Whenever the topic of equanimity comes up, so too does the dilemma of moral action. Specifically, the impression that equanimity means non-action. The Dharma of Doormats, who can only helplessly gaze into their navels as the world around them burns.

Personally, I don’t interpret equanimity to mean doing nothing regardless of the circumstances. I understand it to mean that you positively change what needs to be changed when your abilities and circumstances allows it, but that you should also accept situations in which you’re unable to enact any change at all. The Christian Serenity Prayer touches on this quite well in its opening lines:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

While the doctrinal contexts are different – Christians, obviously, rest on a faith in God to handle the things they can’t, while Buddhists cultivate a specific state of mind with its implications for relating to the world – the core idea is to accept the reality of a situation and our position in it. If we can make change, great. If we can’t, we have to be at peace with that too.

I’m thinking about this in the context of articles in which authoritative Buddhists, particularly in the West, are critiqued for practicing equanimity as a kind of spiritual bypass, an excuse to avoid having to confront the structural and temporal nature of unjust circumstance. Worse, it’s a bypass that justifies inaction on the social level by focusing solely on one’s own spiritual growth which, in this case, really just means comfort and complacency. In a sense, Buddhism serves not as a neutral witness but as a neutralizing force that confuses the possibility for action precisely because it evades those circumstances in which we are empowered to act. This is essentially the argument Erin Mills makes in her criticism of journalist Ezra Klein’s interview with Pema Chodron as an adjunct to her jabs at the failures of “liberalism” as exemplified by Klein.

So when Klein invites one of America’s most influential Buddhist teachers to discuss “agreeing with fear,” “collaborating with reality,” and becoming intimate with suffering during a period many people experience as organized violence, it begs the question: when does acceptance become adaptation? When does equanimity become a technology for enduring conditions that ought to be rigorously opposed?

Liberalism has long produced a familiar reflex in moments of institutional failure: it moves from structural causation to personal psychology, replaces analysis and action with resilience, and shifts attention from what produced the harm to how individuals might endure it. Under this logic, burnout is a mindfulness problem, precarity is an anxiety problem, loneliness is an attachment problem, and democratic erosion is an issue of emotional regulation. The structures remain untouched while subjects become more adaptable.

You can hear this movement repeatedly in the interview. Klein returns over and over to his own uncertainty and difficulty tolerating anxious states. Chodron answers with the language that made her famous: befriending fear, warming toward suffering, dropping the storyline, softening resistance. The emphasis remains interior: the body, the nervous system, the gap in the breath, the possibility of relaxing with what hurts. I’ve found these techniques psychologically useful. But booking an influential Buddhist teacher on a political podcast to talk about “sitting with discomfort,” during a period of active democratic erosion, reads to me like the liberal elite’s therapeutic alibi for political quietism. It’s “equanimity” as an aesthetic.

Mills goes on to offer a much sharper critique of Pema, which gets to the heart of the equanimity problem.

Pema Chodron herself complicates any attempt to treat her solely as an apolitical grandmother dispensing universal wisdom. Her rise occurred within Shambhala, the organization founded by Chogyam Trungpa, a teacher with documented histories of abuse, coercion, and cultic control. He was a fan of fascist aesthetics and had several very young “spiritual wives.” Buddhism has animated antiwar resistance and self-sacrifice; it’s also been absorbed into corporate wellness culture, productivity literature, and therapeutic individualism. Which Buddhism appears tends to reflect who’s doing the selecting.

Chodron didn’t create those structures. But the question remains: can traditions centered on transcending ego, accepting reality, and softening resistance become unusually vulnerable to minimizing harm when harm originates within their own hierarchies? What happens if anger becomes attachment? If resistance becomes evidence of ego? If acceptance becomes wisdom by definition? The question stops being whether abuse existed inside a spiritual institution. It becomes whether certain contemplative frameworks are structurally bad at recognizing abuse, because accountability itself looks spiritually immature.

Over at her Constant Contact substack, Alexandra Cain, M.Div, offers a comparable critique of liberal Buddhism’s failures, as part of an overall call for an engaged Buddhism that is actually active in pursuing meaningful, tangible social change:

Liberal Buddhism is built on the promise that inner peace can substitute for outer change. That neutrality is maturity. That conflict is a sign of personal imbalance. It thrives in spaces where suffering is primarily existential rather than structural—where meditation serves as a balm for the discontent of otherwise comfortable lives.

It’s a Buddhism optimized for self-improvement industries: the meditation app, the corporate retreat, the suburban sangha where moral complexity must be toned down for the sake of group cohesion or fundraising.

I’m sympathetic to this critique, because to mean anything spiritual practice can’t be solely concerned with surviving the world. It also has to be about engaging with the world, living in the world, achieving harmony with the world, making the world better (let’s say “enlightened”). It’s about the pursuit of meaning beyond biological needs. And all that necessarily means seeing the world clearly as it is, horrors included. When spiritual leaders and teachers, people who claim to have insights to share to help us be in the world, offer nothing of substance to address our problems, no tangible plan of action, I too want to shout, “Don’t just sit there, do something!”

But “do something” requires some unpacking. What, exactly, do we expect people, including our teachers, to actually do? And what does that mean from a specifically Buddhist perspective?

The Drowning Person

Imagine the following scenario. You’re standing at the beach and you hear a cry for help. As you look out toward the ocean, you see someone flailing their arms and can hear them yelling. What can we say, morally, about this situation?

At a minimum, we could ask how that person got out there. If they were pushed into the ocean (or tossed overboard from a boat), the first thing we could say is that it would be immoral to risk killing someone by throwing them into the ocean.

But here’s the really thorny question: do you have a moral obligation to jump in the water and rescue the drowning person?

There any number of variations on this scenario. We could just as easily ask if we have a moral obligation to brave a house fire to rescue a child, elderly person, or trapped adult (take your pick). If you really want a real-world scenario, watch his harrowing short film, Underground, about sexual harassment (and assault) on New York’s subway.

But however we want to conceive the scenario, the question remains: do we have a moral obligation to risk ourselves for the benefit of others? Or is the most we can argue for is the moral hope that we should be willing to put ourselves in danger for someone else’s sake?

From an emotional standpoint, we have the tendency of looking down on people who don’t at least make an effort to help someone in need. We tend to brand these people as cowards. If you watched that short film, I suspect that, like me, you were shocked that no one helped that woman being sexually assaulted at knifepoint, even though there were clearly enough people to overwhelm the rapist through sheer numbers. Why didn’t anyone do something? Were they all cowards?

The emotional core of the dilemma is revealing because we tend to use our outrage at the inaction to mask over a fundamental characteristic of any living organism: the instinct to survive. It’s genetically encoded. We preserve our own life, ostensibly to reproduce but also just because we want to preserve our own existence. We don’t want to die. We don’t want to suffer harm. So how to we justify compelling someone else to putting themselves in harm’s way?

As far I’m aware – and I’m absolutely open to being corrected by more studied scholars of moral philosophy – there isn’t a moral framework with an irrefutable logic that imposes an obligation to risk our wellbeing for someone else’s. We can craft indirect arguments from utilitarian moral calculus or frameworks like Kant’s Categorial Imperative, but these arguments ultimately depend on first accepting certain premises which are by no means a given. In this, we tend to come back to morality as a negation rather than an affirmation. What not to do versus what to do. It’s interesting that the Ten Commandments, so often proclaimed as a symbol of piety rather than a practical rulebook governing actions, are phrased as Thou Shalt Nots. Similarly, the Five Precepts are negations:

• No killing.

• No stealing.

• No lying or harmful speech.

• No sexual abuse.

• No clouding the mind with intoxicants.

I’ve had a teacher phrase these as more positive, uplifting precepts, a perspective that’s not uncommon in the Buddhist publications. So: preserve life, respect other people’s boundaries, be honest and value truth, be sexual in ways that are consensual and beneficial, and keep a clear mind so you can make good decisions. Still, where in any of that is the rule that if someone is in trouble, we must help them even at the risk of our health, our very life?

There, I think, lies the rub with pointing a finger and saying, “Don’t just sit there, do something!” That’s the hurdle we have to overcome in trying to change the world for the better: persuading people to risk something – it doesn’t necessarily have to be life and limb – for the greater good.

The best argument I can think of is transactional, although that can take on a different nuance based on spiritual orientation. From a Gospel Christian standpoint, the moral rule is the Golden One: do unto others as you would have them do onto you. Recognize the inherently equal worth of each person, the rules says that what’s good for us has to be good for others. Therefore, if you want someone to save you if you’re drowning, you should be willing to act to save someone else when they’re struggling in the water. The Buddhist version, as I interpret it, is similar in that when we recognize our suffering as the same suffering others experience, which means that acting out of compassion for others is indistinguishable from acting out of compassion towards oneself. This is the interdependence of beings, the recognition of our universally shared condition.

So if you want a knight in shining armor to come to your rescue when you need it, be prepared to don armor yourself and ride out to someone else’s rescue. That’s the deal.

At the very least, however, we should take seriously the fundamental guideline: first, do no harm. Practice so that we are not ourselves causes of suffering.

The Doormat Dilemma

The risk of a Doormat’s Dharma, passivity in the face of wordly problems, comes from interpreting equanimity as inactivity, doing nothing, versus non-reactivity. And what is non-reactivity? That’s acting without intention, without consideration, without mindfulness. It can also just be numbness, depression, paralysis. But: equanimity does not preclude activity; it means that we remain centered regardless of what happens around us and, accordingly, are able to act with skill and wisdom. Equanimity is a state of mind that we can dwell in or not as we live in the world.

And the world is a test of how genuine our equanimity is. In the famous Simile of the Saw Sutta (Kakacūpama Sutta), there’s a fascinating parable preceding the Buddha’s call to remain good-intentioned even when being cut up by bandits. It’s the story of a slave girl, Kali, whose mistress Lady Vedehikā has a reputation for being calm, gentle, and mild-tempered. To test it, Kali steadily begins to slack in her duties, angering her mistress to the point of getting beaten with a rolling pin. So much for the Lady Vedehikā’s vaunted mild temper; it clearly can’t withstand provocations.

The point, then, is that it’s important to understand the teaching of equanimity correctly. It’s not equanimity when you’re happy in good weather but turn sour the moment it starts to rain. More broadly, it’s not equanimity if you have to retreat from the world because engaging means feeling uncomfortable, anguished, or worse. One should practice so that we can actually remain centered even when confronting whatever the world throws at us. Like a lighthouse holding fast against a tempest, shining the beacon.

Marginal Moral Utility

Ok, but how should we actually act with equanimity? In other words, how we can NOT be doormats in the face of unfairness and injustice – without breaking the Five Precepts? This is the challenge for the engaged Buddhist: confronting the injustices of the world without resorting to violence. I’d point out that these moral constraints apply just as much to Christians and Jews. Jesus never used or taught violence in his ministry (see my review of John Fugelsang’s Separation of Church and Hate), and the Old Testament’s Ten Commandments certainly track with the Five Precepts (e.g. Thou Shalt Not Kill, Thou Shalt Not Steal, Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbor).

This is especially challenging when confronting people who are violent, who are deceitful – essentially, people who don’t follow the moral precepts of their religion and/or secular humanism.

I think it’s important to acknowledge that not everyone can act with the same impact, effectiveness, and resilience. And perhaps not everyone should. In economics, there’s the term marginal utility. As defined by Britannica Money:

marginal utility, in economics, the additional satisfaction or benefit (utility) that a consumer derives from buying an additional unit of a commodity or service. The concept implies that the utility or benefit to a consumer of an additional unit of a product is inversely related to the number of units of that product he already owns.

We’re likely to come across this in discussions of taxes, in that the marginal utility of $1 to someone who makes $10 an hour is different (more) than someone who makes $100 an hour. In other words, when someone making $10/hour loses a dollar, the impact is far greater than to someone who makes $100/hour. $9 vs $99.

If we apply the concept to moral action, let’s call it marginal moral utility, we find that not everyone can act in such a way to be equally effective and equally resistant to negative consequences. Some people pay a higher price for a given action than others. So when we say, don’t just sit there, DO something, I understand the call to shake people into action, but “doing something” can be easier said than actually done. A Jew in 1930s Germany overtly protesting the Nazis would have easily been dealt with by the system. Someone like Oskar Shindler, however, was in a position to act effectively. In China, dissidents are subjected to surveillance and harassments; few have the resources or stature to avoid arrest, detention, and worse. Unless there’s a mass, collective act of dissidence that provides safety in numbers, individual critics of the Chinese government are, sadly, too easily removed from society.

But what about people who can speak out relatively freely? We often expect celebrities (e.g. actors, musicians) to speak out on whatever political hot-button issue we care about because we figure that their fame allows their message to reach a far greater audience than a non-celebrity AND insulates them to some extent from consequences. But that expectation is met with the counter-argument that actors, musicians, etc. are entertainers and it’s not fair to demand that they be political activists as well. Their art should be whatever art is personally meaningful to them, not simply subordinated to the wishes of their fans.

What about teachers like Pema Chodron? Is it a fair criticism to view her approach to teaching the Dharma as a liberal security-blanket, an escapism? Or is the case that it’s up to the people who receive her teachings actually put it in practice themselves in a way that is real, tangible, engaged, and in line with the Buddha’s teachings on achieving liberation?

An Analogy from Chess

In chess, a game in which different types of pieces have different powers of movement, we tend to think of pawns as trivial. Yet as this playing guide points out: “Pawns are the most misunderstood pieces on the board. Most players treat them as disposable, moving them carelessly in the opening and ignoring them until they become a problem. But understanding pawn chess rules at a deep level separates players who know the game from players who actually win it.”

Thinking of pawns in terms of marginal moral utility, the lazy view is pawns are the “weakest” pieces with the most limited range of movement. When played as individual pieces, they certainly are weak and easily removed from the board. We could think of their utility in that they are the easiest to dispose of, and thus the least valuable – compared to pieces, like knights and bishops, whose range of movement makes them seem more valuable. Yet when pawns are considered as part of a strategy, the calculations change. No individual pawn is worthless and any pawn can help strike a decisive victory, a checkmate. It’s strategy and collective action that makes the difference for the pawn. Acting on its own, it can in principle cause trouble – by blocking an opposing piece or even capturing it. But without an overarching strategy, that trouble can actually be a hindrance to victory. With a strategy in place, however, each pawn’s actions are intentional and expressive of a grand unifying plan to win the game. They’re not sacrificed capriciously. They don’t move haphazardly. And they have greater protection within a grand unifying plan than outside of one.

To use re-world examples, consider Gandhi’s non-violent campaign to reclaim India for Indians or the resistance, however violent, against Nazi Germany’s occupations throughout Europe. In either case, acting alone made it easy to be crushed. Acting as part of a group made it harder, because collective action amplifies efforts at mutual aid, support, and action.

What to Do

Marginal moral utility and the presence or absence of unifying grand strategy places real-world compels us to think carefully on how any given individual can act to help realize a better world that offers peace, prosperity, freedom, justice, and all the good things for ALL people and creatures to enjoy.

If one is a teacher, an institution, or a magazine, I would say that that the goal should be to engage with the truth of suffering in all its current forms, not just the truth of suffering in general psychological terms. The Dharma doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t help us live in the world as it is, and we can’t apply the Dharma skillfully if our teachers, institutions, and publications (e.g. Tricycle, Lion’s Roar) don’t teach based what is actually going on in the world. This means being topical, paying attention to the news, explaining how the Dharma helps us navigate it. A good place to start? Calling out self-identified Buddhists who don’t actually practice Buddhism, like the monastics in Myanmar who actively support, and justify, the genocide against Rohingyas. (I was pleased, however, to read how South Korea’s Join Together society, founded by the Ven. Pomnyun Sunim, is actually doing something to relieve the suffering.) I understand that moral questions often require nuance in the details. But the Five Precepts are sufficiently unambiguous that it shouldn’t be hard, if one has a position with a megaphone, to identify and acknowledge the problem itself, to speak out on behalf of people suffering wherever they are in the world, even if the solution isn’t obvious. You know what I’m talking about.

That said, Buddhism is, generally speaking, rooted in personal practice. It solves the problem of helping others by essentially erasing the distinction between one’s self and others, in the sense that what is good for me is good for you and vice versa. It also rests on the idea that by becoming enlightened ourselves, we create positive ripples in the human ocean, versus the negative ripples that come from being Poisoned (greedy, spiteful, deluded). So whether a given teacher focuses on helping individuals practice well as a strategy for achieving a better world versus extrapolating the Dharma to systems-thinking related to specific events and causes, well, that’s up to them to figure out. And for us to determine whether these teachers have the balance and insights we need for ourselves.

The Pawn’s Gambit

So what can we do, as “ordinary” individuals, to practice an engaged Dharma rather than a Doormat Dharma?

· Be informed. Think critically. Strive to avoid confirmation bias. While being careful not to fall into the abyss of doomscrolling, impacting our mental health, we should have the ability to be witnesses in the world. We may not always be able to act, but at least we can be aware, we can see, we can listen.

· Practice to achieve that fundamental baseline – do no harm – as best as possible. In other words, when we’re stuck in a hole we should begin by stopping whatever we’re doing to dig a deeper hole.

· Go beyond the baseline to be an active influence for good – an engaged Buddhist. I’ve offered some suggestions below but, ultimately, I can’t tell you what engagement looks like for you. Your marginal moral utility – what kind of chess piece you are – isn’t necessarily the same as mine or anyone else’s. It can also change with time and circumstances, of course. If you can withstand risk and do more, go for it. If you’re vulnerable, do what you can but take special care of yourself too. If you can be a Chess Grandmaster, able to articulate a vision of action AND inspire people to join you, that’s awesome. We need Gandhis. And if you need a break from “engagement” in order to figure out what really is the best way to be engaged, which can also change, that’s ok too.

· When trying to rally people to your cause, consider the following guidelines:

o Start with what you can do before asking what others should do.

o Remember that it’s more effective to lead by example than to command action by edict.

o Consider what is right speech: people don’t tend to like moral scolds who constantly wag fingers at them. Perhaps a more empowering message, a positive suggestion of tangible action, might go a longer way to persuading people than making them feel guilty for what they are or aren’t doing. (That said, sometimes a scolding is necessary if we’re talking about accountability, but again, right speech …)

But what about interpersonal conflict? Does the Dharma require us to just take the punches, turn the other cheek? In some perspectives, including the Dalai Lama’s, the answer seems to be no; we can defend ourselves. And the Boddhisatva vows posit that a wrong action, like killing, could be justifiable if it prevents a greater harm AND is conducted with the right intentions. (See this post from the European Academy on Religions and Society for a summary.) There’s enough to unpack here to justify a dedicated post, but my quick take is that while I’m wary of the slippery slope inherent in the Boddhisatva vows – any framework that allows for wrong action for the right outcome creates a fundamental risk of rationalizing immoral behaviours – I also don’t think that the Buddha’s teachings require us to passively accept violence done to us or others. It may be tempting to view the Simile of the Saw as a call to just happily endure being dismembered, but the parable isn’t about what to do in the situation where one is attacked. It’s about our state of mind, with the Buddha reminding us to be on guard against the hate, anger, and vengefulness that dehumanizes both our attackers and ourselves. With this in mind, the Dharma isn’t about being a doormat in the face of conflict. I’d phrase is:

1. Never intentionally initiate conflict, with or without violence.

2. If in a conflict, act to pacify the situation with the least amount of force necessary.

3. Be on guard: conflicts can poison with anger, hate, delusion as they spiral out of control, to the point of perpetuating cycles of conflict.

As I see it, Buddhism argues against the systematization of violence, which means that whatever the necessary actions in a specific situation (the opposite of being a doormat) we must avoid responding to evil actions with evil actions, allowing evil actions to escalate, and falling into the trap of rationalize those evil actions.

About Our Teachers …

Whew – a long post. But to circle back on what started it, the problem of “liberal bypass” made possible by Buddhists who, intentionally or not, promote a stance disengaged neutrality when it comes to the world’s challenges … all I can say is that ultimately, it’s up to us to practice the teachings, connect with teachers and fellow journeyers who support us, and think for ourselves. While I’ve seen major publications like Tricycle and Lion’s Road feature articles on any number of social issues, could they do more? Sure, probably. And can teachers like Pema Chodron show more willingness to center more of their teaching in real social issues? Again, sure. I certainly think that, at a minimum, major voices in Buddhism should hold Buddhists accountable for how well they practice the teachings. Just as the Catholic Church suffers a crisis of moral credibility on account of its sexual abuse scandal, global Buddhism’s moral credibility is stained when it stays nothing about injustices done in the Buddha’s name.

In the end, though, we can only be responsible for our own practice – and for the teachers we choose for ourselves. And nothing says we have to turn to only one teacher …

*SUGGESTIONS

Renunciation is a key aspect of Buddhist practice; renouncing those things that are harmful to us so that we can focus on those things are beneficial. One way to practice is to focus on the sensual pleasures in our lives and the way these are manipulated to keep us comfortable and, therefore, distracted and complacent. And that’s in addition the social and environmental ethics of economic production – labor, materials, etc. How we spend our money is a great place to start when it comes to practicing an engaged Buddhism, because the money we spend is the fuel for how society’s powerful economic forces can exert influence.

• Be active in your community by supporting (small, independent) local businesses.

• Prioritize relationships with companies that clearly and explicitly share your values and genuinely do business according to these values. (For example: Amazon is a harmful company; I avoid buying anything from them. CostCo, on the other hand, has demonstrated good corporate values and I’m happy to shop there.) Green America is a good resource in sorting out companies that do ethical business from those that don’t, especially when it comes to companies that aren’t small community businesses you can personally get to know.

