Impenetrable Moral Darkness

Has technology threatened human survival? Thomas Merton, sitting on the front porch of his hermitage in Trappist, Kentucky, fretted over such questions:

"We do not know if we are building a fabulously wonderful world or destroying all that we have ever had, all that we have achieved! All the inner force of man is boiling and bursting out, the good together with the evil, the good poisoned by evil and fighting it, the evil pretending to be good and revealing itself in the most dreadful crimes, justified and rationalized by the purest and most innocent intentions. Man is all ready to become a god, and instead he appears at times to be a zombie." (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p.55)

"There is a danger of technology becoming an end in itself and arrogating to itself all that is best and most vital in human effort: thus humans come to serve their machines instead of being served by them....The more corrupt a social system is, the more it tends to be controlled by technology instead of controlling it. The intimate connection between technology and alienation is and will remain one of the crucial problems we will need to study and master in our lifetime. Technology means wealth and power but it bestows the greatest amount of wealth and power upon those who serve it most slavishly a the expense of authentic human interests and values, including their own human and personal integrity. Life in the United States shows this beyond question. But unfortunately, the rest of the world secretly or overtly wishes to become like the United States."

"What a tragedy that would be." (Punto Final)

Technology allows us diversion and escape into endless frenzy, and escape from inner journey of awakening.

"The tragedy of a life centered on 'things,' on the grasping and manipulation of objects, is that such a life closes the ego upon itself as though it were an end in itself, and throws it into a hopeless struggle with other perverse and hostile selves competing together for the possessions which will give them power and satisfaction. Instead  of being 'open to the world' such minds are in fact closed to it and their titanic efforts to build the world according tot their own desires are doomed in the end by the ambiguity and destructiveness that are in them. They seem to be a light, but they battle together in impenetrable moral darkness." (Zen and the Birds of Appetite, p.82)

On the Calling of a Cynic

I came across this passage in Epictetus that reminded me of wise man's way of life. The Cynics were philosophers who were like monks. They were early Beats. They sought happiness through freedom from desires; freedom from passions of fear, grief, anger. Freedom from religious or public authority  or public opinion  They wanted to live free, following the way of Nature:

“And how is it possible that a man who has nothing, who is naked, homeless, without a hearth, squalid, without a servant, without a city, can pass a life that flows easily? See, God has sent you  a man to show you that it is possible. 

"Look at me, who am without a city, without a home, without possessions, without a servant; I sleep on the ground; I have no wife, no children, no profession, but only the earth and heavens, and one rag-robe. And what do I lack? Am I not without sorrow? Am I not free from fear? Am I not free? 

"When did any of you see me failing in the object of my desire? Or ever falling into that which I would avoid? Did I ever blame God or man? Did I ever accuse any man? Did any of you ever see me with sorrowful countenance? And how do I meet with those whom you are afraid of and admire? Do not I treat them like equals? Who, when he sees me, does to think that he sees a king and master?”

Epictetus, On the Calling of a Cynic, Discourse 3.22

Reading Jacques Ellul

Jacques Ellul says that technology has “destroyed everything which people have ever considered sacred. This is the horror of our civilization. What is so awful.”

Technology has replaced, taken the place, of the sacred. People have accepted technology as something sacred.

That is why, if during a demonstration a car is set on fire, people are shocked. Because a sacred object is destroyed.

Human happiness has its price. We must always ask ourselves what price  will we have to pay for something. Traditional societies always asked themselves this question: How will our decisions affect the 7^th generation from now.

If we disturb the order of things, what will we have to pay?

Wisdom does not come from intellectual reflection. It is achieved in a long process of transfer from generation to generation, from our elders. Received wisdom is an accumulation of experience in direct relations with the natural social climate.

Nature served as an example for us. We must now divest ourselves from all that. For in a technological society, traditional human wisdom is irrelevant. It is nonsense.

Technology requires us to live faster and faster, ever more quickly.

Inner reflection is replaced by reflex. In the natural society reflection means that after having undergone an experience, we thought about that experience. In the case of reflex there is no time for thought, we know immediately from conditioning what must be done in a given situation.

Technology will not permit us to think about things. We must react quickly to the flow of changes.

People must adapt to change.

Technology will not tolerate any judgment being passed on it.

City dwellers live in a completely dead environment, consisting of concrete, brick, cement, glass, steel, and so on. People cannot be happy in such an environment. So they suffer psychological problems. Mainly as a result of their social climate, but also as a result of the speed at which they are forced to live.

Human beings evolved to live in nature. And they suffer from this loss of nature.

They then turn to technology to relieve their suffering, medication, diversion, amusement, relief, hatred, as compensation – instead of confronting the root of their suffering.

The technological era is an era of media and loneliness. That is a very important fact. We can see this so clearly in the young. Students shoot up their schools and commit mass murder, and we are perplexed and ask ourselves how this could be. They have everything, and yet they rebel, go berserk. They consume technology and spectacular media, and yet they rebel.

But, if people lose their motive for living two things can happen. It only seldom happens that they accept that fact. In that case, they develop suicidal  or murderous tendencies.

Usually, they just try to find refuge in diversion, or they become depressed and begin taking medicines.

