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autobiography, Canada, Disengaged Buddhism, Engaged Buddhism, Gary Snyder, Jack Layton, obituary, S.N. Goenka, Śāntideva, Thich Nhat Hanh
It will not do my readers much of a service to announce that Jack Layton has died. To non-Canadian readers, the name will probably mean little or nothing; Canadian readers in the past week will have heard of little else.
Jack Layton was the leader of the left-wing New Democratic Party, the only political party whose candidates I have ever voted for. He died of cancer on 22 August, at the relatively young age of 61 – at the peak of his career. Until Layton took over the NDP, the party had never received more than 44 of the roughly 300 seats in the Canadian Parliament. Earlier this year, under his leadership, the party earned over 100, most of those in Québec – where the party had never held more than a single seat before. It received more than twice as many seats as the third-place Liberals, a party which had governed Canada so often that it viewed itself as the “natural governing party.” And a great deal of this rapid rise derived from Layton’s personal popularity. His funeral has now been receiving coverage in Canada comparable to that of Princess Diana’s – at a time when it is held as a commonplace that people hate politicians and are fed up with them. His life and death moved a great many. My American wife, who a year ago didn’t know who Jack Layton was, was moved to tears watching the coverage of his memorials.
Now why am I going on about Jack Layton on a philosophy blog? Because Layton, as far as I can see, lived a tremendously good life. It’s not just that he managed to accomplish a great deal – both for the NDP across Canada and for the city of Toronto in his earlier days as a city councillor. Many politicians do that; that’s why one enters politics, if one has any decency. Rather, it’s that Layton accomplished all this while retaining both his integrity and his happiness – not the pleasure of triumphing over one’s enemies, but the joy of being engaged in a meaningful, intrinsically motivating activity. Even when Layton first took over the NDP and it still seemed a spent force, several commenters dubbed him “Smilin’ Jack,” for the facial expression that he wore even in the cut and thrust of a televised debate.
And Layton has made me think more about the flip side of the anti-political views I have often discussed here. The past decade, for me, was filled with anger, bile, hatred at the terrible things happening in the country around me. Buddhism of various kinds was deeply valuable for me because it saved me from politics. First, my youthful reading in Pali Buddhism provided a satisfying alternative to the misery of a life based in political utilitarianism. Then my dissertation work on Śāntideva helped remind me how one could justify a life consciously disregarding politics. And probably most importantly, the karmic redirection at my Goenka meditation retreat vividly pointed out the anger and hatred choking my soul during the Bush days.
In all these realms, what I found most valuable about Buddhism was that it provided an alternative to the hatred, bitterness, resentment and anger that to me had always characterized political engagement. And how could they not have, I thought, for a left-winger whose entire life was spent during the global ascent of the political right? Thus I’ve long harboured a deep suspicion toward the Engaged Buddhist movement, which combines Buddhism with political activism. It’s not that Engaged Buddhism is such a departure from historical Buddhist tradition (though in many ways I think it is); I’ve defended such departures and continue to do so. Rather, it’s that Engaged Buddhists can turn us away from one of the most valuable lessons that Buddhism has to offer, and the one it offered me.
Layton provided a different way. In his final days, when it seemed less likely that he would make it, he wrote a public letter that closed with these memorable words:
My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.
Here, the rejection of anger is itself the starting point for political activism. So too a rejection of fear – the fear I grew up with, the fear of Reagan’s military buildups, of Mulroney‘s budget cuts and trade agreements, of Bush’s incompetence and reckless spending and military adventurism. These words, these thoughts, these emotions are quite different from those of most of the activists I have known, perhaps above all my young self.