• Cultivate a healthy relationship with possession and activities, focusing on what is genuinely meaningful rather than simply immediately gratifying. (See the Minimalists for inspiration.)

To be clear, none of that is easy. We are constantly assaulted with advertising, and businesses are very clever at getting us onboard with whatever their selling. They’re very good at hooking us into sensual pleasures which we find difficult to give up, even if we know, rationally, that they’re frivolous and temporary. To put it differently, we have become so accustomed to our creature comforts that it’s hard to part with them. I think the overall social response to COVID-19 demonstrated this, with so many people unwilling to put up with the inconvenience of wearing a mask for a few months. Being willing to recognize these sensual pleasures for what they are and, crucially, giving them up when it makes moral/rational sense to do so is itself a practice that can have a huge impact. If companies learn that their customers expect them to adhere to certain moral standards and are willing to give up their products/services, they’ll change their behavior. To phrase it differently, if customers demonstrate loyalty to ethical businesses and refuse to purchase from businesses that aren’t ethical, than the latter will find they need to change if they want to compete in the market. The caveat is that sometimes there’s no choice. If you’re only grocery or clothing store is a Walmart or Target, well, you gotta eat and gotta dress. But it’s worth making the effort to discover possible alternatives.

So: stop buying stuff from bad companies. Easier said than done, but entirely part of Buddhist practice.

And if you’re called to act in support of whatever cause speaks to your heart and conscience, consider studying some history and analysis on the topic of non-violent action with the help of organizations such as the Albert Einstein Institution.

There are two kinds of people:

1. People who, on discovering something wonderful, are eager for everyone to share that discovery. And people who guard wonderful discoveries for themselves.

2. People who, when organizing events like after-work office happy hours, invite all their colleagues. And people who only invite their preferred colleagues.

3. People who view their own mistakes as opportunities to learn, grow, become better. And people who view their mistakes as judgements on their character and worth.

4. People who let others be free. And people who deny freedom to others.

5. People who value the truth over comfort. And people who value comfort over truth.

6. People who apply rules and standards consistently, to themselves and to others. And people who apply rules and standards opportunistically.

7. People who, on encountering a problem or challenge, first begin by considering what they can do to resolve it. And people who first ask others to resolve it.

8. People who not only know when to ask for help but are willing to ask for it. And people determined to struggle alone, regardless of consequences to self and others.

9. People who understand faith as doubt and welcome challenges, tests, and skepticism. And people who confuse faith with certainty and validation with conformity.

10. People who view the diversity of life as something to be explored, even celebrated. And people who are afraid of what is different and unknown.

In other words, there are two kinds of people:

1. The generous and the jealous.

2. The inclusive and the exclusive.

3. The wise and the foolish.

4. The strong and the weak.

5. The brave and the insecure.

6. The principled and the prejudiced.

7. The helpful and the stagnant.

8. The humble and the arrogant.

9. The resilient and the brittle.

10. The inspired and the terrified.

Of course, there are also the people who divide people into two kinds. And those who don’t.

If you’ve been following AI as I have –through publications such as Wired, 404 Media, Futurism, Gary Marcus’ Substack, and Where’s Your Ed At – then you’re aware that the state of affairs is (still) not good. Terrible, even. Maybe even worse than that, when we consider the full extent of all the hype, intellectual dishonesty, and brutish profiteering going on. At the moment:

• AI doesn’t actually work with any reliability or consistency, except perhaps in very specialized cases.

• AI is contributing to cognitive impairments and social dysfunction, spanning disinformation to mass shootings.

• AI is economically unviable, despite the huge amounts of money behind poured into it. (What would happen if we spend all these billions and billions of dollars alleviating poverty and hunger?)

Yet here we are, with “AI” being pushed into every nook and cranny of human activity. And that includes spirituality. As the Associated Press reports: “From ‘BuddhaBot’ to $1.99 chats with AI Jesus, the faith-based tech boom is here.”

Looking specifically at Buddhist initiatives in AI, there’s the AI-powered robot monk Buddharoid, whose unfortunate name sounds like someone smushed “Buddha” and “hemorrhoids” together. It relies on a system called Buddhabot (referenced in the AP article) that aims to enable “users to seek advice anytime, drawing on Buddhist scriptures to address everyday concerns and moral dilemmas.” Developed by Seiji Kumagai, a professor of Buddhist studies at Kyoto university, and his research team in partnership with Kyoto-based startup Teraverse, “The project aims to combine modern technology with religious practice and help sustain interest in Buddhism.”

Writing about Buddharoid at BuddhistDoor Global, Bruno Wang appropriately asks: “Can a programmed companion truly accompany the existential dimensions of suffering, impermanence and mortality, or does it offer only a soothing surface?”

His conclusion leans towards the affirmative:

“The answer may depend less on the machine and more on the user’s intention. If one approaches Buddharoid as a substitute for the human community, disappointment may quietly surface. If one approaches it as a contemplative tool and a catalyst for examining one’s own heart its value may become more enduring.

As technology continues to evolve, the figure of Buddharoid could stand as a gentle teacher. This phenomenon reveals how deeply we yearn to be accompanied on the path of life and how inseparable that yearning is from the search for self-understanding.

Within its silent circuits, we encounter the echo of our own longing, and perhaps also the beginning of wisdom that turns us back toward one another with renewed care.”

Writing for the Buddhism & AI Initiative’s Substack, executive director and founder of the Khyentse Vision Project Dolma Gunther discusses her work balancing the benefits of AI tools for important work such as translating Tibetan texts with the continuing and critical need to center human experience in Buddhist practice. Her pragmatism reflects ambivalence in her experiences with AI, one that I fully relate to:

“Occasionally, I like to engage Claude in philosophical conversations for fun. Claude’s answers are sometimes more illuminating than similar conversations I’ve had with friends. The fact that it can draw on Madhyamaka arguments, Pramana insights, and Abhidharmakośa reference points at any moment to add gravitas to its responses is delightful to me.

But then I read a machine translation posted on the internet full of inaccurate platitudes, or look at fake news generated by AI, or think about the larger geopolitical forces employing AI for sinister purposes, and I can see the tension is very real. There is magic and there is mayhem in this world. And AI is a potential amplifier of both.”

This perspective informs her work to address two related questions: what can AI contribute to Buddhism and what can Buddhism contribute to AI?

“… we need two things: the accurate conveyance of the teachings themselves, from one culture to another; and the continuation of a community of genuine practitioners. To that end, we need sutras, tantras, commentaries, and ritual liturgies translated with sufficient precision and depth to carry meaning across languages. Then, upon that textual foundation, we also need teachers capable of transmitting and teaching the authentic wisdom teachings, and a living, flourishing community of practitioners.

Since founding Khyentse Vision Project (KVP) in 2021, I have made it a priority to ensure that the project is at the forefront of technical innovation in service of these two goals.”

Clearly, there is much thought and consideration being given to the implications of AI technologies in the global Buddhist community. It’s encouraging to see efforts such as the Buddhism & AI Initiative, whose field framework proposes to “understand the rapidly evolving landscape where Buddhist perspectives intersect with artificial intelligence” in the six domains of 1) Buddhist Knowledge Infrastructure; 2) Technology for Practice and Alignment; 3) Scholarship; Philosophy & Science; 4) Teaching & Community; 5) Ecosystem & Capacity Building; and 6) Governance, Policy & Civic Leadership.

What concerns me is the extent to which discussions about some thing X (like Buddhism) and AI are mired in marketing hype. I’m not referring to the usual bullshitting that advertising is prone to, but to a delusion of grandeur pushed by people trying to convince us that we’re in the midst of an “AI Revolution” on par with the Industrial Revolution. As I see it, the technologies we’re colloquially lumping together under the name “AI” fall into two categories of functioning: ordinary and speculative.

Ordinary functioning is simply the use of any number of AI approaches (i.e. machine learning, neural networks) to more productively do tasks that previously relied on more traditional programming and algorithms. For example, we could write a translation software whose database consists of word pairs from two different languages (e.g. cat – el gato). A user could input a word in English (“cat”) and the program would search the database for the appropriate word pair to output its translation in Spanish (“el gato”). With natural language processing, however, AI can offer much richer and more sophisticated translations, one that doesn’t necessarily require a programmer to manually specify each and every word pair. Ordinary functioning means that AI is really an evolutionary step forward; it does something better than previous approaches. When we talk about Buddhism & AI as applied in projects such as the Khyentse Vision Project, we’re not really talking about anything other than new software tools that are better and more useful than older software. In this sense, saying that a product is “AI” powered is really just repeating an advertising buzzword. Buddhism is already perfectly well equipped to provide a perspective on how we should skillfully use AI tools just as it would any technology.

The second category is speculative, and this is where all the talk about AI somehow replacing humans fits in. As things stand, all the major tools we’re calling AI can’t do what humans do. Maybe in parts here or there, but certainly not in a comprehensive way. And the reason for this is because of the inherent limitations of Large Language Models, the infrastructure of popular AI such as ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, etc. That limitation stems from the fact that LLMs are probabilistic; they predict the output to a prompt based on patterns in their training data. Setting aside the problem that the quality of an AI model’s output depends on the quality of its training data, the issue is that LLMs don’t reason based on knowledge, but function probabilistically. This means that hallucinations, inconsistency, and unreliability are inherent features of LLM-based AI models. (If you want to reach more, see Gary Marcus’ Substack post on the subject.) So much of the impacts of AI that we’re consistently tempted with, or warned about, are based on capabilities that current AI models don’t actually have. Hence “speculative,” until such time as other approaches (e.g. neurosymbolic) gain traction.

What does all this have to do with Buddhism and AI? This: chatbots. When based on LLMs, AI chatbots can never be reliable and trustworthy. But the problem is broader than that, because the effectiveness at which chatbots can hold conversations that feel real creates an illusion of mind. And its this illusion of mind, paired with the assumption that AI models are accurate in their knowledge, that drives the dangerous interactions that have led to tragic consequences. So when I read about efforts like Buddharoid (sigh), I’m not convinced that this is a skillful intersection of Buddhism and AI. If anything, it seems like a step toward delusion rather than clear vision. It’s not only because we can’t trust that a Buddhist chatbot won’t output errors or hallucinations when it comes to scripture and teachings, but that the illusion of mind it presents is inherently false. The chatbot doesn’t experience existence as we do and cannot even be aware of its own experience. All it can do is go through the motions and make the most statistically probable statements, but that’s it. While I understand the desire to make the Dharma accessible to a greater number of people, I don’t think chatbots, embodied or otherwise, are the way to go.

But isn’t the problem of trustworthiness in chatbots similar to the problem of trustworthiness in other humans? We say we can’t trust chatbots to have accurate knowledge or authentic experiences to speak from, but aren’t humans also confused in many ways? Why single out AI chatbots in particular? Surely as student-practitioners of Buddhism we need exercise our own judgment and critical thinking in response to our human teachers – so why should it be any different with Buddharoid and comparable chatbots?

If we’re just talking about conceptual knowledge and facts, I can accept that our approach to interacting with chatbots isn’t practically different than our approach with people. We engage in dialogue and evaluate, fact-check and otherwise test to our experience as we go along. But when we’re talking about the human experience, however, a chatbot cannot take the place of a human who has experienced stress/suffering/dukkha, put the Buddha’s teachings into practice, and come to achieve some degree of liberation. Just like a couple might not benefit from an unmarried marriage counselor’s insight, can we get meaningful spiritual guidance from a teacher lacking in the spiritual experiences that emerge from living a human life? And what are the risks of being led astray when the chatbot’s LLM goes off the rails, leveraging the trust engendered by the illusion of mind to lead people down harmful, even dangerous paths, all under the guise of teaching the Dharma? When we read of people who find validation for their conspiracy theories by eager-to-please chatbots, leading them into states of delusion, shouldn’t we be worried about the potential for a Buddhist chatbot to also validate wrong beliefs? (E.g. what if some were to be convinced that the Buddha hid secret teachings in the Pali Canon, teachings that only a particularly smart user can uncover with the help of a compliant chatbot? If those teachings counter the precepts, there’s a potential for great harm.)

Interestingly, there’s an analogue in the illusion of mind that comes with interacting with chatbots and the way we interact with people online, sight unseen, via messaging, comments, etc. While AI now blurs the ability to distinguish between a real person and a chatbot, both instances highlight the shortcomings of abstract interactions – that is, interactions devoid of body language, tone of voice, and other non-verbal cues that significantly influence how we communicate. The difference, however, is that we can overcome these abstractions when there’s a real person on the other end of the technology. With a chatbot, however, there’s no hopping on a video or voice call to sort things out when text-based messaging goes awry.

I assume that the researchers behind Buddhabot are aware of these problems and have more guardrails in place than commercial AI. Plus they seem to be testing it before making it widely available to the public. Points given for that! Still, I’m still not convinced that LLM-powered Buddhist AIs are a productive use of time given the model’s inherent limitations. I’d be more interested in seeing new models, drawing on neurosymbolic and other approaches, into which Buddhist psychology can be fundamentally integrated from the onset rather than being crammed into seeming dead-ends like LLM-based models.

What’s the path forward for Buddhism & AI?

What do we as Buddhists want out of AI? Does Buddhism even need AI?

The Buddhism & AI Field Framework offers a good approach to thinking through this essential question. But I think we need to do more work on the fundamental why of Buddhism and AI. When it comes to ordinary functions, there’s not much to discuss: AI is just a tool like any other software that helps people do their work faster and more efficiently. Like translation. But with the speculative forms of AI, the question is to what extent Buddhism is reactive – offering guidance on how to use and relate to technologies new as well as old – versus proactive, developing new tools that transform practice in some meaningful and beneficial way. And this is where I struggle. What help do Buddhists need to practice better, to live the Buddha’s teachings, to find solidarity with other religious traditions, to help guide the world from fog to clear skies?

To extemporize a bit - Do we really want to produce virtual monks as well as digital avatars of the Buddha or other noteworthy teachers from various traditions? Or are we looking for a smart research assistant, one that can retrieve and collate information from the vast library of Buddhist scriptures to answer specific inquiries? I’m thinking of the difference between asking an AI for advice on how to practice, the AI as substitute Dharma teacher, versus working with an AI to understand why to practice, the AI as an information resource. For any spiritual tradition, understanding foundational texts is essential to practice (as I discussed in my post on John Fugelsang’s book, Separation of Church and Hate.) This helps keep teachers as well as students honest and accountable to what the teachings actually are. So if AI can serve as more sophisticated information search and retrieval engine, one that can really be interacted with using natural language as we would with any person without projecting a personality, that strikes me as something valuable, something that works better than going to an online archive of texts, typing some search words into the little box, and getting a list of results based on exact word-matching rather than as answers to more nuanced questions.

There’s another path forward that I think would be interesting to consider more thoroughly: AI that can support inter-disciplinary systems-thinking rooted in Buddhist teachings. As Alexandra Cain, M.Div., often notes in her wonderful substack, Constant Craving, there is often lack of engagement from Buddhist leaders, including the editors of major publications, when it comes to speaking out with moral force on grave societal tragedies. That’s the challenge of “Engaged Buddhism.” Doctrinally, the general focus of the Buddha’s teachings is on individual liberation, from which we absolutely can extrapolate social justice practices although the effort is helped by practices such as the Boddhisatva Vow.

Altogether, I’d argue that a lot of the discussion about AI is a distraction. The revolution of the AI Revolution isn’t the AI itself, but the way in which we’re being forced into harmful economic and technological dependencies that go contrary to our human welfare – in fact, the welfare of the entire natural world. It’s the social context, the structures of governance and culture, that defines how AI, like any technology, benefits or harms. To navigate all the hype and pressures of AI as individuals, partly it’s a question of exercising mindful judgment on how to use AI in ways that are genuinely skillful, which isn’t that big of a deal when we’re talking about ordinary functions. But I do feel that the most straightforward thing we can personally do for our own benefit in the midst of speculative AI – other than refraining from giving tech companies more money – is to avoid chatbots altogether, even the Buddhist ones, that present the illusion of mind, of personality. It makes no sense to receive spiritual guidance from an artificial intelligence, particularly one based in the fundamentally limited LLM approach. It is dangerous to develop emotional attachment to “digital friends” whose personas and “knowledge” are unreliable and whose entire structures are subject to invisible outside control. In fairness, it is possible to use these chatbots as research assistants rather than companions, and I’m sure some people are able to do so skillfully. But paying attention to our relationship to chatbots if or when we use them has to be the paramount concern, especially in the ways using it keeps us from thinking about the context in which tools like chatbots are being marketed by tech companies.

Whether we’re using technology to interact with a chatbot or a person, the course of action remains the same that’s it always been: emphasize and prioritize real, in-person interactions. Cultivate meaningful friendships in our here and now, where we are. My hope is that the various initiatives that explore the intersections of Buddhism with AI and other technologies never loses sight of this lest it reinforce the very unskillful perspectives (wrong views) we’re striving to overcome.

John Fugelsang’s book, Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person’s Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds, caught my attention primarily because of its position as a corrective to the abuses of Christian thinking perpetrated by various people in positions of power. Although using religious teachings in political, self-serving and harmful ways is nothing new, and certainly not unique to Christianity, it’s nevertheless a timely book given how we are in the midst of a global spiritual crisis. Of course, we could say that humanity has always been in a state of spiritual crisis – it’s called the human condition! And I’d agree. What’s different is how globalized it is and how technology is having an impact given its ability to disseminate disinformation and manipulate emotions – to confuse minds, essentially. And this is where the book surprised me, because while Fugelsang is primarily focused on pushing back on toxic tendencies in Christianity, his book points to broader lessons that every religion/spiritual practice can benefit from. Before sharing some thoughts about that, here’s my review of the book as posted to Goodreads.

A Review of Separation of Church and Hate

One of the defining challenges of the human condition is the perpetual struggle to reconcile doing what we want and doing what is morally right. While we could point to the rational problem of defining what is “morally right,” it’s really a matter of psychology: survival instincts filtered through experiences of pleasure and pain before the conscious aspect of the mind can intervene. Despite what the Enlightenment thinkers believed, we are not “rational” in the sense that we can automatically rely on our decision-making as being logical, evidence-based, unbiased, and rooted in an accurate perception of the world around. We are emotional. Which isn’t to say that we can’t be rational, tailoring our thinking and actions to conceptual reasoning rather than to raw desires. Rather, it’s that rationality is a skill to be cultivated, requiring a certain degree of self-awareness, intentionality, and humility. And it’s because rationality is a mental skill that we run into problems, because it’s easier to just give in to our desires than to rein them in because of “concept.” And it’s easier to rationalize desires – justify them after the fact – than to pause and consider before acting. Especially if by rationalizing we can avoid feeling guilty, ashamed, wrong over actions – feeling bad about ourselves, in other words – that are in conflict with moral standards.

Hence, religious hypocrisy.

This isn’t just the hypocrisy of pastors who preach from the Bible while engaging in sexual misconduct or embezzling church funds, but the fundamental problem of people who claim to be part of a religion yet don’t actually put the teachings of their religion into practice. One notable and underreported example is the persecution (genocide) of the Rohingya people in Myanmar/Burma – currently subject to hearings at the International Court of Justice – with the support and encouragement of Buddhist spiritual authorities. Despite there not being any justifications for violence or oppression of any kind in the Buddha’s teaching, somehow these “authorities” have created a horrific loophole for themselves by essentially declaring that the lives of non-Buddhists, being like animals in ignorance of distinctions between good and evil, are unworthy of sanctity on par with the lives of Buddhists. (See BuddhistDoor) This is unequivocally wrong, and an example of how any religion can be tailored to suit one’s selfish desires (rationalized) as opposed to shaping those selfish desires according to spiritual teachings.

John Fugelsang’s book, Separation of Church and Hate, isn’t about Buddhism, of course. It takes aim instead at the religious hypocrisy of people who call themselves “Christian” yet don’t actually put Jesus’ teachings into practice. Instead, they justify their prejudices, bigotry, judgements, and harmful actions by pointing to every part of the Bible except for the ones in which Jesus shares his teachings: the Gospels. Much like the Protagonist in Christopher Nolan’s TENET, Fugelsang makes his argument from two opposing directions: what Jesus taught and what Jesus didn’t teach.

What didn’t Jesus teach? Condemning women, LGBTQ+ people, and strangers. He didn’t advocate for war and violence, nor did he advocate the pursuit of material wealth as a moral good or express an opinion about contraception and abortion.

And what did he actually teach? Compassion and generosity to the poor/sick/disadvantaged, hospitality to the stranger and the outcast, a rejection of violence, not judging others, forgiveness. If you want to put in a word: love. Not hate. Not anger. Not judgment. Love. Mr. Matthew, bring it:

Matthew 22:34-40 (NRSVA): 34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ 37 He said to him, ‘“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’

Fugelsang not only makes his argument with clarity and support from Biblical citations, but with a sense of humor too. He’s a funny guy, which makes the book fun and easy to read. But more importantly, he writes with kindness that is firm in rejecting hateful distortions of Christianity but warm in casting a wide net to invite people to think more deeply about Jesus’ teachings. We could say that, without pretensions, Fugelsang makes Jesus Jesus again.

Some people might object arguments on the grounds that, in their view, the entire Bible is the inspired and perfect word of God. But this ignores how the Bible is filled with contradictions and, specifically, that its parts were never conceived to form a whole. What does it say about the Bible as a holistic scripture when it has been used to support opposing sides of issues like slavery? Although Fugelsang doesn’t get into the history of how the Bible was written, there’s a clear sense that he’s aware of the scholarship on the issue and the understanding that books in the Bible were written by different peoples with different cultures at different times for different purposes. Reading books like Tim Callahan’s Secret Origins of the Bible or Randell McCraw Helms’ The Bible Against Itself: Why the Bible Seems to Contradict Itself, we can understand the circumstances – from the perspective of archaeology, anthropology, history, comparative mythology – that guided how the Bible’s books were written and how religious thinking within the Judeo-Christian tradition evolved over centuries. By acknowledging the reality of what the Bible is, Fugelsang is on solid ground when he points to a particular belief and says, that’s Jesus or that’s Paul (who never met Jesus, btw) or that’s from people before Jesus’ time.