If some people become aware of their situation they react to it as usually happens in western societies. They become depressed and discouraged. So they just don’t think about their situation and carry on. They drive faster and faster, never mid where, as long as it is fast.

Because of our technology, we now have a world in which the situation of mankind has totally changed. Mankind is now prepared to give up their human independence in exchange for a certain security. The human being is becoming “post human” as  one is changed internally, manipulated by media.

We who resist technology are accused of being pessimistic luddites because we want to awaken people. It is better to let them sleep peacefully, and dream of Disneyland.

But freedom begins when we become conscious.  

Tantric Theravada in Cambodia -

Tantric Buddhism became ascendant  in Angkor during the reign of King Jayavarman VII. His great temples in Angkor Thom, especially the  Bayon, are tantric centers.

The Hevaajra-Tantra seems to have been an important tantric practice in Cambodia at this time.

Boisselier says the brahmavihara meditations are featured in the Hevaajra-Tantra [“we shall expound the chapter on  the divinities. First one should product thought of love, secondly that of compassion, thirdly that of joy, and last of all that of equanimity. Hevajra Tantra I.iii.1] and the tara-sadhana of the sadhanamala.

Why did tantric Buddhism appear so strongly in Angkor (Cambodia) at this time? The Muslim invasion of India destroyed the Tantric centers of Nalanda, Vikramasila and Odantapuri in 1200…Some of the refugee masters went to Angkor, while others went to Nepal and Tibet.

A tantric pantheon led by Hevajra, Vajrasattva, Vajradhara and Vajrapani moved center stage in Cambodia at this time, and Jayavarman had all the resources needed for this in the Phimai tradition from which his Mahidhara dynasty hailed.

The Bayon temple (Ancestor Yantra Temple) with the four-faced Buddhas looking in every direction is a manifestation of this tradition. 

The presence of the Buddhist Tantric masters in Angkor may be attested from evidence in Katmandu, Nepal, where the similar tradition of the Tantric Adi-Buddha eyes look out over the city in all directions from the city from each side of the square harmika of the Katmandu’s Svayambhu Mahacaitya, and similar temples.

BP Groslier, following Jean Filliozat, speculates that the painting of the eyes on the towers in Katmandu and Patan was inspired by the refugee masters from Bengal, at exactly the same time that the giant four-faced Buddhas were carved at the Bayon in Angkor.

“It has been shown recently that it [the new form of Buddhism of Jayavarman VII] very probably consisted of the doctrine elaborated in Nalanda, then taught in Angkor – finally in Japan – by the doctors of the [Buddhist] law who had to flee before the Moslem invaders in the closing years of the 12^th century. It is therefore to this school and its texts that we should turn to JayavarmanVII’s conceptions of Buddhism, and therefore for the sources of the Bayon. This is just as much as the case for the Bengali zealots who took refuge at the same time in Nepal and Kashmir, who were very probably the initiators of the stupas marked with four stylized faces, oriented to the four directions, which are the only exact parallels that can be found with the Khmer face towers.” [Groslier, BP]

Ulrich von Schroeder  said of the refugee Buddhist masters of 1200:

“The annihilation of Indian Buddhism caused a great influx of refugees to Nepal who swarmed to the Buddhist monasteries of Kathmandu Valley, mostly in Patan and Kathmandu…the arrival of these Buddhist refugees was beneficial to Nepal and in many ways one of them being that among the immigrants were many eminent Indian Buddhist scholars who had salvaged valuable manuscripts and probably many cast images. There is every reason to believe that among these displaced Buddhists were also many skilled artists and craftsmen. At the same time the importance of the viharas as centers of Buddhist studies increased and the Tibetan Buddhists shifted their focus from north-eastern India to Nepal. [Ulright von Schroedder Indo-Tibetan bronzes. Visual Dharma Publications, Hong Kong.]

In the years 1197-1207, when all the Ganges valley monasteries were being destroyed, the Khmer were carving face-towers in Buddhist Bayon Banteay Chmar and other temples, and producing stone and bronze icons of Tantric deities such as Hevajra, Vajradhara and Vajrapani – all progeny of Nalanda, Vikramasila and another Indian monasteries.

“In tantric thinking, a king’s personal meditation in discovering the Buddha inside himself generates a mandala of deities, not only for himself but for the whole state. [Jayavarman was a skillful meditator and a learned Buddhist. His second wife and two sons were skilled Sanskritists who composed his three major extant inscriptions, and he is described in his inscriptions as ‘learned in the sutras’ and “a veritable Panini in his youth’ and is shown pronouncing the mantras at a public ritual.”

The apsaras (female goddess dancers) carved into the temples of Angkor are tantric-yoginis. Images of the Yogini-Hevajra cult.

History records that King Jayavarman VII entered the pinnacle of his temple at Angkor Thom every night in order to have intercourse with a “female dragon” – that is, engage in tantric meditation rites with a female partner.