As for Engaged Buddhists: perhaps not surprisingly, the style of their activism varies greatly. The monastic serenity of Thich Nhat Hanh, while far removed from Jack Layton’s familial bonhomie, shares Layton’s generosity of spirit, insisting (as Goenka did) on compassion even towards one’s enemies, and attempting to live such a gentle worldview. On the other hand, I have seen many Engaged Buddhists express their politics with exactly the kind of contempt and anger that made me turn away from politics in the first place. It would be rude to name the names of those I have known personally, but as a public figure I will name Gary Snyder, whose 1969 Smokey the Bear Sutra is as antithetical as can be to anything genuinely Buddhist. The problem is not Snyder’s attempt to move Buddhists to environmental concern, nor his (creative and funny) use of the figure of Smokey the Bear. Rather, it is the poem’s shameful celebration of violence, war and hate:
Smokey the Bear will Illuminate those who would help him; but for those who would hinder or slander him… HE WILL PUT THEM OUT….. And if anyone is threatened by advertising, air pollution, television, or the police, they should chant SMOKEY THE BEAR’S WAR SPELL:
DROWN THEIR BUTTS
CRUSH THEIR BUTTS
DROWN THEIR BUTTS
CRUSH THEIR BUTTS
And SMOKEY THE BEAR will surely appear to put the enemy out with his vajra-shovel.
One could say here that Nhat Hanh is more committed to Buddhism than to engagement, and vice versa about Snyder; but the important thing is that Nhat Hanh, unlike Snyder, does make the combination possible, putting together political activism with a genuinely Buddhist compassion, gentleness and patient endurance. (I note that Layton remained a committed member of the liberal United Church of Canada, and regularly wrote about his commitments; how much of Layton’s generous temperament came from his faith, I can’t say.)
I continue to defend the politically disengaged life. I don’t think activism is a constitutive part of human well-being, and I remain suspicious of those who say that it is. But Jack Layton’s life was a beautiful reminder that political participation and good human lives are not mutually exclusive. Far from it. Layton’s life was a very good one, not merely in spite of his political engagement, but in many respects because of it.
Nice post, Amod! If your American readers want to understand what the loss of Jack Layton means to Canadians, I think it’s fair to say there are many similarities to the death of Paul Wellstone in 2002. Their political philosophies were similar, their deaths untimely, and the deep sense of grief and lost opportunity at their passings were widespread and genuine. We need more like them.
Thanks! I remember the grief around Wellstone, but I don’t think he was as well known as Layton, and the sense of national mourning wasn’t nearly as big. The comparison I thought of would be if Barack Obama had died right after his inauguration.
Thanks, Amod. In particular, I appreciate your willingness to share personal insights on politics and working with anger.
It is an interesting topic. There was a forum recently in Newark, NJ (of all places) with a number of political activists and a number of Buddhists, including H.H. Dalai Lama. According to the NY Times, at one point there was a passionate exchange with one of the activists taking issue with the Dalai Lama’s view that anger is invariably counterproductive and that productively working with others requires first understanding and overcoming one’s own anger. I am undoubtedly not conveying the exchange adequately.
It is an interesting criticism of Buddhism. I recall a friend telling me that in India the Jesuits had a poster of a statue of the Buddha sitting in meditation with the words, “Don’t just do something, sit there.” I always liked that story — as much for what it says about the Jesuits as the Buddhists.
Personally, I don’t think that Buddhism is at all against engagement with the world. But there is a sense that a lot of training is necessary to be in a position to do more harm than good. The Mahayana Buddhists have concepts of developing bodhicitta through “aspiring” and “entering” — with the idea that a lot of time generally has to be spent with the former before it is possible to begin to understand emptiness and absolute bodhicitta.
And there is also the danger that meditation can be very joyful and pleasant and, in a sense, just a refined version of the pursuit of happiness — an escape from the world. At the point when the mind is reasonably settled and there is some insight, it is important to give up the idea of personal attainment and engage in helping others. Politics would be a particularly challenging way to try to do that — so I appreciate your respect for Mr. Layton.
Thanks, Jim. I’m expecting that the issues you mention will be at the forefront of next week’s post.
“Personally, I don’t think that Buddhism is at all against engagement with the world.”
What is the object of “engagement” in Buddhism? And how can one prescribe “engagement” if there is no self to do the “engagement”?
“You” have waxed eloquent on impermanence and how things lack identity and continuity because of their impermanence (This is not a logical inference anyway, but I’ll ignore that.)