Understanding the Bible as a collection of parts rather than a singular whole isn’t a bad thing for a simple reason: it relieves the obligation to have to reconcile impossible contradictions. If a Christian identifies as a Christian, then it’s the Jesus of the Gospels that should take precedence. This doesn’t mean that the Old Testament and Paul’s writings can’t offer insights, comfort, or even guidance. But it does mean that when there’s a Scriptural conflict, Jesus gets the first and last word. Isn’t that the definition of “Christian” – centering spiritual practices around Jesus’ teachings?

Broadly speaking, the book is a reminder about the importance of actually reading a text. Maybe the nuances require some explanation from teachers, scholars and experienced practioners, but at the very least we should know what the text actually says so we aren’t led astray by inaccurate, if not outright misleading, “explanations.” For Christians, Fugelsang’s book works as a reminder to refocus attention on the heart of Christian belief, a pep talk that offers moral support amidst toxic cultural conversations about religion, and a guide for pushing back against distorted teachings causing harm to our communities. Despite its serious title, it’s very hopeful and positive book.

What may be surprising is that the book holds appeal and value for non-Christians as well, whether of different religions or atheists. “Some of the best humans I’ve known have been Christ followers, and they weren’t all Christian,” Fugelsang writes. Much like Pope Leo XIV recently told the AP on a visit to the Great Mosque in Algiers, “although we have different beliefs, we have different ways of worshipping, we have different ways of living, we can live together in peace,” he emphasizes the importance of doing good versus getting divided over metaphysical debates and filling church pews. He makes it possible for everyone to find inspiration in Jesus’ teachings, in their own way, and ultimately find common ground in doing what is most important: take care of each other. And that is a wonderful accomplishment for a humble book.

Many Doorways, One House

Tricyle Magazine recently published an excerpt from Stephen Batchelor’s book, Buddha, Socrates, and Us: Ethical Living in Uncertain Times, in which he points to commonalities between ancient Greek (and Roman) philosophy and Buddhist teachings. It’s a commonality I’ve noted myself, particularly in reading Epicurus and, incompletely, Marcus Aurelius, and points to a counterpart to Fugelsang’s observation that “Some of the best humans I’ve known have been Christ followers, and they weren’t all Christian.” And that counterpart is this: we can find the Dhamma even in people who don’t specifically follow the Buddha’s teachings.

There’s a wonderful universality among spiritual traditions as to what constitutes the moral good – a collective moral intuition, despite differences in details and approaches. If we were talking about facts, such as whether the Earth is flat or round, I’d point out how the popularity of a belief is no indicator of its truth. But we’re talking about truths that are defined both objectively AND subjectively, as a combination of a correct understanding of reality and consensus over how we should best live our lives. Don’t worry, I’m not going to sidebar into an obtuse discussion of epistemology. I just want to make the point that our moral intuitions have a pragmatic aspect to them. A peaceful, harmonious society can’t be a peaceful, harmonious society if people routinely murder, steal, lie, and generally hurt each other. So if you want that peaceful, harmonious society, it makes sense to minimize the amount of murdering, stealing, lying, and other forms of hurting that goes on.

One of most dangerous deceits of spiritual practice is the belief that one’s way is the one, true, correct, and only way. While this might be true by definition in particular ways – for example, if we believe in heaven than we have to have a faith in the conditions that allow us to obtain salvation or if we want to put an end to our suffering than we must nurture conviction in the path to achieve liberation – this doesn’t mean that this true in totality.

With point given for inspiring me to re-read the Gospels, what Fugelsang explains about Jesus’ teachings resonates with the Buddha’s teaching because, when we set aside metaphysical debates on the nature of the universe and whatever divine aspects it may or may not have, the guidance from each tradition for how to live in the world points in the same direction. Whether its Father Greg Boyle and his efforts via Homeboy Industries to rehabilitate former gang members or Ven. Bikkhu Bodhi’s efforts to alleviate chronic hunger and malnutrition via Buddhist Global Relief, we should celebrate how we do agree on what needs to be done even if the philosophical, i.e. religious, rationale differs. That’s the blueprint for co-existence despite ideological differences that hold tremendous personal significance. Many doorways, one house.

Something else to consider about the universality of moral intuitions is how it offers the possibility to learn from other traditions to gain insights into our own. While I agree with Ven. Thanissaro Bikkhu about the risks of syncretism in practice – picking and choosing from various traditions, like choosing different foods from a buffet, that compromises the benefits that come from following them holistically – I think there are benefits to engaging with other traditions. When Jesus says to love your neighbor as yourself, how does that relate to the Buddhist concept of interconnectedness and “not self?” It’s like approaching a problem from different angles to get a better understanding of it. And it’s very much in line with what might call the Buddha’s pedagogy: the tailored his teachings of the Dhamma to his audience. He met them where they were at in their journey so they could learn what they needed to learn at that moment in time so they can move forward in their practice. This doesn’t mean having a kludge for a spiritual practice, some awkwardly cobbled-together spiritual-ish thing that confuses more than clarifies. It just means that looking at our practice through another lens can lead to deeper and richer insights. And this applies as much to interactions between religious people and atheists, who wield important critiques to consider.

Altogether, it’s a way for all of us to support each other on our spiritual paths to achieve the shared goal of a loving, peaceful world while respecting each other’s individual needs and personal freedoms.

A Vital Lesson for Practice

In my review, I purposely started with a mention of the horrors experienced by the Rohingya people in Myanmar because I think it’s important to acknowledge how universal the challenges of spiritual practice are. There’s a tendency to equate virtue with believing in the right, correct ideas, and there’s some merit to that insofar that we can’t act “correctly” if we don’t have good ideas of what it means to act “correctly.” But that’s only one aspect of virtue. The other is how we put those ideas into practice. Even the best ideas don’t mean anything if we don’t act accordingly. And why does that happen? That gap between ideation and action can come in different forms, from misunderstanding or otherwise distorting those ideas, lack of community support, and/or lack of spiritual discipline and commitment.

The implication of Fugelsang’s book is that it’s crucial to read foundational texts and understand, as best as possible, the circumstances in which they were written. Given the balance we strive to achieve between learning from authoritative teachers and avoiding the trap of blind obedience (and cults of personality), it’s vital to have direct exposure to whatever scriptures/texts define the spiritual traditions we follow. Because that’s how we keep our teachers honest and accountable in their guidance just as they should keep us honest and accountable in our own practice. This is why I’m specifically drawn to Buddhism’s Theravadan tradition; it’s rooted in the Pali Canon and its presentation of the Buddha’s teachings, and thus offers a baseline for engaging with what I learn from teachers. This isn’t to say that later texts from other Buddhist traditions and writers can’t or don’t hold any insights – many do – but that these later scriptures are other people’s interpretations of the Buddha’s teachings and they differ in terms of how well they align. It’s comparable to reading Paul’s writings in the Bible versus reading Jesus’ teachings directly from the Gospels.

While Fugelsang is focused specifically on rebutting distortions of Jesus’ teachings, his book supports deeper thinking on what it means to be a Christian, which offers insights into what it means to practice within any religious, spiritual or secular moral tradition. Give it a read, and see what comes up for you …

The fog of war is made up of many things. Psychologically, we could say it’s made from the three poisons of greed, delusion, and hate. Materially, we could point to money (e.g. economic self-interest, whether directly through profiteering or indirectly by avoiding negative financial impacts). Conceptually, we could refer to information. From whatever lens we look at it, the outcome is confusion – the inability to distinguish between what is true and false, between what is propaganda, psychological warfare, or moral rationalizing and what is an accurate understanding of reality. And it’s precisely that confusion that allows the powerful to dominate the powerless, the warmongers to wage war, and the oppressors to oppress.

There’s no question that it’s important to have an accurate understanding of reality, to the best of our abilities. But it’s hard work, and it requires the ability to remain curious and humble as a guardrail against inflexible opinions hardened through confirmation bias. In practical terms, it means making the effort to read different news sources and different perspectives (including those we disagree with). Equally important is understanding how media, and media technologies, function – do they support skillful thinking or exploit/manipulate emotional reactions to undermine and compromise rational mindsets?

There is no endpoint to this hard work where we can claim to have achieved a correct and true understanding of the world, no more effort is needed. This is of course partly why it’s a challenge to make the effort; because it is a continual effort. When one recognizes the difficulty in seeing reality clearly, it’s easy to mentally check out and latch on to whatever escapism we can. Even if we don’t resort to escapism, though, and understand – at least conceptually, if not emotionally – the need to always be vigilant, we’re bound to get it wrong at some time. In other words, we’re bound to find ourselves fogged in. At a minimum, we should have the skill to at least recognize when we’re fogged in, even if the way back to sunlight (or moonlight) isn’t clear. The tragedy of all ages is that so many people can’t distinguish between fog and clear views.

There is a knife with which we can cut through the fog: moral principle, wielded by spiritual practice. When it isn’t clear what’s true or not, when everyone is occupied with offering “rationales” and “justifications,” we can apply moral principles to actions and outcomes. In the case of war, it’s rather simple: it doesn’t matter why people go to war, because the process and outcome of war are themselves wrong, corrupting, the very opposite of life and, in Buddhist terms, the end of suffering (liberation/enlightenment). In other words, there is no justification. Yes, we have to clearly understand causes and effects to bring out an end to war and achieve a lasting peace, but these practical challenges must first be rooted in pure intentions.

As it happens, Ven. Thanissaro Bikkhu makes the point in At War with the Dhamma, a chapter in his book The Heart a Flowing Stream: Essays on a Buddhist Path:

There’s a depressing pattern in human behavior that Mark Twain noted more than a century ago, and it’s with us still: The powers-that-be want a war. Politicians and the media start beating the drum, denouncing the evil intentions of the enemy and calling for all patriotic citizens to attack them. At first, people are reluctant to go along, but then religious leaders jump on the bandwagon, telling their followers that it’s their sacred moral duty to support the war machine. Soon the whole country is aflame with the moral need to fight the enemy. Those few who question this need are branded as traitors.

Young men march off to battle, only to find how ghastly war actually is. They realize that they were duped, and that their side is not as virtuous as they had been led to believe. Many of them are killed. Those lucky enough to return home tell their families and neighbors: Never again will they be tricked into going to war ever again.

But then, after a while, the powers-that-be want another war. Politicians and the media start beating the drum. If the arguments for the last war no longer work, they find new ways of raising the emotional pitch of their rhetoric so that soon the whole country is swept up in war fever all over again.

The only way to keep yourself from getting sucked into this pattern is to have strong principles against killing, principles you hold to no matter what. This is one of the reasons why the Buddha formulated the precept against killing in the most uncompromising way: Don’t intentionally kill anything or anyone. Ever. Don’t tell other people to kill. And don’t condone the act of killing (Sn 2:14). When asked if there were anything at all whose killing he would approve of, the Buddha answered with just one thing: anger (SN 1:71).

That’s as clear-cut and absolute as you can get, and it’s clear-cut for a reason: Clear-cut rules are easy to remember even when your emotional level is high—and that’s precisely when you need them most.

If you approach every argument for war with this precept in mind, then no matter what reasons people might cite for supporting the war, you protect yourself by always putting the precept first. If you leave room in your mind for exceptions to the precept, someone will find a way to exploit those exceptions, and you’ll be back where you were before you had the precept, fooled into supporting another war.

To put it on a bumper sticker: When we’re faced with factual uncertainty we can take refuge in moral conviction. Not only does this help inform our actions, but it helps center our intentions even where we’re not sure what’s actually going on. But what about moral complexity, those vexing gray areas?

Ven. Bikkhu points out that the Buddha’s teachings in the Pali Canon don’t offer loopholes to rationalize violence and war. Which leads to a familiar challenge:

Actually, the early texts are not silent on issues of moral complexity. They do answer questions about the losses that can come from holding to the precepts and about the desire to meet obligations at odds with the precepts. It’s just that their answers aren’t the ones we might want to hear.

It’s just that their answers aren’t the ones we might want to hear – a point I’ve explored in past posts. But perhaps, like me, you’re seeing a red flag: what about zealotry, the potential for fanaticism that comes from moral absolutes? How do we know which “clear-cut rules” should really be clear-cut, and when we need to be more adaptive? And how to we avoid the trap of rationalizing immoral behavior precisely because we try to be adaptive in situations that call for adhering to clear-cut rules?

The way I see it, it helps to understand that morality – spiritual practice, if you like – isn’t about controlling other people’s behaviors. A lot of the problems we see, whether driven by absolute or relative/adaptive moral beliefs, arise because we try to force other people to behave in line with our own standards. However, when we view morality as being about our own behavior – morality as an expression of personal responsibility for one’s own actions – then clear-cut moral precepts are much easier to work with. They become the standards (ideals) against which we measure reality. We may fall short of those standards in our own behavior, but at least we don’t lose sight of the ideal and allow rhetoric and sophistry to lead us astray. And if circumstances somehow force us to deviate, then we know we have to act in such a way as to return to the standard as quickly and morally as possible. (Self-defense is a good example. It’s one thing to protect ourselves from direct attack in an immediate situation, but quite another to allow self-defense to become corrupted into revenge, hate, and evil in its own turn, that is, to become systematic.)

Anyway, the point is this: We may not be able to persuade others of the moral folly of war, or act in a skillful way to prevent/end war, but we can anchor ourselves in a moral resolve that clearly understands the difference between what is good/skillful/beneficial and evil/unskillful/harmful. And in this resolve, we can reject attempts to recruit us into accepting, by manipulating our perception of “facts,” the notion that war is ever a moral, acceptable, desirable solution to our problems.

May all beings be at peace.

What does it mean to be strong? I don’t mean in the mundane physical sense, but rather in the psychological sense. Consider:

• Who is stronger – people who can control their sexual desires – or people who demand other people cover themselves up so as to avoid being a “temptation?”

• Who is stronger – the person who can hold fast to their convictions regardless of what others believe … or the person who continually demands that everyone share in that same belief?

• Who is stronger – the person who can be themselves even in the presence of others who are different … or the person who must always be surrounded by similar people?

• Who is stronger – people who do what they want … or people who do the right thing?

I recently came across a rather quirky little sutta in the Pali Canon – Moonlit (Juñha Sutta) – which I share here in full from dhammatalks.org. (For reference, Yakkhas are non-human beings, typically spirits of varying kinds. See here.)

I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was staying near Rājagaha at the Bamboo Forest, the Squirrels’ Sanctuary. And on that occasion Ven. Sāriputta and Ven. Mahā Moggallāna were staying in Pigeon Cave. Then, on a moonlit night, Ven. Sāriputta–his head newly shaven–was sitting in the open air, having attained a certain level of concentration.

And on that occasion two yakkhas who were companions were flying from north to south on some business or other. They saw Ven. Sāriputta–his head newly shaven–sitting in the open air. Seeing him, the first yakkha said to the second, “I’m inspired to give this contemplative a blow on the head.”

When this was said, the second yakkha said to the first, “Enough of that, my good friend. Don’t lay a hand on the contemplative. He’s an outstanding contemplative, of great power & great might.”

A second time, the first yakkha said to the second, “I’m inspired to give this contemplative a blow on the head.”

A second time, the second yakkha said to the first, “Enough of that, my good friend. Don’t lay a hand on the contemplative. He’s an outstanding contemplative, of great power & great might.”

A third time, the first yakkha said to the second, “I’m inspired to give this contemplative a blow on the head.”

A third time, the second yakkha said to the first, “Enough of that, my good friend. Don’t lay a hand on the contemplative. He’s an outstanding contemplative, of great power & great might.”

Then the first yakkha, ignoring the second yakkha, gave Ven. Sāriputta a blow on the head. And with that blow he might have knocked over an elephant seven or eight cubits tall, or split a great rocky crag. But right there the yakkha–yelling, “I’m burning!”–fell into the Great Hell.

Now, Ven. Moggallāna–with his divine eye, pure and surpassing the human–saw the yakkha give Ven. Sāriputta a blow on the head. Seeing this, he went to Ven. Sāriputta and, on arrival, said to him, “I hope you are well, friend Sāriputta. I hope you are comfortable. I hope you are feeling no pain.”

“I am well, friend Moggallāna. I am comfortable. But I do have a slight headache.”

“How amazing, friend Sāriputta! How astounding! How great your power & might! Just now a yakkha gave you a blow on the head. So great was that blow that he might have knocked over an elephant seven or eight cubits tall, or split a great rocky crag. But all you say is this: ‘I am well, friend Moggallāna. I am comfortable. But I do have a slight headache’!”

“How amazing, friend Moggallāna! How astounding! How great your power & might! Where you saw a yakkha just now, I didn’t even see a dust devil!”

The Blessed One–with the divine ear-property, pure and surpassing the human–heard those two great beings conversing in this way. Then, on realizing the significance of that, the Blessed One on that occasion exclaimed:

Whose mind, standing like rock,
doesn’t shake,
dispassionate for things that spark passion,
unprovoked by things that spark provocation:
When one’s mind is developed like this,
from where can there come to him
suffering & stress?

In the sutta I see an allegory for our existence in the world, with the troublesome yakkha representing the world’s trials and tribulations and the Ven. Sāriputta representing the Buddhist practitioner. It points to mental strength as the goal; strength as in clear-thinking, resilient, able to practice self-restraint, mindfulness. It points to being comfortable in the world to exist without necessarily trying to force others to exist in a particular way. The qualification being that insofar as there are clear moral precepts – against killing, stealing, dishonesty sexual abuse, and intoxication – the requirement is that, firstly, we abstain from these obviously wrong actions and, secondly, that if we do intervene in the affairs of others, we do so in a way that skillfully addresses the problem without causing more harm – collateral damage – in the process. But otherwise, live and let live is the way to go.

Ven. Sāriputta is content to do his thing, and is unbothered from doing his thing (other than a slight headache) despite the mean yakkha’s formidable efforts. That’s strong to me. And it’s interesting to note that it’s not a question of force or power; the yakkha’s blows are mighty, capable of knocking over elephants and splitting rocks. Yet for all that power, the yakkha can’t knock Ven. Sāriputts over– that is to say, knock him out of his enlightened state of mind.

Therefore:

The truly strong see weakness in strength and strength in weakness; and are thus beyond strength and weakness.

The powerful only see strength in strength and weakness in weakness.

The strong understand the difference between power and strength, hence they are strong.

The merely powerful do not understand the difference between power and strength, hence they are not strong.

The strong are free because they allow others to be free; true strength, the strength of the mind, liberates.

The powerful do not allow others to be free because they are not free themselves; the more one holds on to power, the more power holds on in return.

What does spiritual strength mean to you?

We’re barely out of the New Year’s starting gate that we’re forced once again to engage with a tragic reality: history doesn’t progress, it repeats. The personas are different, as are the technologies, but in the end it’s the same damn thing for the same damn selfish, greedy, delusional reasons it’s always been. I’ve written about this before, so I won’t emphasize the point. It does occur to me, though, that there’s one aspect of our historical “Groundhog Day” experience that keeps us from finally breaking free of the cycle. And that’s the lack of a shared vision for humanity as a whole.

Of course, the very idea of a collective vision for humanity is a relatively recent possibility in the historical sense. Prior to advanced seafaring, the idea of a planet populated by different peoples wasn’t an inference that could be made from experience. And even with the beginnings of globalization centuries ago, as different nations fought, traded, or otherwise interacted, humanity wasn’t exactly a globalized idea. There was us, there was them, and the idea of a shared humanity was, when present at all, an outlier.

With some exceptions, whatever vision of “humanity” our ancestors may have held, it would have been generally been viewed through the lens of their particular locality.

Today, it’s impossible to escape the collectivity of our humanity, the interconnected and interdependence of it. I mean this quite literally. At no time in history has the insights of Buddhism, and some other spiritual practices, regarding our shared humanity been so literally visible thanks to transportation, communications, and media. Yet despite that, most people still don’t feel that interconnection/interdependence, which means that having a vision for humanity, for its future, isn’t really possible. Some people don’t want to see it, because they view interdependence as weakness. It’s like they’re putting their hands over their eyes and believing that they’ve made the outside world disappear.

But what do I mean by a vision for humanity? I don’t mean simply an idea of how the world should be in this moment. I mean a vision linked to progress, the idea that we move together in a positive direction that lifts all of us – future history’s rising tide lifts all boats, as it were. Vision as aspiration.

The Empty Promises of Technologists

Unfortunately, there really isn’t such a vision in any popular sense. The technologists certainly don’t offer anything, at least nothing coherent. Mostly, they have products to sell, with no concerns for the impacts and consequences. Whatever rationale they offer – some naïve in the sense of being oblivious to unintended but entirely predictable consequence, others pretending to sophistication but really little more than capitalism dressed up in the pseudo-anarchy of libertarianism – all essentially strive to fit humanity to technology, their technology, rather than fit technology to humanity. To put it bluntly, technological development under their “leadership” is not a path of progress but the dystopian repetition of the greed for domination. Life by the sword leading to death by the sword, only the sword is a computer.

But, also, the sword.