Hevajra Tantra was the first of a new class of Mother Tantras that gave a strong female orientation to its mandalas. …Jayavarman’s temples were known for the special focus they gave to female officiants. The 1225 chronicle of Chau Ju-Kua, the Chinese Superintendent of Maritime Trade in Canton, contains an account of temple life:

“[in Chen-la, ie. Cambodia] the people are devout Buddhists. In the temples there are 300 foreign women; they dance and offer food to the Buddha. They are called a-nan [Skt. Ananda (bliss)]…the incantations of the Buddhist and Taoist [Shiva yogin] priests have magical powers.’”

When Cambodia later adopted Theravada Buddhism, this older strata of tantric Buddhism was subsumed and assimilated into the Buddhist traditions.

Where are you going? Part 2

Material-development and growth fuels the economy. Policy makers, technicians, bureaucrats intensify their efforts to accelerate and expand its growth. The world will be destroyed by this way of thinking.

In former times, when society was based on agriculture in small family farms, rooted in religious culture of community, sharing, charity, selflessness -- cooperation rather than competition was the norm. 

Harmony and preservation of resources was valued. 

Our modern way of life is not superior to the village life of rural societies.

Why do the technocrats think they are ‘improving” the world, or way of life, through their heartless innovations?

Why  do they think things are improving, for the better? How do they measure improvement?

Mahatma Gandhi rejected production-consumption as the goal/aim of human life.

Spirituality is primary to material, he said. The less dependence on material things, the greater the freedom of spirit. The bigger anything is, the more dehumanizing, inhuman, it becomes. Big systems are destructive to humanity.

Reject “bigness” and “growth” as admirable values; but admire “smallness,” simplicity, balance as the qualities of development.

Shumacher, in his book Small is Beautiful, said: “The keynote to Buddhist economics is simplicity and non-violence. From the economists point of view, the marvel of the Buddhist way of life is the utter rationality of its pattern – amazingly, small means leading to extraordinarily satisfactory results.”

He recommended (1) methods free of machinery; (2) play as part of life/work; (3) decentralization of power, decisions on the lowest level.

Wise technologies would: Respect simple satisfactions, traditional values, gradual progress in both physical and spiritual endeavors, preservation rather than destruction, reduction of craving, avoidance of violence, and development of spiritual rather than material things.

As I reflect on "wise technologies" I think these suggestions would be a way of evaluating skillful or unskillful decisions:

Human values vs Technological values

People first    vs    profits first

Spiritual development    vs    material development

Preservation   vs    innovation

Inward    vs    outward

Quality    vs    quantity

Technology must submit to nature    vs    nature must submit to technology

Contentment    vs    desire/craving

Unity (harmony)    vs    conformity

Needs    vs    luxury

Abundance    vs    scarcity

Balance    vs    growth

Connection     vs     attachment

Interbeing (social)    vs    individual/self

Diverse (local)    vs    universal (global)

Cooperation    vs    competition

Sharing    vs    hoarding

Simplicity    vs    complexity

Decentralization    vs    centralization

Small    vs   big

Slow/gradual    vs    fast/instant results

Humans submit to nature    vs    humans submit to machines

Priceless    vs    valued

Subjective    vs    objective

Welfare    vs    warfare

Duty    vs    rights

Where are You Going? Part 1

I often contemplate the effects of technology on human person, and on society.

What is technology for? Does nature need, or benefit, from technology? How? In what way?

How can we dare to contradict the voices of development, globalization, progress?

Technology must serve human beings; foster the growth, development, flowering and fruition of  human nature. Technology must not violate human beings.

Therefore, in order to distinguish between skilful, useful technologies, and harmful, destructive technologies, we must first understand the nature of humanity. What is human nature?  Does technology serve to further this meaningful nature? Does technology make people more truly human? Technology should serve human nature.

What is the meaning and purpose of human life? What is man and what should he be? If we, as a ‘civilization’ don’t have an answer to this most fundamental question, how can we design a technology to serve that end?

If technology is not intended to serve the furtherance and potential of human life, then to what purpose IS technology developed? To make money? To increase economic activity? Even when that economic activity is directly detrimental to human life, and other forms of life?

For technology is to serve the human person, it must recognize that the human person is in a society, community of relationships, in a natural environment of life systems.

For example, we should ask ourselves: Why do we put technology at the service of luxury for the privilege of elites, when the majority of the human race does not have food, medicine, homes, or the requisites to sustain life?

It’s time to put the modern world on notice, that they must respect human spirituality.

Only spirituality puts material concerns second; and materialism must be put in its place.

The technocrats are almost like medieval popes, disdain others. They alone are masters of knowledge, they have all power and knowledge. They believe they can dictate and pontificate to the rest of us, and who do we think we are to questions their authority? They wonder at our hubris to question, even challenge, their globalization-vision of Utopia, technotopia.

Selfishness must be restrained. But how do we answer those who say that human nature is essentially selfish, oriented toward domination, self indulgence, cruelty?

All I can say is: Living together in harmony and cooperation is preferable to living together in conflict and violent coercion, isn’t it?

We must dismantle the industry of war.

Is growth good? When is enough enough?

When you have enough, is growth good?

Is it heresy even to ask such questions?

I suggest that technological progress should be oriented toward preservation, protection, conservation, and cultivation of life.