So, what is really there to engage with? What does “engagement” mean? And, of course, who is there to engage with anything?
Could it be that among the entities you “engage” with are selves with an identity and continuity? No? Then we are back to the question: What are “you” engaging with?
And to what end or goal?
Engagement is not inconsistent with teachings on interdependence, emptiness and egolessness. You just have to understand what ideas such as egolessness are pointing to.
The realization of egolessness is not a realization that you don’t exist or that the other doesn’t exist. If you think about it, non-existence is a solidification of our experience in the same way that existence is a solidification of our experience. Both are incorrect views. An understanding of emptiness or egolessness is beyond concepts. But when Buddhists use concepts to describe egolessness or emptiness, they use phrases such as the unity of emptiness and appearance.
It seems to me that you are more interested in proving these views wrong than in understanding them.
“You just have to understand what ideas such as egolessness are pointing to.”
So, what is “egolessness”? That we depend on other things for our existence? This is a gross abuse of language.
Does it make sense to say that “Your parents don’t exist.” and then to “clarify” this by saying “I mean that your parents also had parents.”???
But religious nonsense is hard to get rid off once it is internalized and one’s identity (Ego) and emotional security have come to depend on it.
I am waiting for an answer to the questions : What are you engaging with? And to what end?
If everything is momentary and impermanent, lacking in identity and continuity (“you” can look up the examples “you” have offered on this topic in the past) who is really there to do the engagement and what is really there to engage with?
I could ask you the same question. “What are you engaging with?” That is a critical question. variants of the question are “who are we?” “What does it mean to be human?” These are basic philosophical questions — East or West.
The Buddhist answer is that it is hard to put a finger on it. Things don’t exist in any solid or permanent sense. Things are interdependent — qualities of things exist only in relation to other things. Moreover, if you try to identify the core, the essential element that defines what something is — you cannot do it. In most cases, we use very sloppy language and constantly shift the focus of what we identify as self or other: “I am old” [the essential core of me is my body]; “I am angry”[the essential quality of me is my expressive communicative quality or my speech]; “I am aware or cognizant” [the essential quality of me is my mind].
And impermanence also illustrates the essential egolessness of phenomena. Things have no solid, permanent core or existence. What we call “things” function in much the way that we call a fire wheel (a fire brand waved in a circle) a wheel. It exists in the sense that it appears. In the case of things that we are emotionally attached to, they seem to exist in a meaningful and real way because we are so attached. But none of it stands up to inquiry. None of it you can put your finger on and say “that’s it.”
As to your question “to what end?” The answer for a Mahayana Buddhist (or likely any Buddhist) might be to relieve suffering. The first noble truth says “there is suffering.” It doesn’t say that there is someone who suffers. If you contend that there is someone who suffers — then I have to ask you to identify the core or essence of that person — and you can’t point to the fire circle and say “it’s obvious, it is common sense, it is somewhere over in that direction.”
“The first noble truth says “there is suffering.” It doesn’t say that there is someone who suffers.”
Yeah, there is walking but nobody who walks? There is shouting but nobody who is shouting?
When I say that there was shouting or yelling in neighboring house, do I need to add that the shouting or yelling was produced by people? It is common sense that yelling or shouting is done by people!
In just the same way, the Buddha didn’t see any need to add after saying “Aging involves suffering” that people undergo aging! It’s obvious.
There is suffering, but we don’t need to say that someone undergoes this suffering? What kind of bizarre falsehood is this?
I am sorry, but the view that suffering exists but there are no persons or beings who undergo suffering indicates some form of cognitive/mental disorder.
How do you identify suffering?
Remember the Buddha’s encounter with suffering on the streets of Kapilavastu? He didn’t see some gaseous phenomenon called “suffering” floating around! He saw an old man, a person suffering from a disease, and a corpse. He also saw a monk with a tranquil countenance. And these are the agents, subjects, or persons who are the bearers of the specified attributes.
