Category: buddhism

This category is about everything Buddha and Buddhism, which teaches that:
1) everything is marked by impermanence, to believe in any permanence is to suffer, and the the ultimate cause of suffering is the rejection of the non-permanent self.
2) Enlightenment (contentment) can be found through the understanding of the true nature of existence (trilaksana) as stated here, and by living in accordance to such an understanding.

Good news … animals flee faster than we think

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It is good to hear that animals know when to run and that when they do run they do it fast.

The shifts of habitat due to climate change has been worrying for the biodiversity of the planet. So this study is a welcome finding. But should we continue to live the way we have because of this? For me we should learn to live less damaging lifestyles even though it is in our “nature” to live the way we do. We have the ability to do so much harm but also it is this ability which could allow us to so much good.

The choice is ours.

First Peace Declaration since the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

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HIROSHIMA, 6th August  2011. From Kyodo News

The following is the full text of the Peace Declaration issued Saturday by Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui at a memorial ceremony to mark the 66th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Sixty-six years ago, despite the war, the people of Hiroshima were leading fairly normal lives. Until that fateful moment, many families were enjoying life together right here in what is now Peace Memorial Park and was then one of the city’s most prosperous districts. A man who was 13 at the time shares this: ”Aug. 5 was a Sunday, and for me, a second-year student in middle school, the first full day off in a very long time. I asked a good friend from school to come with me, and we went on down to the river. Forgetting all about the time, we stayed until twilight, swimming and playing on the sandy riverbed. That hot midsummer’s day was the last time I ever saw him.”

The next morning, Aug. 6 at 8:15, a single atomic bomb ripped those normal lives out by the roots. This description is from a woman who was sixteen at the time: ”My 40-kilogram body was blown 7 meters by the blast, and I was knocked out. When I came to, it was pitch black and utterly silent. In that soundless world, I thought I was the only one left. I was naked except for some rags around my hips. The skin on my left arm had peeled off in 5-centimeter strips that were all curled up. My right arm was sort of whitish. Putting my hands to my face, I found my right cheek quite rough while my left cheek was all slimy.”

Their community and lives ravaged by an atomic bomb, the survivors were stunned and injured, and yet, they did their best to help each other: ”Suddenly, I heard lots of voices crying and screaming, ‘Help!’ ‘Mommy, help!’ Turning to a voice nearby I said, ‘I’ll help you.’ I tried to move in that direction but my body was so heavy. I did manage to move enough to save one young child, but with no skin on my hands, I was unable to help any more…’I’m really sorry’…”

Such scenes were unfolding not just here where this park is but all over Hiroshima. Wanting to help but unable to do so — many also still live with the guilt of being their family’s sole survivor.

Based on their own experiences and carrying in their hearts the voices and feelings of those sacrificed to the bomb, the hibakusha called for a world without nuclear weapons as they struggled day by day to survive. In time, along with other Hiroshima residents, and with generous assistance from Japan and around the world, they managed to bring their city back to life.

Their average age is now over 77. Calling forth what remains of the strength that revived their city, they continue to pursue the lasting peace of a world free from nuclear weapons. Can we let it go at this? Absolutely not. The time has come for the rest of us to learn from all the hibakusha what they experienced and their desire for peace. Then, we must communicate what we learn to future generations and the rest of the world.

Through this Peace Declaration, I would like to communicate the hibakusha experience and desire for peace to each and every person on this planet. Hiroshima will pour everything we have into working, along with Nagasaki, to expand Mayors for Peace such that all cities, those places around the world where people gather, will strive together to eliminate nuclear weapons by 2020. Moreover, we want all countries, especially the nuclear-armed states, including the United States of America, which continues its subcritical nuclear testing and related experiments, to pursue enthusiastically a process that will abolish nuclear weapons. To that end, we plan to host an international conference that will bring the world’s policymakers to Hiroshima to discuss the nuclear nonproliferation regime.

The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11 this year was so destructive it revived images of Hiroshima 66 years ago and still pains our hearts. Here in Hiroshima we sincerely pray for the souls of all who perished and strongly support the survivors, wishing them the quickest possible recovery.

The accident at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and the ongoing threat of radiation have generated tremendous anxiety among those in the affected areas and many others. The trust the Japanese people once had in nuclear power has been shattered. From the common admonition that ”nuclear energy and humankind cannot coexist,” some seek to abandon nuclear power altogether. Others advocate extremely strict control of nuclear power and increased utilization of renewable energy.

The Japanese government should humbly accept this reality, quickly review our energy policies, and institute concrete countermeasures to regain the understanding and trust of the people. In addition, with our hibakusha aging, we demand that the Japanese government promptly expand its ”black rain areas” and offer more comprehensive and caring assistance measures to all hibakusha regardless of their countries of residence.

Offering out heartfelt condolences to the souls of the A-bomb victims, reaffirming our conviction that ”the atomic bombing must never be repeated” and ”no one else should ever have to suffer like this,” we hereby pledge to do everything in our power to abolish nuclear weapons and build lasting world peace.