Yet, we continue with a mindless growth, spiraling out of control. It is “mindless” because “the masters of the world” are afraid that if the quantity is not increased, everything will come to a standstill, or the system will go haywire, leading to possible ruin. They want to maintain the status of the rich. Growth, they believe, will satisfy the peons because “little people” will receive some trickle-down, while the rich reap the vast wealth.

Thomas Merton on Action and Contemplation

"Do everything you can to avoid the amusements and the noise and business of men."

"Keep as far away as you can from the places where they gather to cheat and insult one another, to to mock one another with their false gestures of friendship."

"Do not read their newspapers, if you can help it. Be glad if you can keep beyond the reach of their radios. Do not bother with their unearthly songs or their intolerable concerns for the way their bodies look and feel."

"Do not smoke their cigarettes or drink the things they drink or share their preoccupations with different kinds of food. Do not complicate you life by looking at the pictures in their magazines." -- Thomas Merton.

We live in a hyper-active world of spectacular technological wonders.

Technology is about "action" and not at all concerned with "contemplation" or meditative attainment. With outward expansion and movement, and not with inward stillness and concentration.

Is it possible to create a "contemplative technology"?

The modern world is a "commotion" of movement, with an intolerance  or incomprehension of stillness, silence, and peace.

Commotion is defined as : (1) a state of civil unrest or insurrection; (2) a steady or recurrent motion; (3) a mental excitement or confusion; (4) an agitated disturbance; (5) a  noisy confusion.

Isn't that an accurate description of life in the modern world?

Technology allows us to supplant internal restlessness with external commotion. It allows us to distract ourselves, or "escape" from, our inner restlessness, inner suffering, through movement. It is no accident that the contemplative monasteries of Europe were suppressed at exactly the same moment of the construction of the modern state, and its new faith in "progress", movement, and scientific reasoning.

Technology is not the problem, it is the symptom of an underlying sickness that rests in human hearts.

Meditation is the antidote to modern technology. Meditation is a deepening of experience, inner experience, rather than a flight into external activity. If you can't go far, you go deep.

In the contemporary world, action is mistaken for life. Movement is mistaken for life. Commotion is mistaken for communion.

We create a commotion to avoid, escape, express, replace the inner agitation, and anguish of soul, from living in an intolerable world. And to escape or deny the guilt we feel for having cooperated in the construction of such a cruel and selfish world. We feel guilty because we are guilty.

By committing ourselves to a nonviolent way of life, and cultivating inwardness, we can re-inhabit our vacant inner lives. By arousing our energies by keeping the welfare of others at heart, we can attain enough courage to grow patient and compassionate to our own humanity, and awaken to inwardness, to our own Buddha nature, or "the kingdom of God."

At the heart of commotion is an urgent compulsion to MOVE, to move away form "here" in this place, to escape from the present moment.

Commotion is the refusal to meditate. It is "the passion for unreality" Merton said.

The good news is that we can STOP. We can sit down, shut up, and go inward, and pay attention to the trees.

In the Japanese edition of The Seven Story Mountain, Merton says that Modernism, with its "ideology of matter, power, quantity, movement, activism, and force. I reject this because I see it to be the source and expression of the spiritual hell which man has made of this world: the hell which has burst into flames in two total wars of incredible horror, the hell of spiritual emptiness and sub-human fury which has resulted in crimes like Auschwitz and Hiroshima. This I must reject with all the power of my being. This all sane men must reject. But the question is: How can we sincerely reject the effect if he continues to embrace the cause?"

He became a monk as a rejection of the modern technological world, he said. "As a radical liberation from the delusions and obsessions of modern man and his society."

The monastic life is a rejection, and alternative, to the modern world with its values, assumptions, views.

"It is my intention to make my entire life a rejection, a protest against the crimes and injustices of war and political tyranny which threatens to destroy the whole race of men and the world with him."

"By my monastic vows and life, I am saying NO to all the concentration camps, the aerial bombardments, the staged political trials, the judicial murders, the racial injustices, the economic tyrannies, and the whole socio-economic apparatus which seems geared for nothing but global destruction in spite of all its fair words in favor of peace,"

Are we Things in a Material World?

"We don't realize how much the current indoctrination into systematic and organized consumption is the equivalent and extension, in the twentieth century, of the great indoctrination of rural populations into industrial labor, which occurred during the nineteenth century."

"This same process of rationalization of productive forces, which took place in the nineteenth century in the production sector, is accomplished, in the twentieth century, in the consumption sector."

"We are surrounded today by the remarkable conspicuousness of consumption and affluence, established by the multiplication of objects, services and material goods, all of which constitute a part of fundamental mutation in the ecology of the human species."

"Strictly speaking, these affluent individuals are no longer surrounded by other human beings as they were in the past, but by objects..."

"Just as the wolf-child becomes a wolf by living among wolves, so we are ourselves becoming functional objects."

"We are living in the period of objects: that is, we live by their rhythm, according to their incessant succession."

"Today, it is we who are observing their birth, fulfillment...We have reached the point where 'consumption' has grasped the whole of life."

-- Jean Baudriallard

TECHNOLOGY IS DIS-ENCHANTMENT OF THE WORLD

Reading Max Weber, Modernism is Disenchantment of the World, brings alot of things into perspective.

