Author: Warren Tang

I write about linguistics and philosophy. I also write poetry and take photographs.

Is it The Buddha or Buddha?

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I cannot say I am a great fan of Western comics (excluding comic strips) and the medium. But one that truly had struck me as a piece of fine literature was Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (BDKR).

Different to previous Batman comics he is referred constantly to as “The Batman” throughout the story. While you may think this is a trivial matter I think it is important. Otherwise the author would not have made such an effort to be consistent. After all, that is what makes literature literature.

The point of the subtle name change is that it is to signify that this Batman is different to previous versions of the character. And indeed he is. He is an older (until BDKR the various versions of Batman had not aged), wiser, less tacky and more violent. So there is (good) justification on literary grounds for the name change.

In Buddhism (at least in English) there is a similar problem facing the believer – is it The Buddha or just Buddha? More common is the former use because the word ‘buddha’ means ‘enlightened one’. As a name, then, Buddha with a capital ‘B’ must mean ‘Enlightened One’. As the “founder” of Buddhism then it is important to distinguish him from other enlightened beings. But in English to call him ‘Enlightened One’ without the ‘The’ sounds strange as he is unique in the context of the religion. That is why we use the translated version of his name we refer to him as The Enlightened One. And by extension to call him The Buddha is more common and accurate.

Snow in March?

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Something is seriously wrong with the climate.

On my walk this afternoon all of the sudden began to snow. This is March, the end of March at that! This is not supposed to happen in late March.

Fear and the Slavery of Man

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Every once in a while I like to sit and reflect on Man’s cruelty to not only other organisms and animals but to their own species. Not because I am masochist or that I enjoy the idea, but rather it is because it is important not to turn your eyes away from the ugly things which is part of our make up. If we look at only beauty we will only have a distorted view of the world.

Today is the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. While this day is to reflect on the past we should remember that slavery still exists today. Once in a while you read a story about women sold or kidnapped into prostitution, or the slave labour in sweats shops in a developing country. Add this all up and you have a lot of people.

Fear is always the basis of slavery, or the control of others. We’d rather be on this side rather than that side of the fence. But why can we not be on the same side, the good side, of the fence? If you are a pessimistic Buddhist (which I am NOT) then all Man are slaves, are already on the bad side of the fence. Pessimists (Buddhist or not) will tell that we are enslaved by being not enlightened, etcetera etcetera. That is wrong thinking. It is not even Buddhist thinking.

The point of The Buddha’s teaching is to seek freedom from any kind of slavery, physical or mental. Stress is placed on mental because there is a limitation to the physical from which there is no freedom from. To accept this is the first step to true understanding of our nature.

This is why meditation plays such an important role in his teaching. Not only is meditation physical training but also a mental one. Training here means understanding the nature of your body and mind and therefore being in more control of your faculties.

If one understands and has control of her or his faculties then they will also understand the nature (of the cruelty and problems) of the past, present and future. They will understand that the slavery of other people is finally the slavery of the master to the system. It is one which is difficult to escape from but one from which we must try to free ourselves. That kind of thinking or fear – to want to enslave other people – is in reality the Slavery of Man

The work of Helen Suzman is never truly done

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As a Buddhist, death is not a sad thing, especially when it was not in vain.

The recent passing away of Helen Suzman, an “undaunted champion of freedom”, should be a reminder of the kind of values we should hold and cherish, even in the face of contradictory views so often found throughout human history.

For those who are standing up against the undeservedly powerful, they should remember the fight is not lost as long as we believe in what is right and just, and keep our hope that one day our stand will be completed.

I believe one day there will be a lasting truce between Israel and the Palestinian state. That people will recall how petty the struggle was. I believe there will be a world that is nuclear-weapon free. I believe one day all people will trust one another, will be responsible, will be honest to not only others but more importantly to themselves.

With this trust, responsibility and honesty, then, we can change to be less competitive and more fair in sharing the world, which had not been ours to possess in the first place.

No, the passing of those with a spirit of freedom and fairness is not a time for mourning, but rather it is a time to reaffirm our struggles for what is right. Helen Suzman may rest now, but others must continue this work which is never truly done.

Coal – one day there may be no more mountains left to conquer

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A problem faces President-elect Obama. He knows he has to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but how does he do it without hurting the economy. This is not a new problem, of course. And the rhetoric from the energy camp is like a broken record:

For the mining companies these are potentially unsettling times – billboards along the highway carry the assertive message, “Yes, Coal”. But in reality they’re quietly confident that the new administration will come to see the essential role of coal.

How silly it is to protect a job as though man is inflexible.

Isn’t it obvious that the solution is to get them to change jobs, to convert their energy production means into those which are clean(er).

And why not just educate the public to use less? Reduce is the simplest of mantras and one that is the most important of the three ‘R’s.

And if they are looking for something that takes away the greenhouse gases efficiently why not stay with the good ol’ tree and rainforest? Best technology around, they say.

OK. So I am overstating the solution. There is the size of the population to think about. But there are plenty of countries out there with sizeable populations who live within their means. It is possible to live relatively comfortably and still be under the ecological footprint. Isn’t it about how you define quality of life, or wealth?