So, you cannot even point out or pick out suffering except by pointing to or picking out a bearer or subject or person who undergoes suffering.
There is starvation but nobody who is starving? What rot! LOL
Philosophical nonsense, however, is intractable. So, I don’t think what I’ve said is going to make any difference!
Jim, there is a simple reductio ad absurdum against the view that there is only suffering, but no subject or person or self who undergoes it.
1. If there is only suffering, but no subject, person, self, or “experiencer” of suffering, then all statements on the existence of suffering would have the same meaning.
2. But “My mother is suffering from a headache.” and “My daughter is suffering from a headache.” clearly do not have the same meaning. (The difference in meaning is obvious and can only accounted for if we affirm that the subjects or “experiencers” of suffering here are different.)
3. Therefore, it is false that there is only suffering, but no subject or “experiencer” of suffering. (QED)
Thill, the previous comment was for Neocarvaka.
Thill, of course, we are alone. We have thoughts and emotions that others don’t directly experience. We will die alone. But how does that warrant taking a label and sticking it on our forehead and saying “I am JimWilton or I am Thill” and further saying “These are my baby pictures.” “That is me in those pictures.” “I will die someday.” These statements are true — but only in a relative sense — only if we accept that the continuum that we have affixed the label to is real and has something solid to it that the label can attach to. But what is that solid thing?
Self or ego is a concept that we overlay on our experience.
Jim, let’s suppose that what you say is true. Now, what does it imply for our daily life and its discourse?
What differences distinguish the speech and action of an adherent of the “no-self” doctrine from that of ordinary folk?
If there are no differences, and it is consistent with all that we do and say in daily life, then the “no-self” doctrine is really vacuous.
Jim, let’s suppose that what you say is true. Now, what does it imply for our daily life and its discourse?
What differences distinguish the speech and action of an adherent of the “no-self” doctrine from that of ordinary folk?
If there are no differences, and it is consistent with all that we do and say in daily life, then the “no-self” doctrine is really vacuous.
Ramachandra, this is a very good question. In my understanding — even at the level of simple intellectual understanding or belief (as opposed to realization or experiential understanding) — there can be a profound effect on our lives and behavior.
If the self is understood as a construct or even as just impermanent or ephemeral, then it changes everything — given the alternative conventional approaches to life such as “What’s in it for me?” or “I’ve got to get my share.” All of that becomes less important. You don’t stop enjoying a meal or time with a friend. In fact, a moment of having a coffee with a friend and seeing it as a coming together of many coincidences –including the preciousness of being alive in an impermanent world can be very powerful.
This is not, of course, just a Buddhist view — Western philosophies have much to say about the benefits of contemplation of death and impermanence. The Buddhist concept of egolessness takes the contemplation one step further. Where there is even an intellectual understanding of egolessness — that inclines one toward a life that can be lived where there is less to protect, less hoarding, less need for aggression, more generosity.
“You don’t stop enjoying a meal or time with a friend.”
How can you possibly enjoy your time with your friend if you really believe, in contrast to pretending to believe, that your friend is a non-entity, i.e., has no ego, self, or a personality with some identity and continuity?
What are you really enjoying or appreciating here?
As Ramachandra suggests, you do talk and behave toward your friend in ways which show that you presuppose that you are dealing with a person or self. What then is the role, if any, played by your belief in the “no-self” theory?
One could argue, as the author of Zen At War has done in the context of his critique of the role of Zen, doctrinally and institutionally, in Japanese militarism, that this “no-self” theory is dangerous in that it lends itself easily to dehumanizing people, i.e., the attitude that they are “nothing” (Does the word “sunyata” ring a bell?)
“But what is that solid thing?”
It is your self!
“Self or ego is a concept that we overlay on our experience.”
What a strange statement! “We overlay on our experience” clearly implies a self or ego which is “overlaying” the “concept” of “self or ego” on our experience.
So, if your claim is true, then there is a self or ego which doing this. This obviously implies that self or ego is not merely a concept!
““Self or ego is a concept that we overlay on our experience.”