Science, knowledge, is the "intellectualization" of the world. Science believes that everything can be known, that one "can know," ultimately, everything. There are no "mysteries" - only things as yet "unknown."

This is the "disenchantment" of the world.

Leo Tolstoi confronts the questions head on: "does science, does technology, have any meaning?"

"All his [Tolstoi's] brooding increasingly revolved around the problem of whether or not death is a meaningful phenomenon," Weber said.

Tolstoi's answer is that for civilized man, death has no meaning; the individual life has no meaning, because "progress" continues regardless of the death of the human individual. And progress is all that matters, in modern civilization. The individual human life is only one step in "progress" - even great human lives like a Jesus, or a Martin Luther King.

Because death is meaningless, life is meaningless.

Has progress got any meaning? beyond the technical?

What is the "value" of science?

"Redemption from the rationalism and intellectualism of science is the fundamental presupposition of living in union with the divine," Weber said.

Youth crave meaning, an encounter with the divine, sacred. Youth crave not only religious experience, but experience. They are nauseated by ideas. And science offers them only observations, intellectualisms, objectification

Technology offers youth only spectacular voyeurism, rather than EXPERIENCE.

Sometimes they turn to dangerous romantic irrationalism, in rejection of pointy-headed intellectualism. But this mindless rebellion can often bring about the very opposite of what they hope to achieve, a direct experience with reality. They may get lost in the fun house.

"After Neitzsche's devastating criticism of those 'last men' who 'invented happiness,' I may leave aside altogether the naive optimism in which science, that is, the technique of mastering life which rests upon science -- has been celebrated as the way to happiness," Weber said.

Those people who have blind faith in technology, who believe technology  will usher in a new age of wonderful happiness, need to have their heads examined. They are deeply and dangerously deluded.

Tolstoi said, "Science is meaningless because it give us no answer to our questions, the only question important to us: 'What shall we do and how shall we live?''

Forest Tradition 1

In the Forest Tradition, monks withdraw from society to live in the forests and practice meditation and ascetic practices, and seek to attain Nirvana, following the example of Sakyamuni Buddha. 

This tradition is still alive and vibrant today, although it is almost invisible to the modern world. Countless thousands of monks and nuns live in solitude in the forests of  Burma, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand.

The characteristic features of the Forest tradition include strict observance of the monastic vinaya; following instructions of the Teacher; application of the 13 ascetic practices (dhutanga); living in forest or natural environment; pilgrimage or itinerate lifestyle(thudong); and meditation practice.

In the modern world, forest monks have been almost totally overlooked by historians or scholars, and forest monks even escaped the notice of their contemporaries, because they avoid drawing attention to themselves. They have left few written records of their existence.

Often they did not teach or, when they did teach, had few disciples. Many forest monks never had their life stories published, whether for personal reasons or because their supporters were mainly local people who could not afford the publishing costs. Many shunned publicity for fear of being disturbed by urban tourists. And the rustic ways of the forest monks were not generally respected by the elites of their respective societies.

But forest monks have a lot of offer us, as Jasmine Saville says in her essay Forest Matters: “The wandering monks intrinsically valued nature, perceiving the self and environment parts of an invisible whole. All forms of life were fellow karmic beings, each vital for interdependent well being….the thudong way is a pool of wisdom for spiritual identity in an age of mass consumerism, anomie, addiction, and conformity.”

"In recent years the thudong traditions have gained some kudos and material support amongst urbanites. …The few remaining thudong monks remind us of the intrinsic relationship between Buddhism and the biosphere. Their lesson – that nature is a sanctuary for the mind, nurturing inner transformation. Nature is Dhamma, and so provides a fountain of mortality and ethics required for a harmonious world.”

The wandering monks felt that living in the forest was essential to self-knowledge, and that jungles, forests and mountains were the supreme environment of Buddhist education, where they surrendered to nature and the impermanence of the universe to be free from the ocean of suffering of material existence.

Forest monks are practice-oriented, focused on meditation practice, and personal experience, rather than theoretical knowledge, in contrast to scholar monks who are focus their work on study, preservation, and transmission of the scriptures.

Forest monks practice for liberation, Nibbana, fruition. They must have the previous accumulation of merit, spiritual virtues, and mental certitude (parami), to be able to survive and to follow through to the final stage of liberation.

Phra Phonim Visal of Sukato Forest Monastery in Thailand, said that the Forest Tradition points us to an older, alternative way of life:

"Such messages point to the true value of life, indicating the value of inwardness as much more important than wealth and power, that the life of tranquility and material simplicity  is more rewarding and fulfilling…Such messages are especially revolutionary for a society blindly obsessed with impoverished values. To have forest monasteries amid, or elevated above lay society, is to have communities of resistance, that by their nature and very existence, question the validity of popular values.”

The forest monks “can convey, with insistence and innovation ‘messages’ that create ‘new’ values which can bring about cultural change on a fundamental level or encourage a change in the social patterns which inflict suffering and degrade the quality of people’s lives.”

Emptiness in Theravada

There is a general misunderstanding that "emptiness" is a Mahayana teaching only, and not found in Theravada Buddhism.