The choice to give up should be easy. But to those who are spoilt this may be difficult. Americans may have taken steps to change but how willing will they be. The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one generation or even in one lifetime. But I am hopeful that we will get there someday. For, as a long-term optimist, that is the all I can hope for – that the this animal (for that is what we are) will learn and change to become more benevolent.

An ad for ads?

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There are tell-tale signs of an economic slowdown in Australia.

Here, too, in Japan are similar signs. There were ads on television about how advertising is good for you, that we need advertising. While I see the value of ads as a way to tell us about the availability of a product, it is when ads become a persuasion tool for our need for something not needed that it starts to tick me off.

Most of the products advertised on TV I really don’t need. They do not cover the basics for our survival. We don’t need an ipod to be happy. To come to think of it, if it were necessary for our survival we needn’t advertise about it in the first place. We’d all know what it is.

This is about the difference between needs and wants. But they are often very difficult to tell apart. Skim through this post and you will notice how difficult it is to use the word “want” instead of “need”. At times they can be used interchangeably. At other times they cannot.

So there must be something fundamentally very wrong with our society and our way of life when there is a need(?) to advertise for ads.

The trend towards variable tolls

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It seems there is a trend towards variable tolls around world lately.

In my beloved Australia there is talk introducing it for the Sydney highway systems including the Sydney Harbour Bridge. And in Illinois they are also proposing the same thing (not to any harbour bridge though).

In Japan, the tolls for freeways are super high. But that hasn’t stopped people from using them. As Hugh Bartling has pointed out it only serves to stratify people – the rich-and-the-willing-to-pay type and the poor-and-cannot-afford-it type. And Japan seems to be like this.

How the revenue is spent is an important issue. If it is not used to create new alternative forms of ecologically sound mobility it is pointless and it ends up being a “revenue grab” as David Jeffery calls it.

As I have said before, money makes it all too easy to redistribute for other (mis)uses. Money, like labour, should remain closely related to the point it is collected. Otherwise we lose sight of the reasons for collecting it in the first place.

My Ingrid Betancourt link

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While I am retiring the Ingrid Betancourt link on my blog it does not mean we should forget the other people who are still prisoners of FARC or killed in the name of “freedom” in Colombia. There is no excuse for violence, detainment or suppression of any form by anyone or any organization.

We need to continue to remind ourselves that injustice done upon us is not reason to do it to others.

Buy Nothing Day

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It is almost Adbusters’ Buy Nothing Day. This year it is on 29 November (28 November if you live in North America).

In the past I have read criticism that it does nothing to slow down consumption and spending. To these critics I don’t agree.

Any form of highlighting of our consumption habits will help slow it down. We tend to forget how easy it is to consume when we think money can buy all, and when things are prepared and made available at your convenience at every street corner.

So show support on Buy Nothing Day by buying nothing. Remind yourself of just how precious the planet’s resources are. Remind yourself to share these resources with others including other animals and vegetation. Remind yourself that resources are not only ours to consume but belongs to everyone and everything.

Our supermarket fantasy

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Tim Burton had tried to say it in his version of Planet of the Apes.

In this film Man’s downfall was his forgetting of how to do things for himself (I will use the masculine here since it is generally his fault). Mr Burton’s representation was one of Man not being able to find food for himself without a supermarket nearby. That men in the future cannot grow their own food, cannot live off the land, unlike the apes (in the film) that become the dominant species.

An apt image, I think.

I will have to admit that when I was young, I too had no clue about where food came from and how it was grown. I had lived in a kind of bubble-like existence I like to call a supermarket fantasy. But I doubt I was alone in this. Urban living simply meant one never saw, first hand, where these produce came from. I had believed, just like many other young naive urban children, food came from supermarkets, because that was what I saw. A logical conclusion to draw if these are the only clues you have. And it did not help by calling food food and not produce. We tend to forget food needs to be produced by someone somewhere rather than miraculously appearing on the supermarket shelf.

So the problem, I believe, begins with the urban lifestyle.

City living has two main problems. One is the already mentioned supermarket fantasy where one just does not directly see where our basic needs come from. The other is the image the city projects – an image of a false superiority of human ingenuity. In his creation of superstructures Man constructs a world of his own individual greatness, when all the time he forgets his own insignificance in the long march of history. It is as though the previous four billion years played no part in his creation, that he is where he is because of his own will and determination. He forgets his reliance on the things of the world to create this delusional image of himself.

But don’t misunderstand me. I am not a believer in Determinism. Nor am I a believer that we can do everything though our own will. I believe it is a mix of both. Life is partly determined. We are where we are though a serious of chance. And where we go from here is partially in our hands, for chance still plays a role. Man has a tendency to overstate the case.

Returning to the subject of urban living, Man is now in a place a where he believes that he must live in cities, that city living is good. This is understandable considering its benefits. But in doing so he also has forgotten that he still relies on the land for survival. All he sees is that he needs to make enough money so as to buy the vegetables from that supermarket shelf, when all the time he forgets that it is though his labour, and not money, that he obtains his needs.

So money and city living are, in a sense, one that the same root cause. They both promote the kind of abstract thinking which causes Man to forget about what is necessary.