What a strange statement! “We overlay on our experience” clearly implies a self or ego which is “overlaying” the “concept” of “self or ego” on our experience.”
Here’s a point where I can chime in. While i don’t really have a dog in the broader fight here, hopefully I can clarify this specific issue.
There’s actually some neuroscientific support for this idea, that “self is a concept overlaid on our experience.” The idea that we experience our senses in a continuous-in-time fashion is a construct and illusion: certain parts of our brain reorder and reposition our sensory inputs, to create that appearance of continuity. This is a way in which the “self” is overlaid upon experience, and a way in which our “self” (our conscious internal narrative) does not fully represent a person’s experience, action, or brain. One can rephrase and reinterpret that claim as, “this apparent ‘self’ is not an accurate depiction of our true nature.”
“this apparent ’self’ is not an accurate depiction of our true nature.”
Who wrote this post?
What is “our true nature”?
How do you know it? (The question obviously presupposes a knowing self.)
Ben, pl.explain how the concept of self is created and then overlaid on our experience.
Wait a minute. “Our experience”?
One must already have a sense of self to understand an experience as “my experience”.
So, the self is presupposed in experiencing anything.
Therefore, it cannot be a “concept overlaid on our experience”.
Does this make sense?
“‘We overlay on our experience’ clearly implies a self or ego which is “overlaying” the concept of “self or ego” on our experience.”
Exactly! And the “self” that sees the “self” is also just a thought. Nothing wrong with that. Thoughts are very useful. The problem tends to come when we become attached to particular thoughts — such as a particular thought that “I am x” — or we take an ephemeral experience and use it to bolster our thought of self — “I just won the Nobel Prize. I am very important.” Then there is suffering.
“Exactly! And the “self” that sees the “self” is also just a thought.”
You have taken our precious instrument of language and continue inflict such horrendous abuses on it!
A thought cannot, except in the world of a Schizophrenic, have any powers of perception or cognition! So, in the world of sane people, a thought cannot “see” anything, let alone another thought or the self.
From the fact that I can think about myself, it does not follow by any stretch of logic that I am just a thought! The statement “I am just a thought.” is a very bizarre one, again straight off the page of a lunatic’s diary.
Who is stating that “I am just a thought.”? A thought? There we go again to the schizophrenic’s ward. A thought cannot have any such powers of understanding or expression. Only a person, a self, has these powers of perception, cognition, etc., concerning the nature of thought.
I am struck by how thin the line is between madness or mental disorder and some forms of metaphysical thinking.
“Jim”, even you think, after Ayya Khema, “Being nobody, going nowhere”, you cannot escape suffering.
So, what we think is not going make any difference to the fact that we will suffer in some form or other, at some time or other, due to some cause or other.
A transformation of our thinking can only have a bearing on some forms of thought-induced or thought-exacerbated suffering.
There is no escape from all suffering. The third “noble truth” is false.
Well, I tried. Your only answer to my questions is “it’s common sense”. Of course the fire wheel is a circle — just look at it. Just don’t look too close.
You haven’t tried to understand the basics of ascription: no property without an entity which provides the locus for the property.
By any standard, the notion that we can speak of starvation without referring to people, selves, which suffer starvation is pathological.
What else can one say about the truth that running is an action performed by an agent or entity than that it is common sense or common knowledge?
I hope in your books scientific or “philosophical” proofs are not demanded for commonplace truths, i.e., living people have blood in their bodies, a person cannot live without a head or a heart or lungs, choices are made by persons, etc.
“I am sorry, but the view that suffering exists but there are no persons or beings who undergo suffering indicates some form of cognitive/mental disorder.”
Neocarvaka, this comment has indeed crossed the line. Since Jim has indicated that he believes there is suffering without persons who undergo it, you are directly insulting his cognitive or mental capacities.
I have said before that personal attacks are not acceptable on this blog. I haven’t had to enforce that rule yet, but I will do so if need be in the future. Your putative apology does not make it any better. Stop it.