Mahavagga of Samyutta Nikaya the Buddha says: “Emptiness (sunnata) is what I teach. A teaching that does not treat of emptiness is someone else’s teaching composed by some later disciple.”

Pancaka Nipata, Anguttara Nikaya says: "A discourse of any kind, though produced by a poet, or a learned man, versified, poetical, splendid, melodious in sound and syllable, is not an keeping with the teaching of the Buddha if not connected with emptiness (sunnata).”

Again the Buddha said: “And what bhikkhus is the path leading to the unconditioned? The emptiness concentration, the signless concentration, the undirected  concentration, this is called the path leading to the unconditioned.”

“Thus, bhikkhus, I have taught you the unconditioned. Whatever should be done by a compassionate teacher, out of compassion for his disciples, desiring their welfare, I have done for you. These are the roots of trees, bhikkhus, these are the empty huts. Meditate bhikkhus, do not be negligent, lest you regret it later. This is our instruction to you.”

The world is sunnata, empty.

Khuddaka Nikaya: “Because of being empty of self or of things due to self, it is consequently said that he world is empty.”

Emptiness means upekkha, equanimity,  void of lusts, which Buddha emphasized.

Ajahn Buddhadasa of Suan Mokh said, “Don’t identify as ‘I’ or ‘mine’, act with clear awareness and there will be no suffering.”

“The sunnata of the Buddha means the absence of anything that we might have a right to grasp at and cling to as an abiding entity or self…The world is described as empty because there is nothing whatever that we might have a right to grasp at. We must cope with an empty world, with a mind that does not cling.”

“Nothing to do. Nothing to be. Nothing to have.”

The Dhammapada 92 says: “The arahants have emptiness (sunnata) and signlessness as their object.

Yasam sunnicayo natthi

Ye parinnatabhojana

Sunnato animittoca

Vimokkho yasa gocaro

Akase va sakuntanam

Gati tesam durannaya

They for whom there is no accumulation

Who reflect well over their food

Who have deliverance

Which is void and signless as their object…

Their course like that of birds in the air

Cannot be traced.

In Majjhima Nikaya 121, and also 122, the Buddha recommended a mode of perception that he called “entry into emptiness” in which one simply notes the presence or absence of phenomena, without making any further assumption about them; to look at “experience” or “process” without assuming “essence.”

“This world is supported by a polarity, that of existence and nonexistence. But when one sees origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, ‘non-existence’ with reference to the world does not occur to one.

“The world is in bondage to attachments, clinging and baises. But one such as this does not get involved with or cling to these attachments, nor is he resolved on ‘myself.’ He has no uncertainty or doubt that mere stress, when arising, is arising; stress, when passing away, is passing away. In this, his knowledge is independent of others. It is to this extent that there is right view.” Samyutta Nikaya XII 15

The Age of Resentment

University students often, speak to me of their “despair” and “fear” as they contemplate the future of the modern world.

They are nauseated and dread-full of the culture, idiocy, deadness, absurdity of materialist consumerism.

How to teach them that “the joy-of-life is in the living,” -- the act of living?

The acts that benefit life are in themselves meaningful, fulfilling, satisfying, conducive of happiness, contentment, and peace. We don’t need, nor can we attain, satisfaction from the “results” of our actions, from implementing or imposing our agendas on the world, from getting the results we want.

The achievement of a meaningful life is in meaningful living.

Especially for us who are working for a “paradigm shift” – working to change the world – to overthrow the present order of the world – to turn the world upside down.

We must realize that what we do is insignificant, but it is important that we do it.

Thomas Merton said something useful about this:

“Do not depend on the hope of results…You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and achieve no results at all, if not perhaps the opposite results to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself…As gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.”

“You are fed up with words, and I don’t blame you. I am nauseated by them sometimes. I am also, to tell the truth, nauseated by ideals and causes…It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty, with no trace of meaning left in it. And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make the meaning be there again by magic…

“The big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen. And we can share in them: but there is no point on building our lives on this personal satisfaction, which may be denied us and which after all is not that important.

“The greatest thing after all is to live, not put your life in the service of a myth…If you can get free from the domination of causes and just serve…Truth, you will be able to do more and will be less crushed by the inevitable disappointment, frustration and confusion….”

***

Images are evil. But images are all we have now. We were born modern.

America has no history. America is concrete, active, speed, forward looking, productive, optimistic, pragmatic, idealistic, restless. America no “place” – no roots.

Because we Americans have no history, no knowledge, no experience, we were born modern.

The American Dream is a smiling hallucination of advertisements, of new improved manikin smiles. America is Disney Land with a death penalty.

So America needs to “wake up” from its hallucination, and needs contemplatives to sit right down in the traffic of zooming rush hours, among the skyscrapers scaffolding; sit ZEN in the cacophony of the Bus Horn Concerto – and STOP MODERN MAN. In my humble opinion.

Modern secular man hates himself, cannot stand to be “with” or “by” himself – is alienated from his own mental, interior life – absorbed, transfixed by the computer screen – externals, sensations, technology, materialism.

