the latter, i recognize that neither perspective embraces the advantageously efficient and mutally beneficial integration of economy, ehtics, and the environment. neither extremist side is sufficient, and no middle way could ever remedy a phenomenon based on a dualistic illusion.
the model must be transcended and the actualized agenda expedited by the integrationaist method. only in this way can Transhumanism be acceptable -- in fact Transhumanism can be a truly beneficial transition in the the hands of 'more developed' communities provided that indeed a major reformation does happen, where responsibility is enacted by every individual. it must be a responsibility for the psychological, physical, spiritual, and environmental health of the self (as far as a model 'self' is the center of an individual's conceptual rudiments), for our influence and power and wealth. when true responsibility is underway, 'rights' (as in human rights) will be an obsolete tool for justice (which continues today to ring with little other than a tone of egoistic and egocentric justification -- for the sake of a "controllable social order"). it will be its own means and end for simultaneous betterment of self and neighbor -- for it will be, finally, (as the greatest mystics and miracle-workers have seen it) an integration of the two. (altruism and egoism too contain the extremist absurdity of opposition dualism that is neither here nor there in enlightening us with a realistic plan for action.)
so, Transhumanism may hold some potential for global improvment if it is mutualistically initiated with the integrationist manner of health and conceptualization (thought/action).