“Thought sees thought.”, “I am a thought.”, “I have no self.” “The external world does not exist.”, etc., are on the same level of pathology of thought as “I am a cough.”, “I have no language.”, “I have no body.”, “A sentence writes itself.” and so on.
These are all examples of nonsense, weird nonsense, at that.
If the intention is not to use language figuratively, or to make jokes, then it is entirely appropriate and plausible to explain their generation in terms of pathology of thought.
Hiram Caton has already done this for Cartesian skepticism. Others have done it for Hegel’s “writings”. Wittgenstein is on record saying that a philosopher’s treatment of a (philosophical) question or issue is like the treatment of an illness. On some interpretations, this surely draws an analogy between philosophical confusions and pathology (of thought). So, the analysis of some philosophical or metaphysical claims in terms of pathology of thought is an entirely legitimate approach and legitimately philosophical at that.
If a view is subjected to the criticism that it is a form of pathology of thought, this does not imply that the proponent of the view is subject to pathology of thought in all areas of his or her life.
The crucial condition here is that the proponent must seriously believe the bizarre view and there must be good evidence, e.g., verbal and non-verbal behaviors, to show that he or she seriously believes it. If so, then it is entirely legitimate to say that in Holding That View the person has fallen victim to pathology of abstract thought.
Since I have no clue whether the proponents of certain bizarre views on this blog seriously hold them and act on them, I have no basis for suggesting or implying, beyond a criticism of the views, that they have fallen victim to pathology of thought. Nor have I done that. Indeed, in the absence of the required evidence, I could not possibly have done that. I have only shown the bizarre nature of the claims.
All this said, I have decided that my time is better spent pursuing my lines and styles of inquiry and criticism on my own blogs. I will no longer participate on this blog. I thank everyone and their “aliases” for providing interesting material for discussion and criticism. All the best,
Thill
Thill, I am sorry to see you go and wish you the best.
Likewise, Thill. Thank you for your many insightful, thorough and stimulating comments, and best wishes in the future.
Since I do have a policy against personal attacks, and what constitutes a personal attack is being questioned in this post, I think I need to add an additional reply here to make the policy and its reasoning clear to readers.
When person A has explicitly claimed to believe statement X and person B responds that anyone who believes X must be insane, that is a personal attack. It is no defence for B to say “I’m only attacking the belief and not the person because I don’t know whether A really believes X.” For that is to say “Well, you’re either insane or a liar. I don’t know which.” That is just as much of a personal attack, and it is not permitted on this blog. It is not too difficult to state opposing views openly and frankly without casting aspersions on one’s opponents’ motivations for holding them.
[EDIT, 8 Sep: I had left out the “not” in “belief and not the person” when I first wrote this comment. I hope my meaning was still intelligible.]
“Jim has indicated that he believes there is suffering without persons who undergo it”
For the record, “Jim” also wrote in this thread that “The realization of egolessness is not a realization that you don’t exist or that the other doesn’t exist.”
So, he cannot believe that it is false that there are individuals who undergo suffering.
Hence, “Jim” cannot feel insulted by my attack on the view that there is suffering, but nobody who undergoes suffering.
“Here, the rejection of anger is itself the starting point for political activism. So too a rejection of fear…”
I am skeptical of all this religiously decadent (in Nietzsche’s sense of “decadence”) talk of love, gentleness, the rejection of anger, fear, and such.
Amod may be sincere in all this talk, but I have seen too much hypocrisy and self-deception to be carried away by carefully cultivated public persona thriving on mere talk of love, compassion, and so on, and carefully cultivated poses for TV cameras and other media.
Do you think Mother Teresa was “loving”? Think again! Consider her cruelty in discouraging and even preventing the unfortunate inmates of her Calcutta mission from taking painkillers even in the face of severe pain! When she preached this cruel nonsense to an inmate who was in agony and said to him that “Jesus is now embracing you!”. The inmate made a response which is matchless: “Ask him to stop embracing me!” LOL
In any case, why should we reject anger or fear? Is it feasible to do so always?