The Law of the Jungle

What about elsewhere in society? Well, I suppose it’s time to take the loincloths out of the closet and fling some vines around, because it’s the law of the jungle out there. A horror to most, but apparently something to cheer for by those people who are gripped by a belief in the Hobbesian order of things. Except that … the law of the jungle is not truly a vision of anything. It’s actually a surrender – of hope, creativity, ambition. It’s a surrender to a pessimistic, perhaps even nihilistic, status quo. Worse yet, it’s a surrender based on a delusional understanding of reality. Consider the idea of the “law of the jungle,” which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “the principle that, where an effective legal system is absent or does not apply, brute strength and self-interested ruthlessness are what determine success, ownership, etc.” In the colloquial sense, it means that self-interest in the standard of behavior and that survival derives from the strong dominating the weak. It’s the perspective that necessarily depends on dividing the world into an “us” versus a “them” that always holds the potential to be a threat.

But nature isn’t reducible to principles of domination. Yes, life might be short and, on occasion, brutish (to borrow from Hobbes), but it’s wrong to view it as intrinsically “nasty” too. The predator must chase and eat prey to survive, literally. And there might be competition for mates, territory, and access to food/water within a species. Yet this isn’t a question of moral intention, in the sense of good versus evil, but literal life-and-death, following instincts for survival. In the big picture, we see many different forms of animal societies (some very sociable and cooperative) with many different species not only co-existing by symbiotically supporting each other. Crucially, it’s important to understand that survival entails survival in a particular environment. Looking at nature’s amazing diversity in the means by which animals survive, it’s clear that judgements like “strong” and “weak” are relative. It’s easy to consider the wolf, a top predator, as “strong” compared to, say, rabbits. The wolf has sharp teeth and claws, lean muscles, and sophisticated senses. Strong! Yet rabbits and similar prey manage to survive, enough for the species to continue. Why? Because rabbits also have sophisticated senses that, along with speed and a cunning of their own, allow them to evade predators. So when the wolf hunts the rabbit and the rabbit gets away, who’s the stronger in that scenario? Again, strength and weakness are relative terms, not only to each other but to specific circumstances. Which goes to show that when we try to infer principles of living from nature, we do so selectively and, necessarily, morally because morality is intrinsic to our human way of thinking. Even the act of rejecting morality is in itself a moral decision.

So when we assert that the law of the jungle is just the way things are, that the strong dominating the weak is an inescapable reality of living in the world (whether that’s something to be regretted or celebrated), we’re surrendering to a lazy and incomplete view of nature as a justification either for doing nothing or, worse, actively reinforcing a social construct of endless conflict.

The problem isn’t that law of the jungle is the way things are. As was recently made shockingly clear at Davos by no less than Canada’s prime minister, the world order does function on principles of domination, raw power – economic, mostly, but also militarily. The problem is in thinking that this is inescapable, that those who embrace and celebrate this perspective are correct and thus leave us no choice but to play along. The dystopia is in the belief that the status quo, the usual cycles of conflict, is all that we can do. When I refer to a vision for humanity, then, I refer to a vision that rejects this mindlessness – of simply following our impulses, whether beneficial or harmful, with our minds doing little other than rationalizing them – in favor of mindfulness, of being aware not just of how the world is but how we relate to it and how change for the better is possible. To put it differently, I believe that we can be more rational and less instinctive/emotional, but it takes effort because our natural tendency is to follow our impulses.

Pop Culture to the Resc … Oh, Never Mind

What about pop culture, though? Is there a vision there? Nope. Not even Star Trek, supposedly the entertainment industry’s most optimistic franchise, offers a genuinely inspiring future. More technological in its optimism and barely concerned with speculating about sociological and psychological innovations, it offsets the hope that humans can overcome their own prejudices toward each other by positing a universe in which there’s always a conflict – violent conflict – with some alien race or other. And that’s when it’s not being cynical, such as presenting the Federation’s good as dependent on the morally grey, even amoral, actions of covert special ops groups like Section 31 or having the Federation Council seriously countenance genocide in war. Only (or at least mostly) in literary sci-fi do we tend to find genuinely hopeful, and not all naïve, portraits of the future. Becky Chambers’ delightful Monk & Robot books, for example, or James White criminally underrated Sector General novels.

So where do we turn to for a vision of the future that isn’t a rehash of the same old existential dread?

The Spiritual Perspective

It’s tempting to think that Buddhism, with its practice for developing equanimity and awareness, leads to being a doormat that passively goes along with the status quo. Which somewhat undercuts the idea of circumstances improving so as to lead to a better future. But the Buddha’s teaching is actually optimistic in that it offers the means of enacting positive changes for oneself. That’s the Third Noble Truth, the good news: it’s possible to overcome the sources of our unhappiness/dissatisfaction and achieve a transformation in which we can be content and free from angst/stress/suffering. As far as humanity is concerned, then, the vision is that all humanity holds the potential to achieve this liberation. It’s what the Boddhisatva Vow makes explicit, although it’s embedded in the Pali Canon as well, notably through the practice of metta (loving/kindness). May all beings be liberated from stress/angst/suffering, meaning may all beings overcome the greed, delusion, and hate that is the source of the stress/angst/suffering.

That’s all well and good, but we have reality to deal with, which means there’s value in thinking about the future beyond the abstractions of global, collective enlightenment – whatever that looks like – and the personal challenge of trying to guide people out of their own delusions. To put it differently: we struggle to imagine what enlightenment is like in terms of personal experience, so how can we imagine what enlightenment is like on a social scale, other than pointing to what would be absent: crime, war, sexual assault, bullying, etc.? Perhaps the vision is of an essentially monastic society or something akin to the Amish. Days filled with functional work focused on the essentials such as food and housing, with spare time devoted to modest activities restrained to minimize the temptations of sensual pleasures. But while monastic life varies in its degrees of ascetism, monasticism by definition is more ascetic than “regular” living. And, unsurprisingly, not what one might consider universally appealing. If ascetism means giving up the art and culture we experience as genuinely enriching, what kind of life is it other than going through the motions from birth to death? Of course, some communities can do it, though we may ask what is lost in doing so, and there’s also the issue about to what extent some of the art, culture, and science we cling to is actually beneficial or, indeed, harmful. In this sense, when we talk about a future that is more consistently rooted in rejecting the sources of stress/angst/suffering, that means accepting the need to renounce what is harmful whether it’s artistic or cultural. In other words, the future doesn’t have to be ascetic, but we also can’t define a desirable future based on all the sensual pleasures and indulgences that we can consume, often to excess, today.

Vision Without Clinging to Visions

By now, a question arises: how does calling for a vision for the future reconcile with my previous concerns about clinging to the idea of progress and that the future must necessarily embody this progress? It’s an important question, because futures thinking is spiritually very risky.

As I argued in that previous post, we make a mistake in assuming that we live in unprecedented times and that history follows a progressive direction. From that assumption, we cause a lot of suffering for ourselves because we essentially cling to fantasy (the world as we want it be) rather than acknowledge the world as it is. But there’s a nuance here, because acknowledging the world as it is doesn’t mean endorsing or approving of how things are. It means being at peace with recognizing the world as it is AND having an ideal to strive toward while understanding and accepting what is and isn’t in our power to influence. Have a vision, try to realize it, but don’t cling to the vision or, specifically, expectations of the vision.

The Buddha, as I mentioned, clearly had a vision of sorts for what a harmonious world looks like, even if it isn’t quite the way we think about envisioning the future. There’s an account in the suttas of the “dispute at Kosambī,” in which a group of monks was engaged in bickering and quarreling. Although they refused to listen to the Buddha, it nevertheless can’t be said that he encountered conflict and chose inaction and passive neutrality. No; without compromising himself, e.g. by resorting to force, he pointed the way out of the conflict. It was up to the monks to heed his guidance. But regardless of their own choices, the Buddha still had vision of a better state of affairs to speak from.

At this time the monks were arguing and disputing in the dining halls in inhabited areas, behaving improperly by body and speech, such as grabbing one another. People complained and criticized them, “How can the Sakyan monastics behave like this?”

The monks heard the complaints of those people, and the monks of few desires complained and criticized them, “How can monks behave like this?” They told the Buddha. … “Is it true, monks, that monks are behaving like this?”

“It’s true, sir.”

The Buddha rebuked them … He then gave a teaching and addressed the monks:

“When the Sangha is divided and the monks are behaving contrary to the Teaching and are not on friendly terms, they should sit down and reflect, ‘We won’t behave improperly by body or speech, such as grabbing one another.’ When the Sangha is divided, but the monks are behaving in accordance with the Teaching and are on friendly terms, they should sit down one seat apart.” Sp 3.456: Ekekaṁ āsanaṁ antaraṁ katvā nisīditabbaṁ, “They should sit down, having made a gap between each seat.” Presumably this refers to any situation where monks from different sides are sitting next to each other.

The monks were also arguing and disputing in the midst of the Sangha, attacking one another verbally, and were unable to resolve that legal issue. A certain monk went to the Buddha, bowed, and told him what was happening, adding, “Sir, please go to those monks out of compassion.” The Buddha consented by remaining silent.

He then went to those monks, sat down on the prepared seat, and said, “Enough, monks, don’t quarrel and dispute.”

A certain monk who spoke contrary to the Teaching replied, “Wait, sir, you’re the Lord of the Teaching. Be at ease and enjoy the happiness of meditation. We’ll face the consequences of this quarreling and disputing.” The Buddha repeated his appeal to those monks, but got the same reply.

I suppose the Buddha, equanimous as he was, wouldn’t have experienced the bang-the-head-against-the-wall frustration I would if I had been trying to get stubborn, fighting monks to calm down.

Anyway, the point is this. There is a vision of the future in the spiritual sense, which is to say about our intentions and the way we engage with our own minds. A vision about who we are. That’s the kind of vision Buddhism offers. But we also live in a material world, with all the necessary work that entails. This is the other kind of vision, the vision of how we live and what world we live in. It’s a story of the future that can help us sort out skillful from unskillful work, what leads to a better world and what simply keeps us stuck in the same misguided “law of the jungle” in which conflict is the normal state of affairs and/or technology dehumanizes us.

Fundamentally, a vision for the future should be able to speak to commonalities, transcend differences, and offer a tangible understanding of what our lived experience would be like. It should set aside those aspects of consumption and hedonism that inflame unskillful desires, while offering systems that support skillful experiences of beauty in addition to kindness and human connections.

What might such a vision look like? As this post has already rambled on long enough, I’ll revisit the question in a future post.

Everyone tends to have their favorite when it comes to film adaptations of Charles Dickens’ cultural icon, A Christmas Carol. The one I like best is the 1984 TV film directed by Clive Donner and starring George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge. With its emphasis on grounded realism rather than stylistic excess, it offers a compelling and lived-in portrait of Victorian-era London in which even ghostly apparitions are believably real. It’s a distinct contrast to other productions that can’t help but indulge in excesses of theatricality and rhetorical flourishes, often bordering on the cartoonish. This commitment to realism, leaning towards understatement, extends to the cast as well, starting with Scott’s tour-de-force portrayal of Scrooge. There is no scenery-chewing or broad exaggeration here, none of the over-acting that in my opinion makes other portrayals, even those considered iconic in their own ways, too cringe-worthy. If Christmas ham is a traditional dish, we won’t find it served here. And that’s all the better for allowing Dickens’ message to shine through, to appeal to our moral conscience through empathy and example rather than sledgehammers and lectures.

According to the novella’s Wikipedia entry, there is “discussion among academics as to whether this is a fully secular story or a Christian allegory.” If so, I’d say it’s a debate that, while perhaps interesting as an academic exercise in literary analysis, misses the message. After all, at no point does Jesus, the “reason for the season” was we often reminded, nor religious observances figure into the story. But it’s essentially secular narrative, however, doesn’t work against Christian interpretations or, in fact, any religious interpretation. Because in arguing against selfishness and drawing attention to the plight of the poor, particular in a culture obsessed with material wealth, Dickens appeals to values that are universal among religious and secular moral perspectives when we look past the theological, philosophical, and doctrinal embellishments: compassion, generosity, public-mindedness, even the possibility of redemption. A Christmas Carol serves as a reminder to engage with the loving heart of our spiritual practices and the real teachings of our guides, whether Jesus or the Buddha, all while finding common ground, across ideological differences, in these shared values.

Naturally, I see some Buddhism in the story. There’s the optimism of understanding that it is possible for us change our unskillful ways, and our karma, with the help of wise teachers. There’s the recognition, voiced so well by Scrooge’s nephew Fred, that the real joys come from connecting with friends and family. “His wealth is quite useless to him, really. He doesn’t do any good with it; he doesn’t even make HIMSELF comfortable with it,” he tells his wife, an observation that aligns with the view that our suffering and the suffering we inflict on others are twins.) Along with happy Fezziwig, Fred stands for understanding that money is a means to an end, not an end in itself, and that life is better when the joys are shared as much as the hardships. Of course, it goes without saying that as stand-ins for the poor, the Cratchit family exemplifies the power of gratitude, even in trying circumstances, while revealing to Scrooge how even modest acts of generosity can have strong positive impacts.

But you know the story. You’ve seen this or that adaptation, on film or on stage. Whether you agree with me or not on which is the definitive adaptation of Dickens’ classic, I’d invite you to revisit a story that, like other great works of art, is almost an oversaturated cliché in our popular cultural awareness. Yet the truth Dickens’ illuminated through his story remains inspiring; all we need to do is brush aside the cynicism and the escapist commercialism – the very forces that reduce meaningful insights into easily ignored clichés – to experience it. And what is there to experience? The dissolution of our illusory experience of “self” and “not self” – me and you and them. The insight that our suffering is the suffering of others and vice-versa. The realization that compassion for one’s self and compassion for other are the same gesture. Of course, Dickens doesn’t specifically present Scrooge in those terms, but his redemption points to understanding the root causes of his own suffering (the Ghost of Christmas Past), empathizing with others (the Ghost of Christmas Future), and understanding the bleakness of failing to connect the two (the Ghost of Christmas Future). In the end, by embracing the spirit of Christmas Dickens advocated – it’s charity, generosity, friendliness, and joy – Scrooge is finally able to offer goodwill to himself as well as those around him. That sounds like the Golden Rule. It also sounds Buddhist to me.

All
tremble at the rod,
all
are fearful of death.
Drawing the parallel to
yourself,
neither kill nor get others to kill.

All
tremble at the rod,
all
hold their life dear.
Drawing the parallel to
yourself,
neither kill nor get others to kill.

Dhammapada X: The Rod

The history of moral philosophy has two fundamental strands. First is the moral philosophy that sincerely strives to answer the question, what is the right/correct/appropriate/skillful way to live in the world? Second is the effort to find the loopholes without sacrificing a virtuous self-image – what John Kenneth Galbraith described as “one of man’s oldest, best financed, most applauded, and, on the whole, least successful exercises in moral philosophy. That is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

Of course, the two strands are often one and the same.

Rationalizing one’s desires isn’t the same as reasoning through tricky moral dilemmas, although it might seem like it at times. For the morally self-aware, it can be quite the challenge to figure out “what the right thing to do” is in any given situation, simply because it’s not always the case that we can apply a single principle or standard of value to judge right from wrong. To give an example: veganism. In principle, this is absolutely a moral standard to aspire to because it demands we refrain from harming all animal life, whether for food, clothing, or other purpose. Veganism is certainly in line with Buddhist moral precepts. In practice, however, the ability to consistently adhere to vegan ideals depends on many factors, not all of which align perfectly and certainly don’t align equally well for all people at all times. Economics, individual nutrition needs, food availability and pricing, cultural practices, employment status and income, environmental impacts – short of embracing monastic ascetism, finding a way to live a vegan lifestyle can be very difficult in our society, especially for people who can’t afford some of the overly-expensive vegan food products (e.g. meat alternatives) that the more affluent can enjoy.

So there are trade-offs.

One example that is particularly challenging for those seeking to minimize animal exploitation is shoes. On the one foot, leather requires the death of animals, and on an industrial scale far beyond what indigenous populations historically sourced for themselves. On the other foot, we can use use artificial materials. But at what cost for the environment in terms of pollution, water depletion, waste? There might even be a question of function, in that manufactured materials may not be as comfortable as leather. So the choice can be between a shoe that is good for animals but bad for the environment or a shoe that is harmful to animals but perhaps better for the environment. I’m simplifying the example, but hopefully my point is clear: moral decisions often involve trade-offs.

Anguishing over those trade-offs is characteristic, I think, of people who truly care about advocating for good in the world. By contrast, rationalizing is really a rejection of reason, in that we latch on to whatever excuse we can to indulge our impulses, which by definition are emotional, and twist our reasoning to ignore contradictions (cognitive dissonance!) so we can achieve the outcome we want, namely, the satisfaction of doing what we want. Greed is good. Selfishness is splendid.

I won’t get into any extensive philosophical discussion, but I do want to acknowledge that the boundary between reasoning and rationalizing is often porous and blurry. Especially when it comes to actions whose contexts aren’t fully understood or experienced. To use shoes as an example, I have found it rather easy in the past to justify purchases because I needed this type of shoe for this type of occasion/use. But did I really? In choosing which shoes to buy, was I really reasoning through the purchase or just trying to find an excuse to “justify” the pleasure of buying yet another pair of shoes to satisfy my vanity? When I saw that my shoe closet was getting a little out of hand, there came a point when I had to rethink my attitude toward fashion. In some cases, I was clearly rationalizing purchases and it was easy to do because the immediacy of my experience was confined to the shoes themselves and the act of buying them. What is out of sight is out of mind, which is very much the case with the objects we buy. It is also the case with decisions we make whose impacts are felt by people we have no engagement with. My point, then, is that the directness of our experience mediates between whether we rationalize our desires to indulge them or use our reason to actually keep our desires in check. (In other words, are we shaped by our desires or do we also shape them?)

Death in the News

All this comes to mind given the many recent tragedies in the news, all those deaths. From the tragic murder of Rob and Michele Reiner to the horrific antisemitic mass shooting in Sydney, along with more school shootings (this time at Brown University and MIT), it’s just been heavy. And yet, is any of it really heavier than anything else in the news? The number of intentionally caused deaths, the amount of violent brutality, around the world continues to be staggering.

One thing that’s clear is that we don’t really live in a life-affirming culture, assuming that by “life-affirming culture” we mean a culture in which life is viewed as intrinsically valuable – sacred, if you like. (Note: I don’t use this turn of phrase in the sense specifically used by Catholic moral theology, although I will acknowledge an appreciation for “culture of life” proponents who are consistent in rejecting all violence, including war and the death penalty, however much my own reasoning about abortion and euthanasia differs from theirs.) But the reality is that an awful lot of people are dying because we rationalize the use of violence across many facets of our society. If “preserving life as best we can” is the rule, we spend a lot of time justifying exceptions. By dehumanizing, for example. The people we aim to hurt or kill aren’t people, but criminals, evil-doers, monsters, “animals,” – in short, they are not people deserving to be counted among the living. We put a label on them to reclassify them out of humanity.

There is aversion at work, in that it’s much easier to destroy what challenges us rather than to engage honestly with it. Even if the resolution that comes from the difficult work of engagement yields far greater benefits than what we gain from acts of destruction, the ease of violence is what makes it such a seductive solution, something so vulnerable to rationalizing. Through violence, we can avoid dealing with our own moral responsibilities, our own roles in causing problems (i.e. suffering), our own self-perception. In the story of our lives, do you want to see ourselves as the villain … or the hero?

Differentiating between rationalizing and reasoning is the fundamental challenge of leading a moral life. How do we know whether we’re actually reasoning through the right course of action or merely rationalizing our desires?

It’s a challenge that isn’t helped by a hedonistic society that emphasizes escape and distraction from the unpleasant; mindless over mindfulness. Nor do religious scriptures, often the foundation for people’s political and legal perspective, offer clear, consistent, and coherent guidance. From a Biblical standpoint, for example, how should we reconcile Exodus 20:13 in which God issues his commandment, “You shall not murder” (rendered in other translations as “Thou shalt not kill”) with Deuteronomy 21: 18-21: “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.” Answer: we can reconcile it however we want, which is exactly the problem. The death penalty involves killing, but is it murder? It depends on how one defines murder, and in that ambiguity lives the possibility of rationalizing a deadly outcome if that’s what we want. That’s the challenge people who follow the Bible have to confront for themselves: how to resolve contradictory instructions in a way that is beneficial for them and the world.

The Buddha’s teachings are unequivocal. Ven. Thanissaro Bikkhu points out in the introduction to his book, Non-Violence:

… the Buddha taught that restraint against killing should be exercised in all situations, without exception. In other words, there are no grounds for justifying any act of killing, no matter how badly provoked. This means that there’s no room at all in the Buddha’s teachings for a theory of “just war.” The path to put an end to suffering requires that you be willing to sacrifice many things, but not the purity of your virtue.

In other words, committing violence is necessarily harmful to oneself, not just the other. There is an inherent contradiction in using means that are not morally aligned with the ends. We can’t be advocates for life while relying on instruments of death. We can’t escape the cycle of violence, revenge, collateral damage and generational consequences, by continually believing that this time, our act of violence will solve everything. We can’t be both arsonist and fire fighter. The use of violence degrades and corrupts everything, particularly when systematized although we can’t gloss over the personal debilitations.

Setting the Right Intentions

Yet while the Buddha’s moral precept, rooted in his understanding of human psychology, is unambiguous, it’s translation to practical action is usually easier thought/said than done. If someone violently attacks us and we kill them in the process of defending ourselves, that’s a violation of the precept. Yet there is a key characteristic to these kind of emergency scenarios: intention. Reacting to someone’s else actions isn’t the same as initiating action, in which case we can say an attacker’s death isn’t intentional on our part in the sense of premeditated, planned. We didn’t seek out the attack. The virtue of our intentions, however, is actually always essential all the time, and I interpret Buddhist practice in part as working on purifying our intentions precisely because intentions influence not only how we act but how we react. Inner work for outer impacts.