Modern man is alienated from nature, from his own inner life. He has betrayed himself, has “sold his soul.”

Modern man’s self-hatred is due to his betrayal of his inner nature; due to his alienation – his disconnection from inwardness, nature,  spirit, dharma. Christians would say this alienation is due to betrayal of man’s divine nature, betrayal of grace.

He fills his inner life with “stuff” to fill up the emptiness. He “stuffs” himself, through consuming.

Modern man creates an  “image” to replace the “true self” that he has lost.

He gave away “reality” and inner “truth” for the illusion, for simulacra, for the society of the spectacle, the image…and now he is “lost in the funhouse”, he is lost in the masquerade of post-modern life.

Modern people feel guilty because we are guilty.

And we “stuff” ourselves to become jaded; to become insensitive to the sorrow of this knowledge; “Stuffing” ourselves in both senses of the word: (1) incorporating, eating ourselves to death; and (2) assimilating, accumulating more and more “stuff” in mindless consuming.

We are what we eat. We are the world, and we eat the world.

Alienated from his own mental, interior life, modern man is absorbed, transfixed by externals, sensations, materiality.

The philosopher Descartes planted the seeds of modern individualism, with his philosophy “Cogito ergo sum” – “I think therefore I am.” He starts with the self-centered “self”, and works outward to understand the cosmos (Dharma/god) as “object” of objective experience.

But Dharma/god is not an object , not a thing, or “being.” God is not another “being” and there is nothing out there. And this absence is experienced as a presence.

So modern man put the “self” in the place of the god, the Dhamma.

We become sick of  this charade and deception, and are filled with resentment and revenge, and “self-destruction.” Modern man is will destroy civilization out of revenge for this meaningless life he feels trapped in.

Regeneration, reawakening to our sense of “connection” to nature, our sense of “belonging” in the world, is our only way forward. Re-embodying our own inner lives through meditation is the only way to liberate ourselves from this dilemma, this looming catastrophe.

***

In the Japanese edition of The Seven Story Mountain, Thomas Merton said that modernism, with its “ideology of matter, power, quantity, movement, activism, and force… is the source and expression of the spiritual hell which man has made of this world, the hell which has burst into flames in two total wars of incredible horror, the hell of spiritual emptiness and sub-human fury which has resulted in crimes like Auschwitz and Hiroshima. This I must reject with all the power of my being. This all sane men must reject. But the question is: how can he sincerely reject the effect if he continues to embrace the cause?”

The practice of the contemplative life, meditation, cuts through the conditioning of modernism,  and “is a radical liberation from the delusions and obsessions of modern man and his society,” Merton said.

“It is my intention to make my entire life a rejection, a protest against the crimes and injustices of war and political tyranny which threatens to destroy the whole race of men and the world with him. By my monastic vows and life, I am saying NO to all the concentration camps, the aerial bombardments, the staged political trials, the judicial murders, the racial injustices, the economic tyrannies, and the whole socioeconomic apparatus which seems geared for nothing but global destruction in spite of all its fair words in favor of peace.”

This rejection of modernism, the modern world, is an affirmation, a “yes” to nature, to the natural world.

“If I say No to all these secular forces, I also say Yes to all that is good in the world, and in man. I say Yes to all that is beautiful in nature….”

The change we need is deeper, more profound, than political change. It is a change of heart, a change of consciousness, that is necessary.

“We will never see the results in our time…[We need] a total and profound change in the mentality of the whole world…a complete change of heart and totally new outlook on the world of man….”

The basic problem is not political. It is a-political and human. We must recognize the primacy of the spiritual, that the person is not ‘post-human’.

Dragon of the Mekong

When I visited Ubon Ratchatani, I stayed at Wat Kitivaro, a huge enclosed forest monastery; a shabby, unkempt, run down monastery. A pack of 20 half-feral dogs ran free-reign throughout the grounds, on friendly terms with the local monks, but aggressive towards visitors like me. I was on my constant guard against being attacked by the dogs when no local monk was present to fend them off.

Huge coconut trees, nearly fifty-feet tall, reach into the blue tropical skies above the monks’ wooden huts.

Venerable Siripunno, an old monk who was a student of the famous teacher Ajahn Fan, lived in a small hut near the back of the wooded temple compound. He had been a monk for 42 years, ordained in 1967.

Delighted to have a chance to practice his English skills, he came to talk to me several evenings during my stay in the monastery. He had learned to speak English when he was a boy, through his interactions with the American GIs stationed in Ubon Air Base, where he worked small jobs. He still feels affection for Americans, and nostalgia for his boyhood memories.

I asked him if the local people actually believe in the Naga, the Mekong River dragon. “The Mekong River is a Nine Headed Dragon,” Venerable Siripunno said. “The people do believe in the Mekong River naga. It has scales like a fish, rather than skin like a snake or eel.”

“The naga is crowned or horned,” he said. “It moves through the later like an eel.”

He demonstrated for me, in hand motions, how nagas move through the water.

How to understand this assertion of dragons as real; as a matter of fact?

I recalled Karl Jung’s statement that there are many things in this world that we don’t understand: “Rationalism and doctrinarism are the disease of our time. They pretend to have all the answers. But a great deal will yet be discovered which our present limited view would have ruled out as impossible. Our concept of space and time have only approximate validity.”