Both anger and fear have indispensable functions in the “economy” of human nature and interactions. If you do not get angry with a person who is beginning to mistreat you, chances are that he or she will be encouraged to repeat that mistreatment.
If you have no fear of bears like that fool Timothy Treadwell, you will end up like him, i.e., as bear food. That fool also took his poor girlfriend with him to the entrails of a bear!
So, anger or fear is not a problem. The problem is irrationality in the forms of irrational anger or fear.
When hoodlums go on rampage in your neighborhood (Ignore left wing baloney on that. These are just bad people doing bad things!), you are perfectly natural and rational in being angry and/or fearful. What is critical is to not let the anger or fear and their expression to prevent or undermine an effective response to the threat. I favor the “shotgun treatment” as the hoodlums come to your door or window frothing at the corners of their mouths like mad dogs!
Confucius said that to suppress emotions is unnatural, but to give uncontrolled or unbridled expression to them is uncivilized.
What this suggests is that the energy of ordinary emotions such as anger or fear needs to be harnessed and expressed in a civilized and cultivated manner and not suppressed unnaturally. It points out a better alternative to the false alternatives: either reject anger or fear or be controlled by them.
To express one’s anger or fear potently with style, in the manner of an art. That’s the real challenge!
There are things much worse than anger, e.g., well-fed U.S. military psychopaths sitting around a table and calmly planning “shock and awe” campaigns to kill and maim by the thousands!
My own view, in light of his voting record, is that Jack Layton was an honorable politician, but the following comment in the National Post is also worth considering. I don’t think it violates the precept of Chilon of Sparta: “De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est.”:
“Mr. Layton was a rich socialist. This year, he and his wife would have had a combined income of just under $400,000 and free room and board at Stornaway. To put that number in perspective, the average after-tax income in Canada for the bottom 20% of families is about $15,000. Even if the Laytons were paying 50% in tax, they were still making 12 times as much as “the everyman” he pretended to be.
It’s so easy to tell everyone else they must sacrifice when you’ve already got your own pile.”
(Kevin Bertsch, Richmond Hill, Ont.)
To be fair, Layton was not calling for shared sacrifice as part of his platform. Since Canada is doing relatively well economically and has its deficit modestly under control, he really didn’t have to.
Nor is it necessarily hypocritical to be a rich socialist, in my books. A woman in George Bernard Shaw’s audience once tried to call that socialist out for his hypocrisy: “How can you stand to wear such a fine fur coat when there are a hundred people out here who can’t have one?” “Madam,” he replied, “if I didn’t wear the coat it would be a hundred and one.”
“To express one’s anger or fear potently with style, in the manner of an art. That’s the real challenge!”
Perhaps, even this needs to be negated since it involves the contrivances, however sophisticated, of thought.
As I contemplate, I wonder:
What is anger or fear without thought?
If there is no build-up and exacerbation of anger or fear by means of thought, i.e., exacerbating anger or fear by thinking about their real or imagined objects or sources, what form do they take?
I think that even if the mind has no thoughts, anger or fear can still arise instinctively. They are now experienced in their forms of outbursts of raw physical energy in the head and abdomen respectively.
These are good insights. Anger, in particular, depends on speed and is fed by thoughts. That is why patience is the traditional antidote to anger. This is not even an exclusively Buddhist insight — folk wisdom says to “count to ten” when angry. Just that brief of a gap and reflection disburses the energy.
There are gross thoughts and subtle thoughts. Gross thoughts are easy to see if you can step out of the momentum and energy of the thought. Subtle thoughts are more difficult to see. What happens in a moment that generates instinctual fear is, first, a moment of open mind or surprise that is free of fear, and then very quickly, a contracting and creation of a reference point and the birth of fear. That second moment is a thought, but it is very quick and difficult to see.
The other factor is that we have habits and patterns of thought that are reflexive. Some meditation techniques work on seeing and loosening or changing the habits into more useful, less painful habits. These tend to be the more conceptual, analytical mediation techniques. Other meditation techniques focus just on seeing clearly the more subtle movements of the mind. These tend to be the more formless meditation pratices.