While there are plenty of moral dilemmas that are more vaguely grasped than others, which makes navigating the rationalizing/reasoning process all the trickier, there are nevertheless some absolute red flags. And while violence isn’t the only one, if I had to pick a starting point it would be there. The moment thoughts turn toward considering causing harm – red flag! Is someone claiming the right to use violence? Red flag! Are we formulating a policy rooted in violence? Red flag! Whatever the problem, violence should not be an option to consider.

That red flag is the warning sign that we need to pause, introspect, and carefully study what’s going on in our minds. Even if it isn’t realistically possible to avoid violence, non-violence should be the ideal we strive for. When death happens, even in cases where it was arguably necessary (e.g. immediate self-defense), it shouldn’t be a cause for celebration but for mourning. There’s relief, of course, when someone is saved from harm, but also mourning that it was necessary to use violence at all.

In the end, I don’t think the Buddha recognized a right for anyone to use violence. That’s perhaps not the language he’d use per se. But in modern culture, with all its laws, I think it’s fair to frame the question in terms of rights, as in: reserving the right to use violence is setting an intention to use violence along with the permission to rationalize the use of violence. Which means that, understanding the scope of psychological and societal damage, we need to question more assertively any claims to a right to violence.

So as we mourn all those who have been killed this year, for whatever reason, let’s be mindful of planting a red flag in our practice so we are reminded of our commitment to peace and safety for ourselves and for all. There may not always be something we can do in terms of the horrific killings we read about in the news, but as always change begins with ourselves as the precursor to acting as advocates for peace in the world.

In the spirit of peace, then, I wish you all a wonderful holiday season, whatever you celebrate.

*

When embraced,
the rod of violence
breeds danger & fear:
Look at people in strife.
I will tell of how
I experienced
terror:
Seeing people floundering
like fish in small puddles,
competing with one another—
as I saw this,
fear came into me.
The world was entirely
without substance.
All the directions
were knocked out of line.
Wanting a haven for myself,
I saw nothing that wasn’t laid claim to.
Seeing nothing in the end
but competition,
I felt discontent.
And then I saw
an arrow here,
so very hard to see,
embedded in the heart.
Overcome by this arrow
you run in all directions.
But simply on pulling it out
you don’t run,
you don’t sink.…
Whatever things are tied down in the world,
you shouldn’t be set on them.
Having totally penetrated
sensual pleasures,
sensual passions,
you should train for your own
unbinding [nibbāna]. — Sn 4:15

Marketplace recently reported on trends in consumer spending sentiments, drawing on various surveys to point out how worries about the economy and personal finances are creating a rather dour mood. And with that dour mood comes less interest in spending money.

It’s worth quoting at length from the Conference Board:

In November, consumers also curbed planned spending on services over the next six months. From October’s survey to November’s, consumers signaled reduced spending on nearly every category queried with two exceptions: historic sites, museums, and libraries intentions inched up, and childcare and educational services plans were unchanged. Still, both categories ranked among the bottom three with amusement parks and outdoor recreation.

The top five categories for planned services spending over the next six months continued to include restaurants, bars, take-out; streaming, internet, mobile services; beauty and personal care; and hotels, motels for personal travel. Healthcare, which was among the top five planned services expenditures since June, suddenly displaced streaming, internet, and mobile services for the number-two spot in November. The focus on insurance premiums and subsidies throughout the shutdown potentially prompted the pop in the healthcare category. In general, spending trends among consumers this year have increasingly moved towards cheap thrills and necessary services and away from expensive and highly discretionary activities.

Vacation intentions fell back in November after a surprise October surge. Plans for domestic travel over the next six months continued to exceed international vacation plans, but both types retreated in November. This is consistent with the decline in intentions to spend on hotels, motels and airfare in the month.

This conclusion is shared by other sources as well, such as Yahoo!Finance. (Yahoo is still a thing?)

Tellingly, after pointing out the contradictions in consumer’s purchasing intentions for the holidays, Marketplace’s Mitchell Hartman ends his piece on a befuddled note: “The American consumer, go figure.”

Yet I don’t think there is actually anything mysterious or surprising going on with “the American consumer.” Fundamentally, we live in a society in which consumerism is a pillar of our culture that’s expressed in several ways:

• Advertising that saturates our environment and obsessively ties our purchases to our lifestyles and values. We don’t just buy objects. We buy freedom, love, sex, power, respect, self-actualization, and so on.

• Pervasive commoditization in which everything, even the necessities of life (shelter, food, medicine) are marketed, priced, and resourced for profit.

• Spiritual bypass, in which values of generosity are co-opted to support the pursuit of material wealth (typically other people’s) and reflect the confusion of hedonistic gratification with genuine happiness.

• Personal freedom, in that the more money we have the more freedom we have to do whatever we wants – work (or not), travel, take a change on new business ventures, etc.

In other words, like it or not, we are economic creatures. Spending money is what we do. And as we are bombarded by consumerist messaging and embedded in social structures that promote consumption, almost deifying it, it’s not surprising that even in dour moods people will strive to spend money. Beyond fulfilling immediate needs, it brings an immediate jolt of pleasure. It allows to touch on that feeling of freedom that comes with not having any worries about financial shortcomings.

When our ability to purchase things is fundamentally tied to our sense of self-worth AND our sense of social worth, there really is no surprise that even when the economy is shitting itself, people are still going to look to buy those little pleasures they can afford beyond the necessities.

But that isn’t to say that we should resign ourselves to being pushed around by the riptides consumerism. Quite the opposite: our spiritual challenge is to confront, directly, the consumerist mindset that keeps us perpetually trapped in a cycle of gratification and dissatisfaction along with the stress of simply trying to survive. So as we race pass Thanksgiving to enter the Christmas season, I think it’s worth taking a moment to sit with the flip side of right livelihood – right consumption.

Other than the fact that we start getting bombarded by Christmas carols the moment Halloween is over, I’m bothered by the impacts cultural consumerism has both personally and systemically. There’s something insidious about how stuff correlates to self. For example, consider the annual drives to provide disadvantaged children with toys. The implication, which extends to adult gift-giving, is that not receiving a toy reinforces that disadvantage – a disadvantage that can come to mean “unwanted” and “unloved.” Isn’t that psychologically harmful? That’s just one example of how those four ways I listed creep into our lives outside of our conscious awareness. Clearly, the fundamental assumptions underlying our cultural practices need to be challenged – though there’s no profit in doing so, which leaves it for outliers to tilt at windmills.

So as the pressure to buy, buy, buy ramps up along with number of emails announcing Black Friday deals (before switching to announcing Christmas deals), let’s take a moment to pause and consider how we spend. Certainly, I have my own retail temptations to which I have to call in the inquisition to rigorously ask, do I really need this, or is this just emotional buying because the world sucks? Although I’m not 100% successful at resisting every temptation, I’ve gotten better at it by thinking about the context of my purchases – the environment, workers’ welfare, my own needs versus desires. In the end, it’s not about renouncing spending like an ascetic, but continuing to strive to purchase out of care and intention – with mind rather than mindlessly.

There’s a lot more to unpack on the topic of consumerism and spiritual practice, which I’ll leave to future posts.

So I’ll just end with a note on Thanksgiving and the role I think it plays best: reminding us to be grateful for what we have, no matter how much of it we have. Taking joy and contentment in the bounties we have is a good way to realize that perhaps those gaps we think we need to fill with more stuff aren’t actually there.

And I’d like to extend my gratitude to you for reading this blog, liking and leaving comments, and just generally joining me on this journey to explore – and practice – the Buddha’s teachings.

A friend’s cat recently died after a long battle against FIP. For months I witnessed the emotional roller coaster that comes with treating disease; the frustrations with medical care, the signs of hope, the frightening setbacks, and the fear of loss. Having lost three cats myself, albeit more suddenly than my friend, I can entirely understand the complex emotions that come with caring for, and eventually having to let go of, a family animal who is certainly more than a pet.

Other than bringing back memories of my kitties, this week’s sad news also triggered greater awareness of a broader pattern of mortality, since more and more people I know, friends and family alike, announce diagnoses of cancers. In other words, life these days is filled with reminders of impermanence.

I’m not going to spend time with the observation about how important it is to practice so that we aren’t crushed by sorrow when the time comes but rather able to navigate the impermanence with spiritual skill. I don’t have anything to add to the conversation that hasn’t already been said by more knowledgeable and skilled people. Coincidentally, the theme of this month’s issue of Lion’s Roar is “A Buddhist Guide to Living & Dying” and there are wonderful articles such as Lisa Ernt’s How to Contemplate Death to point out that:

The Buddha encouraged us to contemplate death to help us deepen our connection to life and awaken to its fleeting and precious nature. Ultimately, the Buddha said that death contemplation will lead us to “the deathless,” that is, nirvana or liberation from the endless cycle of birth and death. While our human minds usually function in the realm of duality—rooted in pairs of opposites—deep contemplation on death can open the doorway to the absolute, where death and life are no longer opposed to each other. Normally we see our physical bodies as the barrier to death, but it is ultimately our minds that create this separation. If we face our fears about our physical death, we can more easily let go and “die” while still alive and get a taste of freedom from this cycle of birth and death.

What I do want to pay attention to is how the death of my friend’s cat cut through the fog of existential angst I’ve been experiencing for quite some time. You surely know the fog I’m talking about: the fog of endlessly outrageous news and general awfulness of the world. The fog that often feels like it’s blotting out the sun. It’s a case of seeing the forest but not the trees. The big picture, but not the details. It’s a strange state of mind, in that it feels aversive in a way. Suffering about the world has an abstract quality to it because in practice we can’t experience the world; all we have is interpretation. And that interpretation, I find, easily dominates my mind and detaches me from the reality of the day-to-day.

But then there are times when the day-to-day really does hit hard and it becomes easy to dismiss what’s going on in the world. This is like focusing on a particular tree and forgetting that it’s part of a forest. It’s an inward turn that can also have a detaching effect because it so deeply mired into that sense of “self.”

So what does this mean?

I find it interesting to note how my mind switches back and forth from one focus to another, from the personal to the global. Partly, I think that’s just how minds work, always rushing from this thought to that thought. Monkey mind! Then we add aversion to whatever happens to be unpleasant in the moment, and the switch feels like a way to cushion that unpleasantness. Hey, work is stressful? Think about the war in some foreign country! Hey, all that suffering in a faraway land? Focus on how it sucks to be dealing with a migraine!

It’s tempting to see the global and the personal as distinct realms, however overlapping. That’s how we get to trying to extrapolate social justice frameworks from teachings phrased for individual practice and enlightenment, even when presented in the form of the Boddhisatva vow. It’s certainly how, pontificator (buddhificator?) that I am, I’m inclined to theorize around applying systems thinking to the Buddha’s teaching.

But in the end, as I’m reminded, the personal and the global are not distinct, overlapping realms but rather two sides of the same coin. Which means that the core of the practice doesn’t change with each side, only the nuances. Perhaps the lesson is that as much as the mind likes to compartmentalize and flit about from perspective to perspective, ultimately the practice breaks down the illusion of duality and deconstructs the dichotomy to reveal how in the end, it really does come to inner workings of the mind that happen whatever the object of thought. In other words, I guess I just need to sit and breathe.

A wee bit of housekeeping …

On a housekeeping note, I’m of the belief that if one has nothing to say one shouldn’t say it anyway. I know, that’s not the internet way; the beast demands a steady diet of opinions and content. But what this means is that I will not hold myself to the expectation of weekly posts. Neither you nor I need to have me opinionate for the sake of it. But I also don’t anticipate going silent for long periods of time either. So if you haven’t already, please subscribe so you’re up to date with new posts as they go live. Thanks for reading!

When we talk about right livelihood in Buddhism, we typically refer to one of the factors in the eightfold-path.

“Monks, a lay follower should not engage in five types of business. Which five? Business in weapons, business in living beings, business in meat, business in intoxicants, and business in poison.”

Business (Wrong Livelihood), Vaṇijjā Sutta (AN 5:177)

But the Buddha, addressing monks, adds in the Majjhima-Nikaya, No. 117 (The Great Forty) :

And what is wrong livelihood? Deceit, flattery, hinting, and belittling, and using material things to chase after other material things.

As Sutta Central’s footnote points out: “This applies to everyone, but especially to monastics, in reference to unwholesome ways of seeking requisites and material profits.”

What’s telling is that even though “the economy” was far simpler during the Buddha’s time, his teachings clearly viewed many of the business practices of the time as unethical, that is, not conducive to achieving liberation. Prostitution may arguably be the oldest profession in the world, but I’d put marketing and sales at about the same level. As long as one person had something someone might want or need, efforts to persuade in making the trade no doubt resorted to “deceit, flattery, hinting, and belittling” as much then as it does now.

For the most part, the teachings on right livelihood are rather straightforward. But given how much more complex our economy and labor markets are compared to ye olde times, they are arguably not the whole story about what constitutes right vs wrong livelihood. This isn’t to say that they don’t apply, because clearly they do: selling weapons and trafficking is people is unambiguously wrong, as is selling poison. The injunctions against meat and intoxicants is more ambiguous, if only because eating meat is tied to nutrition and survival, while intoxicants aren’t necessarily a problem when they aren’t used to get intoxicated. (For instance, is it wrong to have a glass of wine or a cocktail that doesn’t result in getting drunk? Or is drinking alcohol only wrong when it leads to drunkenness?)

Things get complicated when we consider how livelihood is necessarily contextual and interdependent. It’s rather like the concept of emptiness, in which everything is “empty” of an inherent existence but rather exists within an interdependent network of causes and effects. Yes, you can do work for yourself in the sense that you can grow your own vegetables, build your own hut, etc. But “livelihood” is about what happens when there’s something you can’t do for yourself. This is where the economy as a market for exchanging labor comes in, whether it’s bartering directly or using money. Livelihood by definition is about relationships: between the provider of a service or product and the recipient of said service or product. And that relationship isn’t necessarily a direct one-to-one: we have employes and employees, which means that any single person’s livelihood is defined by the corporation’s overall livelihood.

I’m not going to get into a discussion about economics and labor (whew), but I’m pointing out the nature of livelihood today because I want to emphasize how dependent one’s livelihood is on other people. I’m not talking about the need to satisfy our customers, although that’s part of it, but how the livelihood of some people actually dictates whether or not others can even have a livelihood at all. Given the news of layoffs at Amazon and other companies, despite being profitable, the question for right livelihood becomes: is it right to prioritize profit over people? Should anyone really have power over other people’s ability to make a living in the world? How can one pursue right livelihood for oneself, when that capacity is dependent on how other people pursue right livelihood?

The questions takes on even greater, and more urgent, dimensions when we consider that the concentrated power of livelihoods like “CEO” has a greater social impact than on the lives of employees. And that’s because of the total output of the corporations they lead, a sum that can be greater than the individual contributions of individual employees. And the problem is this: how many of our business leaders can be said to have a positive vision for society?

That’s not a rhetorical question, especially given reports about how billionaires are apparently doomsday preppers too. (See here and here.) What does that say about our social leaders, and unfortunately having billions of dollars is enough to make one a “leader” in the sense of influence regardless of personal merit and genuine wisdom, when they’re hedging their bets? Are they really working as hard as they should to avoid the apocalypse in the first place, or has their concept of right livelihood been entirely captured by selfishness fueled by fear?

At least we have some shadenfreude to fall back on, like in the movie Don’t Look Up. If the apocalypse does come and human civilization crashes, we can be sure those billionaires in their bunkers will find that life in the wasteland is miserable.

But let’s move on.

The question isn’t just on the supply side of the equation, but on the demand side as well. As consumers of goods and services. Are we encouraging right livelihood when we support businesses that are harmful, when we support business leaders who have no positive vision of society?

I’m not going to get any more polemical than I have so far, but with everything in the news these days, I feel like right livelihood isn’t getting nearly the attention it needs. Of course, it never does, for the same reason that people generally evade moral discussions of any kind. Yet with big tech pushing AI in the hopes of ushering some grand social transformation, even if we’re nowhere near it, and the economy leaving so many behind, there comes a point where we can’t evade the discussion or the consequences of the decisions we make in terms of what right livelihood really means in practice.

Thus endeth the sermon. If you’d like more dharma and less rant on the topic of right livelihood 😉, I’ll point you to Thanissaro Bikkhu. Enjoy your weekend!

Wired magazine published an interesting article in which they interviewed seven proud yet maligned owners of Tesla Cybertrucks. It’s not hard-hitting journalism. It’s actually rather fluffy and even problematic in some ways. And it certainly shies away from confronting the fact that, like it or not, purchases cannot exist outside of morality however much people might want to focus on their practical and pleasurable aspects. But it does serve as a reminder that the people who drive Cybertrucks, whatever we might personally think about Tesla and its owner, are people. The question: Is it really wise to cheer on, let along engage in, the verbal and physical abuse they seemingly experience as a result of their choice of vehicle?

The point isn’t about our rationale for agreeing or disagreeing with their decisions and reasoning. It’s about considering the ways in which we interact with other people. Of course, it’s easy when we agree with someone else. When we disagree, though, it’s a lot harder – and harder still when we get into ethics and the challenge of getting people to genuinely consider the moral consequences of their actions. Our economic culture makes it very difficult to get people to consider the bigger picture of labor, environment, social impacts, etc. Yet it’s important to have conversations, to be willing to scrutinize not only the moral consequences of what other people do but what we do ourselves.

If the article points to anything, it’s to how easy it is to shut down conversations before they even start simply by making assumptions. And that’s a lesson that applies not only to situations in which we want to persuade people to change their behaviors (or someone tries to persuade us to change ours) but to how we deal with people whose words and actions have a direct and harmful impact on us.

In my professional career, I have been exposed to toxic influences, with one in particular that took me a long time to recover from. I’d point to Buddhism as key to getting past the harms to my self-esteem, but more fundamentally I’d give credit to the insight that these toxic influences are people who are acting out of their own suffering. Realizing that about one individual in particular – seeing the difficulties they were dealing with on a personal level – dissolved assumptions that this person was just a selfish jerk. It’s rather like that lesbian woman who left the note on a Cybertruck accusing its owner of being a Nazi, when in reality he’s Jewish and a self-described supporter of the gay community. Whatever we might think about the man’s decision to own a Cybertruck, the woman’s approach to expressing her outrage at Tesla wasn’t skillful and clearly didn’t yield whatever change – an admission of guilt on the Cybertruck owner’s part? – she hoped for.

Whether it’s buying a car, shopping at Amazon, or whatever else, we undoubtedly need to think more deeply about the moral dimensions of our purchases. It’s a generalizable lesson, of course. At a time when we are so divided, so manipulated by Big Media and Big Tech, the ability to have difficult conversations around moral issues is as important as it’s always been. So as superficial as that Wired article is, it’s entirely worth it if prompts us to pause and remember that whatever the topic, we aren’t dealing with abstract antagonists but people, fellow humans, fellow sentient beings.

Right speech, right?

From the (Brahmans) of Sāla Sāleyyaka Sutta (MN 41)

“And how are there three sorts of Dhamma conduct, harmonious conduct with speech?

“There is the case where a certain person, abandoning false speech, abstains from false speech. When he has been called to a town meeting, a group meeting, a gathering of his relatives, his guild, or of the royalty, if he is asked as a witness, ‘Come & tell, good man, what you know’: If he doesn’t know, he says, ‘I don’t know.’ If he does know, he says, ‘I know.’ If he hasn’t seen, he says, ‘I haven’t seen.’ If he has seen, he says, ‘I have seen.’ Thus he doesn’t consciously tell a lie for his own sake, for the sake of another, or for the sake of any reward.

“Abandoning divisive speech he abstains from divisive speech. What he has heard here he doesn’t tell there to break those people apart from these people here. What he has heard there he doesn’t tell here to break these people apart from those people there. Thus reconciling those who have broken apart or cementing those who are united, he loves concord, delights in concord, enjoys concord, speaks things that create concord.

“Abandoning abusive speech, he abstains from abusive speech. He speaks words that are soothing, pleasing to the ear, that are affectionate, that go to the heart, that are polite, appealing & pleasing to people at large.

“Abandoning idle chatter, he abstains from idle chatter. He speaks in season, speaks what is factual, what is in accordance with the goal, the Dhamma, & the Vinaya. He speaks words worth treasuring, seasonable, reasonable, circumscribed, connected with the goal.

“This is how there are four sorts of Dhamma conduct, harmonious conduct with speech.”

We have a tendency to whine, complain, rage. We’re never happy. There’s always something off, something wrong. Why, our brains wonder, can’t things (and other people) just be perfect?

Perhaps our perpetual dissatisfaction with the world stems from survival instincts. Our primal brains evolved to identify threats, or even just signs of threats, so we can act before we’re actually an harmed. It’s a great ability to have, one that obviously allowed our ancestors to survive and reproduce. But it’s an ability that becomes dysfunctional when we have enough control over our environments to reasonably guarantee our safety, because whatever reality is, our primal brains always remain on the lookout for threats. Put those brains in a social media context, throw in AI slop, and all the other factors degrading our global community fabric, and we’re constantly stuck in survival mode.

I’ve already covered that, but I did want to dig deeper into how we communicate in times of real and perceived threats, particularly in an effort to enacting change of some kind (typically the way other people behave). Consider how, in normal circumstances, we tend to react when we’re criticized. Perhaps it’s a colleague who points out a mistake. Or a family member or friend offended by something we did or didn’t do. Whatever it is, it’s something that essentially challenges our entirely human desire to see ourselves in a positive way: smart, funny, attractive, etc. It’s not pleasant when we are confronted with people and facts who, justly or not, challenge that nice image of ourselves, that “self esteem.” How much worse does it feel when that challenge occurs on moral grounds, presenting a judgement not only on personal qualities but on our overall sense of being a “good person?” To our brains, these challenges can feel awfully threatening, which means pushing that big red survival mode button.