In the year 2000, the journalist Richard Freeman led an expedition to Thailand in search of the mythical Mekong River Dragon – the naga. The expedition was commissioned by Discovery Channel.

“The Naga is essentially a gigantic snake, usually found in Hindu and Buddhist mythology,” Freeman said. “It is supposed to bear an erectile crest on its head rather like that of a cockatoo, but made of scales, which it holds menacingly aloft when angry, just as a cobra opens its hood.”

“Legend says the nagas possess immense intelligence and magical powers. They can, for instance, transform themselves into humans and walk unnoticed in the world of men. It is believed they inhabit grand underwater palaces, rather like the dragons of China…the naga is not satisfied with being a legend and still rears its scaly head, being sighted up and down the Mekong River even today.”

Freeman interviewed a 70 year old man named Pimpa, who claimed to have had a personal, terrifying encountered a naga. Pimpa lived in “an extremely remote village in the forested hills”, where he came face-to-face with a dragon while exploring some underground caves, connected to the Mekong.

Freeman followed Mr. Pimpa into the caves into the naga’s lair, for about a mile into the narrow, dank, labyrinth of tunnels.

“The old man had been exploring by candlelight when he turned into the cave and came across a giant snake. Its head was in the shadows, but the visible portion of its body was 60-ft long. Mr. Pimpa had pressed himself against the wall in terror as the giant reptile crawled past at an astoundingly slow pace. Its scales were black with glossy green sheen, and it was around 2.5 to 3-feet thick. Finally, it had disappeared along the passage, and Mr. Pimpa had collapsed gasping in relief.”

Freeman tried to give a rational explanation to the persistent, unshakable belief  in the existence of the naga among the people who live along the Mekong River. “There was once a group of primarily aquatic snakes which reached immense sizes. The Madtsoids…were found worldwide…Reports from all over the tropics suggest that some species may have survived to the present day. As well as their great size, all these monster snakes seem to share strange ornamentation on their head. The manotauro or sucuriju gigante of the Amazon is believed to have horns, and Indochina’s naga has a crest. Horns are not unknown on snakes; the rhinoceros viper of Africa and the horned viper of the Middle East are just two examples. Although their horns are actually modified snakes.”

The Mekong River forests of Burma, China, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand is one of the most vast and unique regions of the earth, bounding in life, surpassing the richness and diversity of the Amazon Rain forest.

In early 2009, the World Wildlife Fund released studies that identified thousands of new species previously unknown, including spectacular insects, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals. Perhaps they’ll find a naga.

Personally, I’ll suspend judgment. There are things in this world that we don’t understand.

“You must go visit my home place in Nakon Phanom,” Venerable Siripunno  told me. “You must visit vipassana center Wat Sitep. It is the best place, the best teacher – Chao Khun Tep, long time ago.”

He described the beauty of his homeland to me, the forest and scenery of flora and fauna along the Mekong River. A look of longing and joy came over his face as he remembered the distant scenes of the beautiful mountain-scapes of Laos, across the Mekong River, standing against the eastern horizon.

               

***

“The Mekong River is a nine-headed dragon,” Venerable Siripunno said.

The Mekong River is the realm of Sisattanag (Seven Headed Dragon). The That Phanom Chronicle says the Mekong River was dug by the naga -- literally River-dug-by-the-chest-of-a-naga -- when Indra cast him from Nong Sae, somewhere in southern China.

Many naga serpent-dragons followed, came to live in his realm, Suvannaphumi – the Land of Gold.

The Mekong is not a border, but is rather a central artery to the forest tradition of Theravada Buddhism.

When you see the Mekong, you feel the presence of the naga and spirits. You know for sure you’re in paradise. Bewitched, led by the spirit of the Mekong, by a mystery of the beauty of the place, you sense the real presence of the spirits, and realize the actual magic.

Such a beautiful world, so strongly seductive that one simply cannot leave it without sadness. There is something about the Mekong which, even years later, makes you want to sit down beside it and watch our whole life go by, writers waxed poetic under its spell.

The Mekong River is alive. It is the Dharma River. You will be actually enchanted, and commune with the spirit of the Mekong. It is a presence and mystery, and it will flow through you, as it spreads out into ‘nine heads’ of the Mekong Delta, and empty in the jade-green waters of the South China Sea.

The naga is protector of the Buddha.

Future Ain't What it Used to Be

I talked to an old hippie girl on the metro bus

today

She was over 65 years old, living in senior housing 

Eyes still sparkled, though she was

     gray haired, wrinkled and fat.

"When I was young, I hated to hear

the old people complain about 'the 

    world today' - how bad everything 

    is, how good things were in the

    past; how everything gets worse 

    and worse. 

I promised that when

    I got old, I would not complain

    about 'the kids today' - how things

    are worse than they used to be.

But that's a promise I can't keep.

The world has gone wrong. People

are worse than they were before.

We are about the destroy the earth.

Horrible things are happening now - 

caused by human greed -  that

I could have never dreamed of.

The  world is on 

the wrong path,"

    she said.