Years ago I wondered when the time would come that atheists would get on the Buddhist case. Buddhists seemed to be getting a pass, whether it was because they were so polite or deemed to be a lifestyle choice of the intelligentsia I don’t know. Here in this blog a non-discriminatory, equal opportunity ethos rules and that’s a good thing though the hooting tone of the expression of disagreement is lowering. Given that at some point even the greatest ditherer will come for the sake of survey to some benchmark, a point of reference lest one be altogether lost and lorn, how then to deal with the chainsmen of other gangs arises. Polite but firm as Jim Wilton has been doing is the better part even though your interlocutor seems an inch-worm measuring everything by his own petty length.
In ways this problem is at the heart of politics. Jack Layton I note from my reading of the Wikipedia article on him, probably inaccurate, was in favour of proportional representation which has the tendency to create coalition and compromise. The loony left and the rabid right are likely to be involved in government. Difference needs to be managed not by majoritarian crushing of one’s opponents but through continuous dialogue. End of homily.
Well put, Michael. I agree on all counts.
A lot rhetoric here which obscures the fact that reasons were advanced to show why a claim is nonsensical or inconsistent with another claim.
One would have to be in an odd state of mind to deny the self and yet wax eloquent on Jack Layton!
Does “Jack Layton” refer to a self, a person?
If not, what’s all this circus about “him”?
Neocarvaka:
Nothing is wrong with rhetoric when it is understood correctly as the art of presenting your arguments in a way which is most effective, in other words least likely to alienate those whom you seek to persuade or rebut. Terms such as ‘mental disorder’ etc. are simply vulgar abuse, possibly a staple of enthusiastic atheism but out of place in mature discussion.
Antonio Damasio who as far as I know has never been in danger of being sectioned writes in The Feeling of What Happens about 3 centres of the self, proto-self, core-self and autobiographical-self. He writes of the proto-self:
Correction:
Blockquote should end after dimensions.
The rest of the paragraph is my own words.
RE: “position on the nature of the self”.
I think this is the most productive line of inquiry. It is hard to prove a negative — and the Buddhist view of anatta is not even a negative.
Any approach that looks into and tries to identify the constituents of existence or self should be useful. That is why I was interested when Thill on another thread was engaged enough to define existence as (i) existence in space / time (which I view as a statement that Thill’s definition of existence implies and acknowledges impermanence), and (ii) having qualities or characteristics (which I believe is a statement that Thill’s definition of existence implies and acknowledges interdependence). If this is the definition of existence, then that is quite close to the concept of emptiness.
Now, if someone else wants to posit an eternal soul as the basis for existence, then I think some more inquiry is necessary concerning what this means. Unfortunately, we don’t have too many theists in this discussion.
1) “Ben, pl.explain how the concept of self is created and then overlaid on our experience”
I don’t claim that the *concept* of self is created and overlaid on experience. The created thing is the continuity of our perceptual experience. But here’s how it happens:
Have you ever glanced at an analog clock, and momentarily wondered if the clock was working, before seeing the second hand move? This common experience occurs because our brain turns off the input from our eyes, as our eyes move. This avoids motion blur, but it means every time our gaze leaps to a new target, our visual input shuts off for 2-3 tenths of a second. Yet, of course, we experience no discontinuity. What our brain does, is backfill that time with the final image. In this way, our consciousness perceives the second hand in one place for 1.2-1.3 seconds, even though our eyes and early visual areas perceive it for 1 second.
How does that affect the “concept” of self? I think it shows that our perceptions and intuitions about our conscious experience are not necessarily trustworthy.
2)” What is “our true nature”?”
I certainly don’t know the full answer. But I do know what it isn’t: I’m confident that our conscious self, choices, and experience are only a subset of our nature. Every day, we do things that our conscious selves dislike or regret; maybe finishing those french fries, or not exercising, or being snippy, or wasting too much time on the internet. It seems clear to me that the processes/narrative of our consciousness are not the full extent of our minds.
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