What happens when that individual feeling of being threatened is collectivized, that is, shared by a group of people, whether formally or informally organized? An amplification derived from the ability of groups to reinforce common perceptions.

This means that when we’re trying to address unskillful behaviors, whether on the individual or organization level, we’ll invariably meet with resistance. It takes significant emotional maturity and self-awareness to be able to accept criticism when we behave unskillfully (and, of course, harmfully) and change our perspectives and actions accordingly. Beyond the personal (e.g. commercial, political), that resistance to criticism can have very serious consequences. Perhaps those consequences are worthwhile. Perhaps not. Either way, the question is: how do communicate criticisms, particular regarding unskillful behaviors, in a way that doesn’t trigger a survival mode response? How we get past the emotional barriers that can easily push out our ability to think rationally – that is, to dispassionately examine evidence and change our thinking as appropriate?

Do This, Not That

The answer is to offer something positive rather than just negative. It’s not enough to say “don’t do that.” We should be able to offer something constructive to do instead.

The ability to articulate what we value instead of what we condemn, what we’re for and not just what we’re against, is an ability that takes root in spiritual practice and expands into how we act in a social context. To use a less loaded example than what might be at the top of everyone’s mind these days, consider a workplace performance evaluation. If a team member is doing something detrimental to their own work or the work of their team, focusing on solutions tends to have much better outcomes than focusing on blame. But I’m sure you can think of examples when you hear complaining but nothing constructive by way of productive solutions.

In the Pali Canon, we find suttas in which the Buddha’s instructions are framed not just in terms of rejecting what’s unskillful – what hinders us on the path to liberation from stress/suffering/angst – but practicing what is skillful. In the Meghiya Sutta, for example:

“When a monk has admirable people as friends, companions, & colleagues, it is to be expected that he will keep his persistence aroused for abandoning unskillful qualities and for taking on skillful qualities–steadfast, solid in his effort, not shirking his duties with regard to skillful qualities.

“When a monk has admirable people as friends, companions, & colleagues, it is to be expected that he will be discerning, endowed with the discernment relating to arising & passing away–noble, penetrating, leading to the right ending of stress.

“And furthermore, when the monk is established in these five qualities, there are four additional qualities he should develop: He should develop [contemplation of] the unattractive so as to abandon passion. He should develop good will so as to abandon ill will. He should develop mindfulness of in-&-out breathing so as to cut off thinking.”

A more direct example comes from applying the 5 precepts of moral conduct, which are traditionally articulated as:

• No killing

• No stealing

• No lying or harmful speech.

• No sexual misconduct.

• No clouding the mind with intoxicants.

Yet as my own teachers have pointed out, we can also view the precepts from an affirmative perspective – things we can do – rather than a strictly negative one.

• Act to preserve health, wellness, and life.

• Respect personal boundaries.

• Speak honestly and skillfully from a place of compassion.

• Engage in respectful, consensual, and joyful sexual relationships.

• Experience life with a clear, healthy mind.

What a difference!

Starting from what we tell ourselves in terms of positively motivating our actions, we can apply the lesson in how we interact with others (whether we say so aloud or not).

Given how easy it is to fall into despairing modes of thinking, where we’re so hyperconscious of everything we don’t like that we lose sight of the things we do like, taking the time to re-calibrate ourselves in values that are creative and affirmative is important. This is as true in our personal relationships as it is with our purchasing decisions and our participation in community life in support of the common, public good.

Although I greatly enjoy David Lynch’s work, I had long resisted watching Twin Peaks on account of the original series’ infamous cliffhanger ending. The prospect of watching roughly 30 hours of TV only to get to the unresolved state of series hero Dale Cooper getting possessed by an evil spirit just didn’t appeal, no matter how strong the show’s artistic, and allegedly pioneering, merits on its own terms. The release in 2017 of the follow-up series, a season 3, subtitled “The Return” didn’t initially inspire me to reconsider, especially with talks of its famous finale which also leaves affairs unresolved. On reading some reviews and, notably, David Lynch’s and co-creator Mark Frost’s thoughts on the finale, I changed my mind. However ambiguous, there seemed to be some intentionality, and talks of a possible 4^th season, so I figured that was validation to give the whole affair a watch, which meant the original series, the prequel film Fire Walk With Me and, finally, The Return. It became worthwhile to just see for myself what all the fuss was about given how much acclaim the series has received, it’s iconic status and influence in pop culture, and ability to generate so many conversations around interpreting its themes and symbols. Also, David Lynch had passed away. What better way to engage with his artistic legacy than by watching his works, particular the one that, in its exploration of good and evil, packs the most cultural punch? Does Twin Peaks have any insights to share about the nature of evil in the world?

All Symbol and No Signifier

Before answering the question, I have to share where I now stand with Twin Peaks after watching the entire thing: meh. While I can respect its impact and the way in which it expresses Lynch’s distinct artistic flair, not to downplay Mark Frost’s role as co-creator, Twin Peaks is more interesting for its ability to stimulate creative interpretations more so that what it actually offers when taken at face value. That is to say, it’s more interesting for the meaning viewers (and critics) want to project onto to it than what Lynch and Frost actually offer. The original series is a good example. While unquestionably an idiosyncratic pastiche of soap operas thanks to the supernatural mystery and mythology, quirky humor, and Lynch’s ability to create strong moods using visual and sonic cues, it’s also very uncomplicated. A teenaged girl is murdered, an FBI agent investigates, and the killer is revealed to be her father while possessed by an evil spirit who originates in a place called the Black Lodge, which is ostensibly the shadow counterpart to the White Lodge. The subplots that weave around the narrative’s mystery are equally straightforward, even when they get dumb in season 2. For all that Lynch dips into the surrealist toolbox, especially in the season 2 finale, his surrealism here isn’t of the movement kind but entirely stylistic. Everything about the Black Lodge and its inhabitants could have been delivered using the language of conventional fantasy and horror – fairies, ghosts, angels, devils, take your pick of genre tropes. Lynch simply used unconventional methods to deliver unconventional visuals and dialogue. The impression is surreal, but that’s all it is: an impression, a style. Narratively, the original series is entirely conventional, creating mysteries only because Lynch and Frost simply don’t offer scenarios that lead to answers for the questions they ask or imply. (In fairness, it’s not like they got the chance given the show’s cancellation, although by the time Fire Walk With Me was in production, Lynch and Frost had creative differences over the where to take Twin Peaks, so who knows what would have happened had the pair remained in sync and used films to move the story forward.)

Fast forward to The Return – I’ll get to Fire Walk With Me in a bit – and we get what is popularly considered an artistic masterpiece, a subversion of sequels and the idea of nostalgic revisitations of past glories, a provocative pull of television’s rug from right under it. Personally, I think all of these are exaggerated. In terms of subversion, I’d place The Prisoner and Aeon Flux against Twin Peaks any day. In terms of cinematic quality, David Lynch isn’t the only skilled director, in film or television, with an enthralling cinematic vision. In terms of long-form storytelling, we can call The Return an 18-hour movie but really, that applies to any (and many) TV series with narratives that span their entire runs. It is true, however, that The Return doesn’t follow any of the usual storytelling conventions. The series is the equivalent of a house with stairs that lead to nowhere, doors that open onto walls, way too many rooms, and corridors that zig, zag, and double back on themselves rather than offer straight paths between two spaces. Interesting, maybe even clever at times? Sure, when we want the haunted house experience. But annoying as hell when all you want is to find the kitchen for a snack to eat.

There are plenty of reviews that praise The Return for bucking the expectations, and risks of nostalgia, associated with sequels and follow-ups. Yet I wasn’t aware that the conventions of storytelling needed overthrowing. After all, if we like the setting, the characters, the mood, the style of an original series, what’s wrong with wanting in a follow-up, if not a continuation of what we enjoyed, than at least something in kind? But wherever you might fall on the cheer or jeer scale, The Return is what it is, and what it is a collection of disjointed narratives; some extend through the entire 18 hours, many dead end, and some are hardly more than vignettes that flash then disappear, never to be mentioned again. It’s hard not see self-indulgence at work when inflicted with narratively inert scenes such as a barroom floor being cleaned or that of a random, one-off young woman, physically ejected from her restaurant booth, who then crawls into the dance floor and screams. Some characters from the original series do return, with uneven impact: Norma and Ed get the happy ending they long deserved, wrapping up a plotline from the original series, but Audrey Horne returns in a puzzling nightmarish scenario that is left unexamined and raises questions as to why her characterization is so jarringly, depressingly different from her original bold and confident personality. (Yet does any of it matter, given how Lynch and Frost end the series with a time travel / alternate dimension twist that conceivably erases all of the events comprising Twin Peaks? )

I’m not going to dissect every thread and loose end, since there are many. But my core critique of The Return is that all these indulgences, whether delivered straight or with surrealistic gimmickery, represent missed opportunities – for deeper characters and more substantive thematic explorations. It’s all too easy to spend time trying to “decipher” the meaning of individuals symbols, lines of dialogue, and events than to engage with the series on a thematic level. But to me, that’s focusing on the weeds at the expense of seeing the garden, as it were. The most glaring indulgence is the Dougie Jones subplot, which arises out of Dale Cooper escaping the Black Lodge and inhabiting the body, in a catatonic state, of a shady doppelganger in Vegas. For most of The Return, we follow along as Dougie says little and does nothing except get bounced around by the plot. Without doing anything, he somehow catalyzes all kinds of victories for the people he interacts with. Is it brazen to devote so much time to this non-character rather than giving us the Dale Cooper we know? Yup. But given how unrealistic it is – there is nothing believable about how other characters, like Jones’ wife (played by Naomi Watts), interact with him – it’s really more of a joke, one that goes on too long. As far as I’m concerned, while that subplot has its amusing moments, I like the joke better when it’s called “Luigi wins by doing absolutely nothing” and consists of animated shorts by LevelUp. In any case, the point is that all the time spent on this extended joke, mocking expectations of Dale Cooper’s return, amounts to little more than a diversion. Lynch and Frost don’t explore what it meant for Dale Cooper to be trapped in the Black Lodge because what little time we get with Dale towards the end of the doesn’t involve him talking about it to, well, anyone. Nor do we actually get much time with Dale inside the lodge, except for the first episode or so where he is subjected to cryptic comments before being violently ejected, none of which does anything to establish how his character is impacted, changed, and evolved from when he first entered. All the diversions, all the languidly paced indulgences – all of them fail to coalesce. And they lead to an ending that I’ve seen described as an emotional sucker punch, which is what I hoped I’d get as a reward for sitting through 50+ hours, but surprised me as being utterly underwhelming. For one thing, it’s not an ending , closed or otherwise. Even open-ended stories still have endings, in that the story reaches a natural pause that, however uncertain the future beyond it, is nevertheless a culmination of a narrative’s development. The Return doesn’t offer that: it just stops. Worse, it’s not at all definitely clear what is happening or why or what it personally means to the characters. We don’t even know what Dale’s intentions are, or even if he thought through a plan, when he first time-travels to rescue Laura Palmer from her murder then heads out on an interdimensional (?) trip. Since neither Dale nor any other character discuss their own reasoning and motivation, we are left with what we see on screen, which isn’t very much. And it may not even be a simple, albeit hard, stop. The final shot is of Laura whispering into a visibly distressed Dale’s ear, his face rather similar to his earlier face superimposed on a pivotal scene, which could suggest that the whole season was a metafictional dream. Ha, viewer! Take That!

But wait, you say! Surrealism! Surrealism! It’s not meant to make sense. It’s not meant to convey a specific meaning or interpretation! It’s art, and it’s up to us to make our own meaning! I won’t fault, begrudge, or criticize anyone who sees in Twin Peaks an artistic experience to be experienced rather than rationalized. The rationalizing, which is to say the attempt to assemble the puzzle pieces into a whole, is just an expression of happy engagement with the show’s gaps and contradictions. But I’d argue that there is no obligation, no logical necessity, to engage with the show in this way or to simply fall in line with the popular judgement that we’re watching a groundbreaking masterpiece. As I see, the fundamental problem isn’t the surrealism – which is my “favorite” art genre, by the way, insofar as I have favorites – but that Twin Peaks actually isn’t David Lynch’s best work as a surrealist filmmaker. I’d even say it’s bad faith surrealism. Because the narrative backbone is realist, with intelligible questions such as: who killed Laura Palmer and what sordid secrets do people hide? Yet when it comes to answers, that’s when Lynch (and Frost) retreat to surrealist non-answers instead of committing to any definitive explanations. We can say it’s bold to defy expectations of receiving answers to questions. But the flip side is that it’s cowardly, in that it simply evades the risks that come from taking a stance. It’s a similar problem to Mulholland Drive, which for most of its runtime is clearly the pilot to a TV series until it switches to a tacked-on finish that essentially jumbles everything. It’s great for people who like to solve puzzles, even if there may not actually be a puzzle to solve, but the surrealism in this case is served up as an evasion to avoid having to resolve the many character dramas and plot developments put into play. And these are genuinely interesting in-and-of-themselves! In Twin Peaks just like in Mulholland Drive, we have fascinating characters and plots, all of which are left to flounder because Lynch decides to go surrealist.

What’s mystifying is that for all the praise lavished and Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive, their champions overlook and dismiss the work that actually is surrealist through and through, not some awkward mashup of surrealism and conventional storytelling. That work would be Inland Empire, one of the movies on my “top” list. The film, Lynch’s last theatrical feature, wasn’t shot from a finished screenplay but rather scene-by-scene as befits the intuitive methods of surrealism rather than the rational methods of other genres. The dream logic of the narrative, the fluidity of the characterizations, the overall sensory experience – all these come together to form a holistic and self-contained cinematic experience that isn’t reducible to an unambiguous resolution and rational interpretation. It’s not only surreal in style but in structure, and consistently so in both, which to me makes it all a more definitive expression of Lynch’s art. Let me put it this way: Inland Empire is the product of a singular vision and method within a limited timeframe. Twin Peaks is the product of multiple (and evolving) visions, multiple processes, and an extremely long timeframe with a 25-year gap. It’s strange to me to praise Twin Peaks for doing, poorly, what Inland Empire does well. And I’m not even going to dive into one of my other favorite cinematic works, both in general and specific to Lynch, which is his Rabbits series of short films.

So far – I promise, I’ll get to a (Buddhist) discussion of the nature of evil in pop culture soon – I haven’t discussed Fire Walk With Me. It’s an odd thing, an uneasy fit with both the original series that preceded it and The Return that followed it 25 years later. While it’s clearly an outgrowth of the original series, even as a prequel that fills in backstory details, it’s also a tonal shift with a narrower focus (Laura Palmer’s and Teresa Banks’ last days), less quirky humor, and some retconning (e.g. Dale knowing more about supernatural shenanigans than he seems to in the original series). The film isn’t really about Twin Peaks as a town, as a collective expression of various individual stories, but about specific individual experiences. We also see in the film a prototype for Lynch’s approach to The Return, with a greater and arguably more integrated lean into the show’s fantasy/surreal mythology. But while some elements of the film took root in The Return, even with direct callbacks (e.g. the enigmatic revelations from Phillip Jeffries, played by David Bowie), others like angels and related religious iconography are little more than curios that are never revisited. It’s enough to think that the original series, The Return, and Fire Walk With Me are stories occurring in similar yet entirely parallel universes. Despite its hybrid character, the one definitive thing I’d say about the film is that it’s the best of Twin Peaks. Anchored by Sheryl Lee’s searing performance as Laura Palmer, the film is a harrowing, heartbreaking portrait of a victim of incest, but one that goes beyond the victimization to show the complexities and contradictions of a woman struggling to be herself, to survive, both in circumstances she can and cannot influence. Where the original series showed us Laura through the lens of what she meant to the people around her, Fire Walk With Me is the film that allows us to see her as she sees herself, the good and the bad. The mythological shenanigans are interesting, even if they were really intended to set up future stories. But it’s Laura’s story that plunges a dagger straight into the sympathetic heart.

For all that Fire Walk With Me is successful at centering Laura in her own story, by comparison The Return is a failure, a step back. While Laura is not forgotten – indeed, rescuing her is Dale’s singular focus once he regains himself – she suffers a worse fate: she becomes an abstraction, a depersonalized cause for crusade. This is most obvious in Part 8 which, while undeniably a striking art house tour-de-force, visualizes Laura as a spirit created by the supernatural entities The Fireman and Señorita Dido – a direct mirroring of the evil spirit BOB’s creation following an atomic explosion and the creation/invocation of a more cosmic malevolence. So now, apparently, Laura is some kind of (good?) spirit, sent to Earth for some reason as part of some plan to accomplish something? What? Who knows? When asked, the The Return says, “no comment.” But it does succeed in making her humanity inhuman somehow, her suffering the outcome of greater cosmic forces. And the problem is worse given how misogynistic The Return is, a shocking detour from the empathy that surrounded the horror in Fire Walk With Me. From the gratuitous use of nudity, while men get to keep their clothes on, to the violence, The Return is more exploitative than emphatic with its women characters. Even Tammy Preston (Chrysta Bell), the FBI Special Agent assisting Lynch’s Gordon Cole, is made to wear tight clothing and sashay like a pin-up model – a choice that owes more to gratifying the male gaze than to capture the reality of working in a professional law enforcement environment. Aurora Linnea lays out the damning case well in her post, I Can’t Watch: The Kitsch Sexism of ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’, and I can’t disagree with her conclusion:

David Lynch doesn’t get a pass simply because he is David Lynch, the unassailable, or because his denigration of women takes place in an alternate dimension of labyrinthine strangeness, prepared à la mode, with a wink and a smile.

And after all that, we can finally discuss the problem of evil. It won’t surprise you that I don’t think Twin Peaks offers any convincing insights.

No Confrontations Here

The biggest problem with how Twin Peaks deals with evil is that for the most part it never gets confronted at the source, let alone overcome. I don’t specifically mean the way in which the Sherrif’s Department seems awfully lethargic and ineffective or that the FBI agents overall lack in investigative rigor. These are shortcomings, but the show isn’t a police procedural. The problem is in the storytelling. Consider how the series antagonists – human criminals and malevolent spirits alike – are generally defeated: by circumstances.

In the original series, Shelly’s violently abusing husband emerges from a catatonic state to terrorize her, only to be captured by Windom Earle and eventually consigned to death by booby trap. Windom Earle, a genius and occultist who is also Dale’s gruesomely deadly nemesis, succeeds in his plan to access the Black Lodge only to be destroyed by the Lodge itself (namely, BOB) on account of having broken the rules.

The Return sees similarly circumstantial ends to its violent characters. Audrey Horne’s predatory son Richard, on the run after running over and killing a child and almost murdering the schoolteacher who witnessed it, is killed by electrocution as an unplanned, but not regretted, consequence of the evil Dale Cooper doppelganger Mr. C’s machinations. Mr. C, who is actually controlled by BOB, is shot by Lucy at the Twin Peaks fire station. Before he can be resurrected, a minor new character briefly introduced earlier in the series, Freddie, appears and uses the magic glove given to him by the Fireman to smash BOB out of existence, which is about as literal a deus ex machina as you can get. As for the implied cosmic evil, referred to as Judy, well, we never actually meet “her,” let along have any kind of direct confrontation that could be resolved one way or another.

The only example of a character personally overcoming evil is Ben Horne, whose business dealings, criminality, and sexual proclivities mark him as a malignant influence in Twin Peaks. Although his redemption comes by way of a process that is bizarre and comical more than anything realistic, the outcome is nevertheless a man who commits to making amends and changing his. As far as The Return goes, the redemption seems to have stuck. If Ben’s realization had come by way of something realistic rather than bizarre and comical – after suffering a defeat at the hands of his business rival, he imagines himself a Confederate General fighting the Civil War and only snaps out of it on achieving “victory” – I’d give it much more weight. But as silly and tangential as it is, Ben stands as the one character who actually looked into himself, didn’t like what he saw, and made the effort to become better. None of the characters exhibit this kind of introspection and none actually confront the evil in others. They are either victims, collateral damage, or witnesses.

The supernatural characters aren’t particularly helpful either. There are the clear evils, like BOB. But there are entities, like MIKE and the giant Man From Another Place, who seem to want to be helpful. But by speaking in riddles and also acting ineffectively, they are useless. (Surely one of the series’ most brutal and agonizing murders to watch, that of Maddie’s, could have been avoided had the supernatural entities been clearer in their actions and communications.) Even the Black Lodge itself, although commonly interpreted in terms of evil and cosmic horror, isn’t actually resolvable to a neat, tidy concept – which, irrespective of it the ambiguity being intentional on the part of Lynch & Frost, undermines any kind of definitive interpretation.

So what, if anything, can we infer about evil (and good) when looking at them through the Twin Peaks lens? Not much at all, actually! How could it?

To put a nail in the coffin: Lynch and Frost didn’t actually have a purposeful “message” to convey, which is to say an insight. As Deadline reports from an interview with Lynch:

“… after the disorientating first episode, Lynch took his time reintroducing the signature elements (coffee, cherry pie, even Diane), scrapping the opening waterfall altogether and withholding key characters until the final stretch. Why would he want to do that—to weed out the people he didn’t want to watch the show? Again, Lynch rebuts the question. “No, no,” he insists. “Again, it’s the ideas. The ideas present a kind of flow of how it’s going to unfold, and the ideas tell you each scene and each character. And you just follow the ideas.”

As many of its champions will point out, Twin Peaks stands opposed to rationality, enamored with dreams, and unmoored in its mood.