Is this what is called “river kill”?

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I drive a lot more than I would like to.

Because my wife’s place of work is a non-selectable one she has to stay put far more than I would like. Which means I have to live where I live and commute to where I can find work.

Driving a lot means I also have a lot of what I like to call “micro” road kills. The front of my car and the wind shield is a graveyard of dead splattered bugs. I have a problem with this because being a Buddhist I have to live by the precept of “Do not kill”. Yet this is easier said than done.

If I were to be true to the word of non-violence to all living organisms then I would have to live like a Jain. I myself would feel better about it but my family would have a fit. It may be extreme but it is a morally rigorous and therefore attractive.

The amount of life I take on the road makes me feel guilty. It seems everything we do seems to affect the animals we share the planet with. The dilemma is one I have no answer but one I must ponder on nonetheless.

An open statement to Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese people

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I can imagine how Aung San Suu Kyi feels.

As a parent I can relate to how she feels when seeing her son again. It must be hard (this is an understatement) but it is doing is for her country, for her people, for freedom. And I admire her, her son and the Burmese for that.

Her release may bring joy to her supporters for now but the fight isn’t over. For Burma is still in the clutches of a brutal totalitarian regime. She knows this and still chooses to stay to fight. That is truly courageous.

I pray for her and for the people of Burma.

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.

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

Does the Hinayana have Buddha Nature?

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“Does a dog have Buddha Nature?” a monk asked.
“Mu (No),” replied Master Joshu.

This is usually given as a first koan to Zen practitoners. It is the first koan in the Wu Men Kuan (Japanese: Mumonkan), one of the most important collections of its kind. A koan is a short example of sayings by Zen masters which reveal something of the truth. They are used as an aid to bring about Enlightenment. Zen students, particularly of the Rinzai School of Zen, are given koans to help them attain Enlightenment.

In a teisho (Dharma Talk) by Yamada Roshi he states that the answer should be obvious: all things have Buddha Nature (Buddhata). But here Joshu denies this when asked by a monk. Why? Because the monk is fixated on the answer and not the truth, to use a Zen analogy, mistaking the reflection of the moon in the water for the moon itself. Joshu was trying to “wake” the monk up from his delusion. And in this way Zen is a truly profound.

But the history of Buddha Nature has bothered me for some time now.

The school closest to the historical Buddha, Theravada (also called Hinayana) does not teach Buddha Nature nor is it a concept not within its discourse. The Pali Canon, the oldest writings based on the Buddha’s teaching, does not include this concept. It is only in the later works, the Mahayana writings, that we begin to find this concept. In other words, there is a probability that the concept was a later formulation. I say probability because there is also the probability that the Pali Canon may have ignored this teaching for reasons unknown. We can never be sure of this as we have lost important sources of information about the formation of the sutras.

All Mahayana schools believe that Buddha Nature (Buddhata) is inherent in all beings. However, some schools extend this to cover all things unconditionally. So to summarize there are three three possible views on this:

  1. Buddha Nature does not exist.
  2. Buddha Nature is inherent in all beings but not things.
  3. Buddha Nature is inherent in all being and things.

Given that there is no agreement among Buddhists some doubt then must be entertained as to its authenticity. This questioning must not be done out of one-upmanship but out of the true spirit of enquiry as to what the true nature of the self is. This idea is something akin to Dogen’s simultaneous acceptance and denial of Buddha Nature. It is a paradox but a paradox worth pursuing in order to come closer to Enlightenment, the highest ideal of the Buddha’s teaching which all schools do agree upon.

So does a dog have Buddha Nature? Well, the answer depends entirely on whether you are a Hinayana Buddhist, Mahayana Buddhist or non-Buddhist. If you are a Hinayana Buddhist the answer is, “What is Buddha Nature?” If you are a Mahayana Buddhist the answers is “Yes and no, but only if you are unenlightened, and you have to think about it, or if you have to ask”. If you are non-Buddhist the answer is “Who is this Buddha guy?”

Differance, No-self and ecological interconnectedness

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In Buddhism, the understanding is that there is no-self (anatman), or rather, what we believe as the self is not what it seems to be. Put in another way, there is no concept of Soul as in the Western sense. And also because there is no belief in a soul there is no final resting place like Heaven. Life just extinguishes (nirvana). The Buddha came to this conclusion through thorough analysis of the conditions of life.

But if there is no Soul and Heaven then who or what is it that gives us our identity and purpose? It is a loaded assumption, of course, that there needs to be either or both in order to exist, much like the meaning of a word.

Jacques Derrida, that Deconstructionist, in his study of the structural linguistics of Saussure came up with the concept of differance. The spelling is not a mistake but an invented word to describe something which had no construction until then (Deconstructionists will tell you it is a non-concept). It is pronounced (in French at least) the same as ‘difference’, the word it relates, but also differs, to it at the same time. It is also related to ‘defer’ in meaning. Playful was this man.

