Sat, 25 Feb 2012
Altruism Unleashed
You may wonder what has taken me away from blogging. I've been spending most of my free time coding a replacement for the software that runs this website. The software is written in Perl and goes by the ungodly name CMS::Onsite::Editor. It's a project that literally been years in the making and has taken an increasing share of my time as it gets closer to completion.
Tonight I write about an idea of Rudolf Steiner that I feel could have a big impact on the world if taken seriously. Steiner was a theosophist and most of his talks are in that vein. But there are little nuggets of gold strewn throughout his talks, if you take the trouble to look for them. He said that when we engage in the economic proccess as consumers we are acting selfishly. But when we engage in the economic process as producers we are acting altruisticly. Note that he is not saying how people should behave in their business, he is saying how people do behave in their business. I think this is an important and neglected truth. If you try to run your business selfishly and motivate your workers through selfish means, your business will be less successful than if you inspire yor workers through a common shared purpose. That may sound idealistic, but there is research to support it. Workers do a worse job when their pay is explicitly tied to their performance. The idea has an important implication for how corporations should be organized: the managers who run a company should have no financial interest in it and their compensation should not be tied to the financial performance of the company. In other words, there should be a separation of the ownership and management of business. That certainly is against current wisdom on how to run corporations. But the pas generation has scarcely been an example of good corpoorate governance.
It can be compared to the practice of meditation. In meditation you sit a person in a quiet room fre of distractions with nothing to do. In other words, you cut off te avenues most of us spend our time engaged in: passion, aggression and distraction. And when these are cut off, something new and unexpected has a chance to flourish. The same is true in business. If the CEO is no longer concerned with next quarter's profits, what is going to happen? Once the idea of corporations as engines of profit is dropped, something new is going to emerge. On Twitter Nella Lou replied to the statement, "money and corporations as vehicles for changing the world in positive ways" with "like that's really going to happen." But it's either that or nothing. The current profit obsessed corporation is not going to change the world in a positive way. But if corporate governance is reformed in the way described here, the force of altruism which is at the root of all productive activity can be unleashed and the world will be changed.
Sun, 12 Feb 2012
Confession Prayer
Great Lama, Vajradhara, Buddhas residing in the ten directions and all Bodhisattvas, please look upon me.
I, (your name), since the time of beginningless samsara until now, through the power of the conflicting emotions of anger, attachment and bewilderment, have committed the following negative activities of body, speech and mind: the ten non-virtues, the five immeasurable negative acts, the five moral faults, breaking the Vinaya vows, violating the Bodhisattva's training, breaking the Vajrayana vows, being unfaithful to the Three Jewels, being disrespectful to teachers and master, being disrespectful to pure friends practicing good conduct, abandoning the holy Dharma, using Dharma for personal gain, casting aspersion on the noble Sangha, and so on.
In summary, I have committed negative activity that blocks the higher realms and causes one to fall into and completely admit and confess (all these negative acts) without hiding or concealing anything. I vow hereafter to never do them again. Through admission and confession, happiness is maintained. If faults and negative activity are not confessed, happiness cannot arise.
By Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye
From www.lamakathy.net
Glossary
Ten non-virtues: The three bodily nonvirtues of killing, stealing and sexual misconduct, the four verbal non-virtues of harsh speech, divisive speech, lying, and gossip. the three mental non-virtues of envy, ill-will, and disbelief in morality.
Five immeasurable negative acts: Killing father or mother, killing an enlightened person, shedding the blood of a Buddha, or causing a schism in the Sangha.
Five moral faults: killing, stealing, lying, sexual misconduct, and intoxication.
Vinaya vows: The approximately 250 vows taken by monks and nuns.
Violating the bodhisattva training: To cheat, harm, or promise never to help another.
Vajrayana Vows: The fourteen vows taken by an initiate in highest yoga tantra.
Three Jewels: The Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha
Sat, 11 Feb 2012
Lobotomy with Fries
Someone on Reddit pointed to this rant, Mindful Lobotomy. The author's point is fierce emotions are good. I've got nothing to say to that but suit yourself, go ahead and smash your furniture. But I did comment on Reddit on the creepy culture of mindfulness that has grown up around Buddhism:
Buddhism is a long path, three kalpas long according to the traditional formulation. What is not helpful is when stages along the way are presented as goals of the path. After a year or so someone who practices meditation will develop a certain sense of calmness and detachment from their emotions. It's wrong to present these results as the goal of meditation when when they actually are the precondition for the actual work of meditation: looking at the mind to discover that our thoughts and emotions do not constitute a self and that in fact there is no self.
Fri, 10 Feb 2012
My Elevator Speech
I got asked on Reddit for my "elevator speech" on Buddhism, so here it is:
Have you ever had a problem, tried to solve it, and later realized your solution had nothing to do with the real problem? Our entire lives are like that, because we do not understand our own mind, which is the source of all our desires and frustrations. Buddhism gives you the theoretical and practical tools to understand your own mind.
Fri, 03 Feb 2012
God and Buddhism
Yes, it's been another long absence. This time my excuse is that I've been sick. I had a bad habit of clenching my jaw when under stress. It eventually caught up with me and set off a facial neuralgia. It felt like the whole right side of my face was on fire. It didn't go away simply by stopping the jaw clenching. But time and some homeopathic medicine have resolved the problem. I found the most helpful remedy was Coffea Cruda, though it took me a while to find it. The remedy that came out tops in the repertorization was Rhus Tox, which helped, but not as much.
What prompts tonight's post is a comment Brad Warner made on his blog,
"I'm writing a whole book about why I think Buddhists believe in God."
Which I don't agree with and will say here why. The central idea of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy is emptiness. And the most important thing to understand about emptiness is that it is a non-affirming negative, which means that it denies that one thing is so without affirming that its opposite is so. This can be seen in the Heart Sutra where both a property and its opposite are denied. "Here Shariputra, all dharmas are marked by emptiness: they are not produced or stopped, not defiled or immaculate, not deficient or complete." (Edward Conze's translation.) Applying this to the practice of meditation, insight cuts through the false idea of self, starting with its coarsest manifestation and then ever finer manifestations. Though what is perceived is an absence, because it is an awareness, it also is a positive phenomena. If not clearly understood, this awareness of an absence can be misunderstood as a perception of a positive but indescribable phenomenon. But this is a misunderstanding of insight. In asserting insight as a positive phenomenon and calling it the awareness of God, one loses the distinctive character of Mahayana Buddhism and strays into the view of Advaita. To anyone who thinks otherwise, here is another quote from the Perfection of Wisdom in 8000 Lines (also Edward Conze's translation.)
Even Nirvana, Holy Subhuti, you say is like an illusion, is like a dream?
Even if perchance there could be anything more distinguished, of that too I would say it is like an illusion, like a dream. For not two different things are illusion and Nirvana, are dreams and Nirvana.
What is indicated here is that for Mahayana Buddhism ultimate reality is not a positive phenomena or quality, it is just seeing the illusory nature of phenomena. This is not just an intellectual quibble, it goes to the heart of what Mahayana Buddhist practice is all about. If Nirvana were a positive phenomenon, it would have a cause, like any other phenomenon. And when that cause ceased, so would Nirvana. But Nirvana, not being a thing, is unproduced and unceasing. It is not eternal in the way God is asserted to be eternal, instead it is the absence of what could not possibly be so. I could go on, but hopefully this is enough to explain the difference between the view of emptiness and the view that asserts the existence of God, even a God that transcends all description.