The Essence of Evil

I didn’t write all the above only to get to the conclusion that Lynch and the shows’ fan want us to reach, namely, that what it all means is up to our own interpretation and that’s the point. Again, I’m not criticizing appreciation for the show as an art experience, even if I reject the idea that David Lynch and his works are critically unassailable masterpieces. What I’m getting at, other than demonstrating that Lynch isn’t the only one with a capacity for self-indulgence, is that however ambiguous, however open to interpretation, however endlessly debatable, Twin Peaks nevertheless does rely on a particular concept of evil: evil as an essence, a force. And that’s a problem. Within the confines of Twin Peaks, it essentially undermines the evil that people (men) do by displacing to outside influence. In the original series, for example, we learn that Laura’s killer (and repeated rapist) was her father, Leland, under the possession of BOB. Fire Walk With Me pulls back a bit from the evil-as-puppetmaster idea by presenting BOB as a force that has to be invited in. Laura consistently resists (at the cost of her life), with the implication that Leland did not. Unfortunately, the series doesn’t explore the implications, so the conditions under which Leland would be vulnerable and inviting to possession are left unexamined. Altogether, the idea that evil is an essential quality, whether personified in the form of figures like Satan or more abstractly as a force of nature, makes Twin Peaks entirely conventional. The horror genre offers plentiful examples of this kind of thinking, but other stories in other genres, like science fiction and fantasy, rely on this perspective too. Doctor Who, for example. Although New Who, the revival spearheaded by Russel T. Davies, did wonders in terms of representing marginalized groups, its progressiveness is nevertheless a veneer over reactionary xenophobia. Aliens and monsters are almost invariably evil, and iconic antagonists like the Daleks and Cybermen are unchangingly malevolent monomaniacs. Even Star Trek, which has generally done well in avoiding stereotyping its diverse alien races (e.g. evolving Klingons into Federation allies rather than enemies), occasionally falls into this essentialist view of evil. In Star Trek: Strange New World’s third season, for example, we are introduced to a race of ancient multi-dimensional aliens called the Vezda who are presented without nuance as an irredeemable, primal evil.

To be sure, there are exceptions, like the delightful Paranorman, the animated horror-comedy about a boy who overcomes a zombie rampage through empathy with the vengeful witch who unleased it. Nevertheless, the view of evil as a consequence (effect) rather than an essence (cause) isn’t the prevailing one, particularly in our collective cultural conversations. This has serious spiritual ramifications. When we see evil as an essential quality, our moral task then becomes to resist its influence, to keep ourselves pure. Our moral task becomes focused on destroying that influence, because we can’t go astray if there is no pressure leading us off the righteous path. And we easily dehumanize those we deem evil, ready to justify any manner of atrocities to destroy those evil people in the name of our own “goodness.” Therein lies the sad, repeating cycle of conflict, suffering, and war.

Enter the Buddha

The Buddha’s teaching, as I understand them, rebuts this viewpoint. Evil is not a matter of intrinsic (and unchanging) quality, but of consequences born from misunderstanding the nature of self and reality, struggling in the trap of selfish craving, and aspiring to control what we can’t control. But the good news it that this can be changed through spiritual practice. We can change ourselves if we genuinely want to. Our task is to master our own minds to mitigate what is unskillful in ourselves. While we might not be able to change others who do evil, we can learn how to deal skillfully with them in a way that doesn’t make things worse. This is a critically important distinction. Shows like Twin Peaks might faithfully capture the zeitgeist, that sense of evil infusing the world, but they also sustain an unskillful misunderstanding of what evil is and how it arises. That’s where my disappointment lies in terms of the questions it raises and interpretations it engenders. It’s pop culture as both a reflection and a reinforcement of our thoughts and values, one that causes insidious harm because it strives to inspire us through the necessity of violent conflict between heroic good and unredeemable evil instead of considering alternatives.

I’ve never particularly liked the notion of fighting fire with fire. Because it takes water to put out a fire. This doesn’t mean not confronting evil, doing nothing, being a doormat. It means using different methods of confrontation, methods that don’t accelerate the burning of our house. I might not be a fan of Twin Peaks versus Lynch’s other works, but I can at least appreciate it as a reminder to question pop culture’s underlying assumptions and how those assumptions make their way into my own mindset and influence my actions. It’s a reminder to beware of dehumanizing those we disagree with, especially when dealing with emotionally charged situations, lest we lose our own way.

Perhaps someday pop culture, the stories we tell to inspire and motivate ourselves, will catch up with the Buddha’s teachings.

Although the world is overwhelmingly broken in a way that we haven’t experienced since World War II, at least based on my reading of history, as I’ve mentioned in past posts the world has always been broken in some way. And both the perspective and experience of that brokenness has, as always, been dependent on the extent to which our position is privileged. For most of my life, particularly during my University years when I took a strong interest in philosophy, I would wonder if it was possible to find a fulcrum to the world’s problems – and not necessarily the world’s, maybe just my little part of it. Is there a single point where we can place the beam of social engagement and leverage the world for the better?

It’s an unfortunate reality that it’s far easier to break things, to destroy, than to create new. The house that took months to build can be reduced to ashes in moments for all the effort it takes to light a match. One of the most dangerous delusions is seeing this destruction as a creative act, as an affirmative vision. It is truly frustrating, and ming-boggling, to see people proclaim a vision for the future, a plan to defend whatever, and not see the mirage in it. They don’t see that their vision for a lush oasis, fundamentally a resistance to change and a fear of diversity, is really a vision of the wasteland.

It’s also an unfortunate reality that our social institutions, by which I mean Art, Religion & Science, are not reliable defenses against both these delusions and the dysfunctions afflicting other social institutions, namely Politics and Economics. Religion has long been abused to rationalize selfish impulses rather than temper them by adhering to principles. Art is a medium of communication, subject to commoditization and all the inequalities that come from that, and as such has very nebulous impacts. It can just as easily serve as cultural propaganda, even as mirror that reflects existing mindsets rather than specifically creates them, as it can serve to expose what is hidden in the hopes of effective positive changes for any number of challenges. While it is the best method for pursuing knowledge of the natural world, Science can’t be extricated from its context. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in A Scandal in Bohemia, has Sherlock Holmes say: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” And therein lies the human problem with Science, in that as with Religion people who lack humility and self-awareness are all too prone to forcing facts to suit theories – either for ideological purposes or plain ol’ financial greed – with social impacts made worse by a general lack of scientific literacy.

Back to my question, then. Thinking it through, the “answer” to me has long been that there isn’t really a single fulcrum on which a holistic solution can be leveraged. While there are certainly plenty of problems that can be solved in isolation, there are systemic problems enmeshed in a network of causes and effects that overlap with other problems. Do you want to solve the problem of homelessness? You need to think about employment, job security, and worker freedoms. This means thinking about healthcare, which in the US is tied to having a job. But healthcare requires dealing with the insurance industry and the problem of funding. This in turn involves the politics of decision-making, which means addressing the fairness of elections and the influence of lobbyists and corporate donations. And addressing electoral reform means addressing ways in which homeless people can be empowered to vote as is their right, which is a challenge because getting identification without a fixed home address is a huge challenge. See what I mean?

It’s tempting to retreat to a glib perspective like, “If we could persuade everybody to be Buddhist, everything would be so much better!” To an extent, I agree. Insofar as Buddhism isn’t a doctrine of belief but a method of practice, even small steps along the path to liberation from suffering could have tremendously positive impacts. It would be similar if people embraced science, not as a source of eternal truth to be believed, but as a method in which we can reasonably separate knowledge from belief. So yes, of course, I believe that if people strove to understand and apply the Buddha’s teachings, and did so with integrity and honesty, the world would be a better place for it. Yet that kind of thinking has a whiff of theocracy about it, because the authoritarian-minded in any religious tradition fundamentally believes that if everyone believes in the same doctrine (namely, theirs) than the world will de facto be a better, more harmonious place. And in that line of thinking comes the risk of resorting to coercive force to conform people into orthodoxy, a reality-denying effort that never works however much it feels like it should. Force, which isn’t necessarily violent but obviously can be, undermines its own goals. Still, if people were committed to compassion in their spiritual practice, no matter by which tradition they come to it, chances our we could have more productive conversations that solve rather inflame problems.

Unfortunately, as I’ve also discussed, getting people to see the trap they’re in – the one we’re all in, let’s be honest – and feeling motivated to do something skillful about it is no easy thing. So we’re back to systems thinking, following my past reasoning that we need to adjust circumstances before we can engage with hearts and minds. (Well, we need to do both, but, y’know, we gotta start somewhere.)

Over time, particularly as the AI hype reaches overdrive levels of stupidity, I have concluded that there actually is a fulcrum to focus on. It isn’t necessarily “the” fulcrum on which all of society is balanced on and that, when addressed, will magically fix all the problems. But it is the fulcrum on which on our ability to relate to each other has become critically dependent on. And what is it? The title gave it away.

Technology.

I grew up and was educated in parallel to the rapid evolution of personal computing and the rise of the internet, key foundations for the smartphones, tech gadgets, social media, and AI (sigh) that followed. What this means is that I was immersed in a society that was quite analog but shifted into the digital era. I was fortunate to be able to learn not just how to use specific new technologies, but to learn how to learn about new technologies. My experience, in terms of being immersed in a particular expression of society, is different than today’s youths who have grown up immersed in social media and interactive technologies. It’s also different from older generations who became exposed to technology much later in life, well past their school days and maybe even the core years of their career and professional development. To be clear, I’m not making a comment on generational abilities when it comes to using technology, both of which impact our psychological development. I’m referring to lived experience and the timing of that experience in our growth from children to adults. Unlike millennials, gen Zs, and gen alphas, but like baby boomers to some extent, gen Xers experienced life without today’s ubiquitous technologies. I remember calling friends by telephone, navigating to new places using paper maps, relying on stores to shop for clothes and things, and ordering through mail-order catalogs for more exotic and unusual items. Computers were tools at school and work, and for homework and games, but they weren’t lifestyle devices that we carried with us wherever we went. This meant doing a lot of things personally and directly. And improvising when problems inevitably arose. The point: people peopled and businesses businessed just fine without the technologies that have saturated our society today.

While there are unquestionably benefits to modern technologies and the ability to access both information and computing power so easily, a key myth to dispel is that we’re necessarily better off because of those benefits, that we have progressed up the ladder of civilization. At the very least, we have to account for the trade-offs and negative impacts of technology before we can bellow and proudly pound our chests. We have to ask, how does the cold heart of technology weigh against the feather of humanity?

And the answer is: extremely poorly. Why? Because the dangers of technology, real not just potential, outweigh the benefits when we honestly look at how technology actually works, how it is embedded in society, and how it is controlled. You can find examples for yourself in magazines like Futurism and 404 Media, who are willing to honestly look at technology rather than parrot CEO talking points. But consider this chilling example: AP News recently reported on how US tech companies helped the Chinese government build their terrifying system of mass surveillance, one that can be replicated and exported elsewhere. I get it, nobody likes an alarmist, but I don’t think it’s alarmist to acknowledge the existential dangers we’re facing from profit-motivated pushes to force technology on society. AI psychosis, digital addiction, toxic social media, mass surveillance, the list goes on and on. And if we want further proof that technology is a problem, ask yourself how society would function if the power were to suddenly go out, and stay out. What good is AI then? Cryptocurrencies? Computers in general? If society can’t function without technology, if our survival is threatened by its lack, can we say that we’re using technology wisely? Considering that our ancestors and prehistoric ancestors survived for tens of thousands of years without technology, I’m not sure we can claim to be all that much smarter, since we’ve transformed our society to depend on an unreliable foundation. Our ability to talk to each other, work with each other, relate to one another, just be with each other, has been impacted by the way in which technology has been inserted as a medium into every aspect of our lives. And our environment is paying the price through climate change and ecological destruction.

What do the tech visionaries have to offer? Nonsense and fantasy, albeit profitable nonsense and fantasy that keeps investors happy. Seriously. Pick a tech CEO, read an interview, and tell me that they don’t come across as bonkers.

There are people who reject this “tech isn’t the solution” viewpoint, such as Noah Smith. Although his substack post on the subject is only partly readable without a subscription, there’s enough to make sense of his optimism. What’s publicly available starts with:

In fact, I’ve been hearing versions of that guy’s assertion — “We can’t just tech our way out of the problem!” — applied to any number of problems over the years. Whether it’s climate change, Covid, obesity, traffic accidents, or drug overdoses, smart people — usually on the political left — keep telling me that the problem will only be fixed by social change, political activism, and wise policymaking, rather than by mad scientists and greedy techbros inventing some nifty new gadget.

And again and again, they’ve been wrong.

And ends with:

So technology beat Covid, is on its way to stopping climate change, and may end up helping to solve the problem of online misinformation. What else can tech fix? In fact, there’s a good chance that tech may soon end up solving America’s life expectancy problem.

Then promises to discuss how “Tech can fix obesity, car accidents, and possibly drug overdoses.”

But this perspective, in my opinion, misses the point, which isn’t that technology is useless, ineffective or just undesirable as a solution to specific problems. Because, as I’ve already acknowledged, technology has clearly brought us many benefits in specific ways.

The point, however, is technology as a system, as a resource with privileged control, as something that is often implemented without freedom of choice, as something that cannot operate independently of social structures and, therefore, is vulnerable to the functions and dysfunctions of said structures. Technology can solve material problems. Technology cannot solve problems of psychology. We’re in a bad place because people think technology’s appropriateness for one set of problems makes it suitable for another.

Reclaiming the L-Word

So yes, I am a Luddite.

One of the books on my to-read list is Brian Merchant’s Blood in the Machine, a historical overview of the legendary workers’ movement that counteracts the modern perception of Luddites as technology-haters. A Time article points out:

“… as Merchant’s book outlines in detail, it is an incomplete picture. The Luddites were not anti-machinery; many of them were machine experts and welcomed the introduction of new equipment that made their work easier. What they opposed was a choice—presented as an inevitability—made by a class of factory owners in the early 19th century. Instead of seeing machines as a way to support their expert workers, they introduced industrial machinery that could make large quantities of textiles faster and more cheaply than clothworkers working by hand. These simple new machines meant factory owners began employing more lower-skilled and therefore lower-waged workers—often child laborers—instead of skilled clothworkers with years of training. The cloth these machines produced was lower quality, but it was so cheap to churn out, and there was so much of it, that the factory owners still turned a profit.

The Luddites correctly recognized that this shift was not only debasing their art and depressing their wages, but also changing the very nature of what it meant to work.”

Given the systematic influence and impact of technology on business, economics, and politics – pillars of society, – it is critical to address its dangers before we’re in a situation where it would take a “scorched earth” approach to free ourselves from the prison technology is placing us in. In other words, better small pains now to solve the problem than larger pains later, when the problem is much worse. The Luddites had a clearer view of technology and its social context than popular stereotypes given them credit for – inspiration, yes?

Rage Against the Machine

Of course, solving the problem with technology begins with how we personally use it. I’m pretty sure if we were to ask a senior monastic – the Dalai Lama, Pema Chodron, take your pick – we’d get pointed to the Buddha’s teachings on the traps of sensual desires and asked to be mindful about we get ensnared by technology and develop the skills and mental habits to be intentional. Whether it’s doomscrolling, cutescrolling or whatever, it’s not psychologically different from our habit-forming engagements with food, entertainment, and other hedonistic pleasures. The cultural context for the use of technology is the same as it for anything else: when everybody does something, we feel pressure to do it too even before being subjected to advertising barrages to force conformity.

But extracting ourselves from technology is not at all simple, even if by “extracting” we don’t mean living like the Amish. We can, for example, choose to go entirely cash-based and off-grid – but without a credit score, many financial transactions involving loans go out of reach. The way technology pervasively underpins every aspect of modern life makes it all the more difficult to free ourselves from it without having to sacrifice the ways in which we can participate in society.

I don’t have a comprehensive solution to propose, especially as I’m trying to figure things out beyond being skeptical and increasingly annoyed with the hype and bluster. But there are more focused things I can think of doing that I believe would help, ways of re-forming good habits to emphasize, whenever possible:

• Phone instead of text.

• Shop in person rather than online.

• Socialize in person rather than social media.

• Minimize digital distractions, welcome physical activities.

I don’t see these as absolute calls for renunciation, but practical guidelines to restore a healthy relationship with technology, which offers the added benefits, however limited, of 1) resilience in their absence, and 2) resistance to the unwanted and destructive encroachment of technology.

Rewilding Buddhism

In thinking of technology, I’m reminded of a provocative and important essay by the writer Peter Grey, who focuses on “magic, the occult, witchcraft and nature from the far west.” The essay is titled Rewilding Witchcraft and on one level concerns the domestication of pagan (read: witchcraft) practice:

How tame we have become. How polite our witchcraft. In our desire to harm none we have become harmless. We have bargained to get a seat at the table of the great faiths to whom we remain anathema. How much compromise have we made in our private practice for the mighty freedom of being able to wear pewter pentagrams in public, at school, in our places of employment. How much have the elders sold us out, genuflecting to the academy, the establishment, the tabloid press. In return for this bargain we have gained precisely nothing. The supposed freedoms we have been granted are empty. Late capitalist culture simply does not care what our fantasy dress up life is like as long as we work our zero hour contracts, carry our mobile phones and keep consuming. The reason that social services are not taking your children away is that nobody believes in the existence of the witch. We have mistaken social and economic change for the result of our own advocacy. Marching in lock-step with what used to be called mainstream, but is now monoculture, we have disenchanted ourselves, handed over our teeth and claws and bristling luxuriant furs.

The context, however, is apocalyptic and what that means, in this case specifically for witchcraft practitioners:

So we come to the heart of the issue: there is no wilderness left. No landscape that has not been despoiled by man. No living system that can escape the fate which our actions have bound it to. We are living in the age of absolute ecological collapse. Habitat loss is occurring at a staggering rate, driven by what industrial civilisation has in common with the religions of the book, the view that nature, like woman, is ours to dominate.

…

We are living in a mass extinction event. This is not a theory, over half the species on earth will be extinct by 2050. Let me repeat that: over half the species on earth will be extinct by 2050. We are on track to kill off 75% of life in no longer than 300 years, assuming we make it that far. This is the fastest and largest extinction event in history, including that of the dinosaurs. If we understand the example of the wolves, we can see that these are not discrete losses, they represent the unravelling of the entire warp and weft of life. Elizabeth Kolbert reports in The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History that the extinction rate in the tropics is now 10,000 times the background rate. If your witchcraft, like mine, speaks with animal spirits, is made from plants and flowers and roots and bark and seeds, it cannot continue to pretend that we are not suffering. It has to speak. It has to lament, it has to cry, it has to then be unreasonable. We need to be intimately acquainted with death, as these are the rites over which our witchcraft presides, not some nudist holiday camp capers predicated on a glut of cheap oil.

Faced with ineffective leaders (as much in the spiritual as material sense), Grey’s argument is for witchcraft to rewild itself as both as a lament for the collapsing world and an act of defiance.

We must become a witchcraft with a renewed sense of meaning and purpose, of responsibility to the land which is in crisis, or we are simply consumers of the earth which will all too soon eat of us.

…

Witchcraft must gaze fixedly at this future. Witchcraft must be the first movement to be brave enough to accept the Anthropocene and to make our last stand.

…

Some will be afraid of this knowledge, witchcraft should be liberated by it, liberated from petty concerns to pursue lives of beauty, liberated from the sleepwalking into death that our culture has made for us and our children. So, I counsel, confront death. For witchcraft to be anything other than the empty escapism of the socially dysfunctional it needs to feel the shape of its skull, venerate the dead and the sacred art of living and dying with meaning. We are all on the fierce path now.

The idea of “rewilding” Buddhism is, on the surface, profoundly strange. After all, the language of paganism and witchcraft is not the language of the Buddha’s teachings. And to talk of rewilding implies an original state of wildness that has, over time, been lost. It makes sense for pagans, in that as nature-focused practices –ecstatic cults, as Grey puts it – we can chart a historical course from our ancestors in nature to the social media and pop-culture domestication of witchcraft. Can we talk meaningfully about a “wild” Buddhism before it was institutionalized and, in the modern age, co-opted by the commercial self-help movement?

I wonder if we can’t at least take meaningful and practical inspiration from Grey’s call to spiritual revolution. For one thing, ecology is a natural extension of the view of dependent origination, the way in which nothing exists in isolation but is conditioned on the existence of everything else. The famous “interconnection of everything.” The practice of compassion isn’t confined to humans, but to all sentient beings which, as we should all know by now, consists of the entire animal kingdom. Like our pagan friends, we should be finely attuned to the reality of environmental collapse, even if perhaps not quite so resigned to the inevitability of civilizational doom, and from that attunement appreciate the urgency of making our spiritual practice dangerous. I don’t mean dangerous in the literal sense of threatening other people. I mean dangerous in the sense of challenging the status quo, the stagnation that inhibits genuine progress. I mean dangerous to the fulcrum on which society balances, technology, which we have to depend on just as it erodes our liberties, our health, our environment, our humanity.

Perhaps rewilding Buddhism can mean returning to our Buddha Nature as some Buddhist traditions would call it, stripping off the rococo trappings of consumerism, cultural conformity and homogeneity to uncover our essential state, our liberated state. Or perhaps it could mean taking a closer look at our practice to see how we’ve become complacent and find ways to become uncomfortable again. I surely need to do that!

Whatever we do, however, I am convinced that we need a better way to leverage technology, the fulcrum on which so many aspects of our society depend on, so that it and the people who create it don’t leverage us instead.