Saussure had brought to light two important properties of language. First, is that a word (signifier) and the thing it represents (signified) are completely arbitrary (see sign). There is no reason why any word should represent any object. If that be the case then the name of an object would be same in all languages. But there is no such determination in language. Some may argue that certain words are imitations of the object or concept (eg. gong, bang) but even then this does not determine that it will be the same across languages.

The second property is that a word gains its identity from its difference to other words. A symbol, therefore, only means something because it is in a system of signs. So, for example, to add an extra letter to English alphabet would mean nothing unless it plays a role within the system of the English language. Similarly to introduce a new word into a language doesn’t guarantee its use. That can only be done through agreement by at least two people of the language in question.

What Derrida did with this structural linguistic concept was to take it to its logical conclusion. So if there is nothing but differences within the system, it must necessarily mean that they do not have an inherit meaning or definition. And this is what is meant by Derrida when he says meaning is ‘deferred’, that words cannot come to full and independent meaning. He says words are forever partially marked by absence.

But, as far as I can tell, the Derrida’s concept of differance was only limited to the study of signifiers, or words. It seems logical, to me, to extent this also to the entire system of signifieds, to see meaning as created from the difference between all objects.

And so, if we extend this to the concept of No-self and see it is like the concept of differance, we will see they are similar in that they both believe that no internal meaning is possible. Or to go by the deconstruction logic, what we call the self relies on everything else for its definition.

And in a similar vein interconnectedness in ecology works in the same way, that nothing independently exists, but that everything is part of the intricate web of life. All three areas of thought seem to have a commonality. They dif(f)er only by their choice of words or path to the conclusion.

Two years of (un)sustainability

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It’s Sunday morning. It’s four Celsius below freezing point. The kids are asleep. I have pulled the laptop out to sit in my un-preheated lounge room to write this without any preparation or thought.

Sustainability Dharma is two years old. But what should I write about? What is there to write about?

Over the past year I have occasionally (very occasionally) looked at some older posts. There were some good writing in there, especially early on. There was passion, content and substance in it. They were proofread. They had been researched, not thoroughly but at least I had spent time on them. But these days I have to sit and rush my writing in between life. I have neither time to view or comment on the blogs of fellow writers nor time to keep up with the sustainability news. So should I be blogging at all?

Should a father of two young attention-heavy children, who is driving (unsustainably) to a university 60km (40 miles) away from home almost everyday to do a Masters thesis, and does part-time teaching at night three times a week, be blogging? I don’t think so.

But I will continue. I will write because I think it is important. I will write because I share with others a desire to make the world a better place. I will write because I think I have something valuable to say.

While I am still very busy I do not see this situation to continue. I am in my final semester, writing up my thesis, and my youngest goes to daycare in a couple of months. And holding on to my newly acquired degree I will be looking for work again, hopefully at a higher institution. By then my kids will have grown out of their “terrible-twos” period.

But will things really improve as I imagine them to? I have come to understand that things never progress the way you think they will (like me being married, having two kids and doing my Masters). Life has more twists and turns than any labyrinth. What is installed for Sustainability Dharma for the next year, I cannot imagine. All I know is I still have a passion for writing about sustainability.

Do we need an Ecological Buddhism?

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Coming back to blogging here I had to rethink what exactly am I trying to achieve here. Why do I want to write about ecology and Buddhism? Are they compatible or is this just one person’s argument?

Let me start by asking then ‘was Buddha an environmentalist’? An easy question with an easy answer. No, not in the conventional sense. In Buddha’s time and place conservation or environmentalism as a concept simply did not exist. It has been pointed out that he was one against the some of the dominant contemporary ideas of the time, especially within Hinduism. But there is much more to Buddha and his thought than that.

Would he have been an environmentalist if it had existed in his time? I think asking such questions really is irrelevant. He may have been but this is only idyll thought, a game that even Buddha would have rejected as a waste of time.

So then is ecology and Buddhism compatible, and should these two words be said in the same breath? Buddhism, as a lifestyle, has many similarities to ecological conservation or ecology, and is perhaps one of the gentlest lifestyles without going to extremes. It most certainly was influenced by the other popular then contemporary philosophy, Jainism, which tries to not affect the environment by wearing masks and carrying brooms so as not to harm other life.

Clearly Buddhism respects all life in a way similar to ecology, but that does not mean all Buddhists are ecologists. The question of whether there is such a thing as Ecological Buddhism (or Buddhist Ecology) is only a matter of names. It just so happens that I like both ecology and Buddhism, but I don’t think it is possible or even necessary to consciously combine the two, just as there is not a need to combine Buddhism and ethics to create a philosophy of Buddhist Ethics.

Buddha would probably not deal with these questions. More than likely he would have thought them unnecessary. So let’s stop here and get on with the important issues.