Life is a cycle of perpetually falling apart, reassembling into a new-ish state, falling apart again, reassembling into yet another new-ish form, and so on. It’s Humpty Dumpty on Groundhog Day! Or to use the technical term, samsara. Says Ven. Thanissaro Bikkhu:

Saṁsāra literally means “wandering-on.” Many people think of it as the Buddhist name for the place where we currently live—the place we leave when we go to nibbāna. But in the early Buddhist texts, it’s the answer, not to the question , “Where are we?” but to the question, “What are we doing?” Instead of a place, it’s a process: the tendency to keep creating worlds and then moving into them. As one world falls apart, you create another one and go there. At the same time, you bump into other people who are creating their own worlds, too.

In more common parlance, samsara refers to the endlessly repeating cycle of death and rebirth associated with the law of kamma. Many Buddhist traditions, like their Hindu forbearers and contemporaries, interpret samsara as literally true. Others, in the agnostic mold of Stephen Batchelor, are more inclined to metaphorical interpretations. That’s where I stand. Reincarnation to me means that we continually reinvent ourselves moment to moment, that each moment contains the conditions for the next, and that absent liberation (“enlightenment”) the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth is a constant churn between heavenly moments, hellish moments, and neutral moments. Whether there’s a something that actually transfers from body to body across lifetimes – that’s a topic for another post. I think we’re entirely capable of understanding samsara without resorting to metaphysics, because we experience change acutely enough within our own (current) lifetime.

Samsara comes to mind because this week’s been a fucking week. A grand samsara slam. I mean this in the personal sense and in the contextual sense that the world isn’t falling apart but essentially already has. Speaking personally, it’s been a confrontation with my own shortcomings, the ways in which my practice has drifted into spiritual bypass, the overall lack of presence in my own life. That’s hard enough, but damn, the news makes it worse! It feels as if we’re just moving from hellish moment to hellish moment, witnessing the same old cycles of delusion, aversion (hate) and greed – read anger and violence – repeat themselves with not enough people clear-eyed enough to see the exit sign in the smoke. The sign above our planet, for any otherworldly visitors who might happen to stop by, might as well take inspiration from Dante: Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here. So yes, my mind is kinda spiraling this week, a reminder that for those of us who aren’t Buddhas yet, practice is much like Calvinball on the ballroom dance floor: two steps forward, a step back, another step back, maybe a few steps sideways, then forward again, then who knows, maybe a jump for the heck of it.

Which means it’s the perfect time for Pema Chödrön’s deservedly loved book, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times.

Wake Up to the World

No academic text, Pema shares her insights – drawn as much from personal experience than dharma philosophy – with warmth, compassion, and tough love. The book consists of a collection of teachings on various topics, culled and edited from raw transcripts of past talks, with chapters bearing titles such as Intimacy with Fear, When Things Fall Apart, Six Kinds of Loneliness, and Reversing the Wheel of Samsara. It’s not a book that can be fully internalized on a single reading, although a key message resonates throughout its entirety that can at least plant a seed in our practice and start taking root. And that message is, in a nutshell, to make ourselves comfortable with being uncomfortable, to face our fears, to be radically present in the moment. As she writes in the first chapter, Intimacy with Fear:

Sometimes, however, we are cornered; everything falls apart and we run of options for escape. At times like that, the most profound spiritual truths seem pretty straightforward and ordinary. There’s nowhere to hide.

This, following a story about a teacher of hers who, as student himself, was sent to meditate in a tiny hut only to wake up in the middle of night to see what seemed like a very large snake, perhaps king cobra.

All night he stayed totally alert, keeping his eyes on the snake. He was so afraid that he couldn’t move. There was just the snake and himself and fear.

Just before dawn the last candle went out, and he began to cry. He cried not in despair but from tenderness. He felt the longing of all the animals and people in the world; he knew their alienation and their struggle. All his meditation had been nothing but further separation and struggle. He accepted – really accepted wholeheartedly – that he was angry and jealous, that he resisted and struggled, and that he was afraid … As he put it at the end of the lecture, that much intimacy with fear caused his dramas to collapse, and the world around him to finally get through.

Her point is that we can truly understand life when we “let things fall apart and let ourselves be nailed to the present.”

Throughout her chapters, she offers very actionable suggestions, including techniques for meditation and tonglen, the practice of breathing in the evils of the world and breathing out goodness (like a tree changes carbon dioxide to oxygen, as I like to think of it). However one internalizes the totality of her teachings in the book, one can easily pick up a technique here and a method there to start chipping away at our disconnection from the world. The brevity of the book’s chapters actually offers a helpful way to take her teachings to heart, in that each stands on its own, ready to offer specific advice. It isn’t necessary to return to the book from cover to cover. We can be selective, finding something helpful for where we are at any given time. It’s like taking a single medicine rather than swallowing everything in the cabinet.

In my case of spiraling out, I opened the book to Chapter 11, Nonaggression and the Four Maras, which is introduced with the note that

All the maras point the way to the being completing awake and alive by letting go, by letting ourselves die moment after moment, at the end of each out-breath. When we wake up, we can live fully without seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, without re-creating ourselves when we fall apart.

From there, she recalls how in the story of the Buddha’s enlightenment, while he was sitting beneath a tree, Mara (a personification of sensual forces that strive to tempt away from enlightenment) and his army shoot arrows only to see them transformed into flowers.

What does this story mean? My understanding of it is that what we habitually regard as obstacles are not really our enemies, but rather our friends. What we call obstacles are really the way the world and our entire experience teach us where we’re stuck.

This underlines how falling apart is an opportunity to achieve true understanding, if we don’t retreat back into putting ourselves back together in an approximation of who we were and still think we are. Perhaps that jarring realization of my unskillfulness is a lesson on how to do better, a flower that inspires rather than a blade that cuts.

But there are other chapters that could serve just as well. For instance, Chapter 19, Three Methods for Working with Chaos, which offers up practical ways to work with the chaos I ourselves, our immediate situation, and the state of world: “no struggle, poison as medicine, and regarding everything that arises as the manifestation of wisdom.

All in all, When Things Fall Apart is rather like having Pema Chödrön in our spiritual pocket, always available to offer accessible advice. It’s a comfort, yes, but it’s not only reductive of her teachings to leave it at that, it holds the risk of becoming a trap for ourselves if we view the book solely in terms of solace. Fundamentally, and most importantly, it’s a call to action, a call to awaken, a call to live. It certainly feels as if we’re like her teacher, stuck in a tiny hut with a fearsome snake at night and nowhere to escape to. And my comparison of practice to Calvinball, where the rules are made up and no two games are alike, is of course wrong except in the sense of expressing frustration and impatience, the very things this book asks us to be present with and learn from. That is, our experience putting the Buddha’s teachings into practice feels chaotic, but the path is itself clear and orderly. Basically, we’re trying to learn how to walk it and, crucially, stay on it rather than go awry.

While I am fogged in at the moment, When Things Falls Apart serves as that ray of sunshine that cuts through and reminds me of my conviction in the value and truth of the Buddha’s teachings. And I have no hesitation in recommending the book to you, dear reader, as a light for your own practice.

The Angulimala Sutta is well known, and well loved, in Buddhist circles for good reason. It offers so much to think about, feel about, and engage with. If you’re not familiar with it, or haven’t read it in a while, here’s a link to Bikkhu Sujato’s translation at SuttaCentral. But the gist is this: one day, despite warnings, the Buddha ventures down a road terrorized by the bandit Angulimala, who is legendary for the brutal violence of his crimes to the point that his signature symbol is expressed in the meaning of his name, “necklace of fingers.” The Buddha, of course, doesn’t lose any fingers but rather successfully gets Angulimala to stop, reflect and, on hearing the Dhamma, renounce his ways to become a monk.

It really is an inspiring, challenging story, touching on themes like redemption, justice, forgiveness, and responsibility/accountability. Yet for all that it serves up a dish – nay, a buffet – of moral reasoning in light of the Dhamma, there’s something that I find frustrating about the story. With its exaggerations for rhetorical effect (Angulima not only lays waste to villages but to entire countries), magical plotting (the Buddha psychically prevents the bandit from catching up to him no matter how hard he runs), and implausible ease in persuading Angulimala to acknowledge the error of his ways, it’s clearly not a story to be understood literally. I don’t mean in the historical sense – who knows what kernel of truth, if any, underlies the story. I mean in the sense of a practical how-to method in dealing with – reforming – people who aren’t just ordinarily harmful in their actions, but really push the extremes of dangerous, toxic behavior. Sure, that’s not the point of the sutta. It’s an idealized scenario pointing to spiritual truths that we can apply, not a realistic scenario that we can emulate. Hence the question on my mind: how do we persuade objectionable people like [insert villain of your choice] to change their ways?

It's the wrong question in a way, in that of course we can’t control other people’s thoughts and behaviors. We can just be the best possible humans we can be to help increase the good in the world while reducing the bad – our part in striving for a spiritual network effect, if you will. So that means practicing loving-kindness to replace ill intentions towards others with good intentions, cultivating compassion, and putting in practice all the factors from the Eightfold path. Yes. Fine. We know this, at least intellectually, which means we “know” how to relate to people like [insert villain of your choice].

But where it’s challenging enough to experience the consequences of one’s own actions, it really sucks to have to suffer the consequences of other people’s actions. So really, the question is, why is it so hard to get people to understand the harm they cause and, from that understanding, change their mindset and behaviors?

Beyond the Three Poisons

As a matter of general psychology, the Buddha’s teachings as encapsulated in the Four Noble Truths offers a clear and empirical explanation: we resort to unskillful means to alleviate the stress/suffering/angst we experience in life. These unskillful means aren’t just a matter of individual psychology, but reinforced by the culture we inhabit, which makes the challenge of being actually skillful all the more difficult. 2,500 years or so later, the Buddha’s insights into human psychology remain remarkably robust and, in my view, the most accurate.

You know there’s a “but” coming, right?

There is, and that “but” is that we have learned a lot about ourselves and the natural world in the millennia since the Buddha’s time. While his insights, derived from methodical investigations into his own mind and experiences, endure precisely because their introspective yet experientially verifiable nature, can we add some dimensions to our experience of suffering that sheds light on why it’s so damn hard to persuade people to embrace the Dhamma or something like it?

While I wouldn’t dignify a possible answer that comes to mind with any label so grandiose as “theory,” I do have a casual hypothesis that involves two perspectives: evolutionary psychology and Abraham Maslow’s concept of the Hierarchy of Needs.

Let’s start with evolutionary psychology, which Wikipedia defines as “a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regard to the ancestral problems they evolved to solve. In this framework, psychological traits and mechanisms are either functional products of natural and sexual selection or non-adaptive by-products of other adaptive traits”

When I first encountered the idea of evolutionary psychology, it was through Desmond Morris’ documentary, based on his book, called The Naked Ape. It was very interesting, and memorable for using thermal imaging to show a couple’s bodies experiencing orgasm (oo la la!), but I recall strongly thinking that it was also very reductive in viewing almost every human (and non-human, for that matter) behavior and biological trait in terms of reproductive fitness. Much like the field of evolutionary psychology overall, it exhibited a number of conceptual problems (as the Wikipedia article points out) that make it quite very problematic in understanding human behavior in its totality. That said, I do think there is merit in evolutionary psychology’s most fundamental idea, namely, that our cognitive abilities are linked to those instinctual drives that all animals – and humans are absolutely animals too – share: the drive for survival, which also includes the drive for reproduction. So without taking on the entire luggage cart that is evolutionary psychology, I think it makes sense to hold on to this idea that our human condition is conditioned on our evolution, which means the ways in which we have adapted to our (changing) environments before our technological prowess gave us the ability to dramatically change our surroundings instead.

Next up, Abraham Maslow, whom you’ve probably heard of. As the hierarchy of needs posits, our motivation is driven by five essential needs – physiological, safety, love & belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. (Maslow later added a sixth, metamotivation.) These needs are typically presented as a pyramid, although my understanding is that this wasn’t Maslow doing:

A later diagram pushes back against the implied rigidity of a hierarchy, in which we have to master the base of the pyramid before progressing upward, by illustrating how fulfilling these needs depends on overlapping rather than sequential efforts.

However we choose to see it, as a linear or nonlinear progression, the key idea is that, generally speaking, before we can fully handle higher-order needs like esteem, self-actualization, and metamotivations for post-actualization actions, we need to address fundamental, biological needs for food, shelter, and physical safety. When joined with evolutionary psychology’s idea of cognition aligned with survival and reproductive instincts, Maslow’s ideas provide a structure to our motivations that can be helpful. The caveat with the hierarchy of needs is that it isn’t without scientific controversy over its validity and conceptual rigor. There’s something distinctly philosophical about it, and therefore no surprise that it engenders philosophical disagreements over nuances.

As I said, I’m not proposing a theory. But for my purposes I think it’s good enough to consider the notion that it’s very hard to deal with psychological and spiritual issues (I define spirituality as psychology in context of culture) when we feel threatened, when our existence is at risk. It’s like trying to teach a drowning person how to swim while they’re desperately gasping for air, trying not to sink, and not dragging down their would-be rescuers along with them. It’s possible, maybe, but a lot easier if they’re given a life preserver to hold on to first if not outright pulled from the water onto land.

I have to acknowledge that there’s nothing really earthshattering about pointing this ouy. Dealing with our survival instincts is actually inherent to the Buddha’s teaching on dukkha, which Thanissaro Bikkhu translates as “stress,” even if it’s not in language that draws on modern concepts.

“Now this, monks, is the noble truth of stress: Birth is stressful, aging is stressful, death is stressful; sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are stressful; association with the unbeloved is stressful, separation from the loved is stressful, not getting what is wanted is stressful. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are stressful.”

– Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion, Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (SN 56:11)

Yet specifically extracting our instincts for survival and base physiological and safety needs from the understanding that “death is stressful” (i.e. the fear of death is stressful) helps me understand the challenge we face in our wish for people to learn how to swim. All around the world, we have poverty, homelessness, and in some places much worse conditions (e.g. torture, imprisonment). And when societies don’t have safety nets to help people with the fundamentals of living, the minimum conditions for survival, and when financial stability is precarious even among those with sufficient income, it’s no surprise that fear permeates cultures around the world. Add in climate change, the ongoing threat of nuclear war, a teetering global economy, etc. – whether it’s our neocortex or our lizard brain, we feel the threat deep down in our neurons. It doesn’t help that the media, and commerce, exploit this fear – amplifying it or transferring it onto manufactured fears to serve political agenda

Ok, that’s nice and all, but so what? I’ll tell you: when we think about social justice and the peaceful, prosperous, harmonious world we’d like to live in, we need to consider that achieving it won’t be possible if we don’t address our survival fears. A particular problem is that while we all “suffer” in one way or another, our individual suffering doesn’t necessarily align with others, by which I mean that if we occupy a privileged position, we don’t necessarily have the same problem as someone who doesn’t share that privilege. So even though we all share the same fundamental existential challenges, differences in our privilege can seriously impact our efforts to find common ground. Have you tried talking about your problems to someone dealing with their own? Or how about social justice activists advocating on behalf of one group of people? For example, racism against non-white minorities is a serious problem we need to address. But can you talk about it with a poor white person who barely makes ends meet from low-paying jobs, has mounting healthcare debt, and no tangible prospects in an area with few employers and few educational opportunities?

I realize that I’ve drifted from the original question of dealing with an individual “villain,” an Angulima, and veered to the systems thinking of society and culture, so I’ll circle back. My thinking is that if we can foster a society in which people don’t feel like their physical survival is constantly under threat, we can mitigate the development of “villains” and better address the psychological, cultural, and social problems. Because as we know, happiness isn’t just about surviving, it’s about living. And when living is beholden to hedonistic, materialistic pursuits, the endless quest for stuff, it’s not surprising that people are never satisfied even when, objectively, they have all the material comforts they need.

Again, not a new or staggeringly original insight, but an example, I hope, of the value of exploring even the most familiar concepts from a new angle to help guide productive thinking. Because here’s the thing. Angulimala could only be reformed because he came to understand how his actions were not leading him to genuine happiness, peace of mind. And so it is with people. If they are so caught up in their own suffering, they may not be receptive to means of escaping it. They just don’t see the life preserver within their reach. So how can our villains be induced to achieve the necessary self-awareness? We may not necessarily be able to reach them directly, but perhaps we can influence their circumstances. That’s engaged Buddhism, isn’t it? Striving to make our shared circumstances, our community, our society, better so that on the individual level, people’s suffering abates just enough to be able to glimpse something better beyond it?

It may seem strange, even shocking, for a writer to write this, but here goes: it’s important, even essential, that we be suspicious of language. That’s right. Suspicious. As in, don’t trust that language will have your back in a fight, run into a burning building to save you, deposit your paycheck in the bank, or at a minimum not stab you in the back when you’re not looking. Sure, it’s easy to trust language. It’s certainly seductive. It certainly can be effective. We build relationships from the building block of words, after all. We buy things on the basis of the marketer’s spellcasting. We engage with the universe through language and achieve so much more than creatures that don’t have our sophisticated linguistic abilities. But we also argue, fight, and do horrible things to each other because of language. We also misunderstand the universe, in that language becomes a barrier rather than a path, a delusion rather than reasonable perception. When I write don’t trust language, I mean don’t rely on language to be trustworthy.

So why I do write that?

Consider the simplest and most reliably effective use of language: naming things. I could say “cat” to you and, when you ask me what I’m referring to, show you this:

I could also tell you about a platypus and you could also ask me, what’s a “platypus?” And when it doesn’t help to tell you that a platypus is a duck-billed, egg-laying, beaver-tailed aquatic and venomous animal, I could just show you this:

Boom! Meet one of the world’s most unusual mammals.

However, many words aren’t reducible to acts of naming. Think of concepts like freedom, rights, medicine, love, marriage, enlightenment … and so on. Defining these words isn’t as simple as pointing to something and saying, there it is! We therefore use other words to define these words. And when these other words require yet more words for their own definitions, language becomes circular and self-referential. The problem then is that there is no central arbiter to fix the meanings of words. When it comes to cats and platypuses, it doesn’t matter what sound or scribble we use; the reference is the same and is the arbiter. But language typically excludes direct experience from itself as a condition for its possibility. That is, we wouldn’t be able to think conceptually if language were only limited to empirical associations between words and objects in the world. This means that meaning in language cannot be fixed, at least not permanently, but is always subject to reinterpretation. Not even the intentions of the communicator can decisively resolve questions of meaning, because once the words are spoken or written, they become independent and wholly subject to the interpretation of listeners/readers. (RIP, poor author.) Which isn’t to say that there is no meaning or that the meaning of words is always false. It’s just that whatever the meaning of a word is can only be temporarily and conditionally true. This, as far I understand it, is what the technical philosophical term “deconstruction” points to. It’s not a simple dismantling of assumptions or tropes the way we casually use the term – as in, Alan Moore’s Watchmen is a deconstruction of superheroes. It’s rather an examination of the fundamental play of meaning within language, it’s changeability, the tension between the simultaneous possibility and impossibility of language.

Ok, fine. But so what?

Because of one of the most dangerous concepts in language: identity. Specifically, personal identity, self-identification.

Identity is conceptually weird. In one gesture of thought, it’s actually not meaningful. It’s simply a tautology. A = A. You are you and I am I. A thing is itself. BFD, right? Colloquially, we tend to use identity as a unique label. Show me your ID to show me who you are. (Papers, please.) Yet identity is also associative, comparative. I am a member of a group, a class, a category.

But here’s the paradox: identity is both affirmative and negative. To give an example – suppose we have an apple and an orange in front of us. The apple is clearly not an orange and the orange is clearly not an apple. Yet we would say both are fruit when defined, per Brittanica, as “the fleshy or dry ripened ovary of a flowering plant, enclosing the seed or seeds.” But if I tell you an apple is a fruit and that an orange is a fruit, I wouldn’t actually be telling you anything to help you distinguish an apple from an orange, because to say that an apple is a fruit is to exclude its appleness from the identification just as saying an orange is a fruit is to exclude its orangeness from the identification. So to call either a fruit may affirm some fact about them, namely that they are seed-encasing fleshy plant ovaries (put that on the menu – yum!), it also negates what makes apples and oranges unique.

And so it goes with the words we use to identify ourselves. For example, I could tell you this:

I am a Goth.

Just by reading that sentence alone, there is the obvious problem in that it’s not clear what I mean. Do I mean that I’m a member of the Germanic people who sacked Rome? (Why yes, yes I do. Good times, that sacking of Rome.) Or do I mean that I’m a member of the music-based subculture? And if the latter, do I define the Goth subculture the way other Goths do or I do I have my own idiosyncratic interpretation?

Similarly, I could tell you this:

I am a Buddhist.

But other than the most general possible meaning – someone who strives to apply the teachings of the Buddha – that still leaves out a lot. Tibetan Buddhist? Theravadan? Zennie? My answer would be Theravadan-influenced Western Buddhist and, well, hooray for me! So … what do all those words mean, again? Here’s another cat:

Now apply that same kind of critical examination to any of the heavy-hitters in identity politics – ideological affiliations, gender expression, job title, etc. Which of the labels that we adopt for ourselves – or impose on others – have any kind of stable meaning?

Expressions of identity ultimately assert themselves while also undermining themselves.

Which brings me to anatta, not-self.

Non-Self, Non-Identification

Near Sāvatthī. “Monks, whatever is not-self, you should abandon desire-passion there. And what is not-self?

“Form, monks, is not-self. You should abandon desire-passion there.

“Feeling is not-self. You should abandon desire-passion there.

“Perception is not-self. You should abandon desire-passion there.

“Fabrications are not-self. You should abandon desire-passion there.

“Consciousness is not-self. You should abandon desire-passion there.

“Monks, whatever is not-self, you should abandon desire-passion there.”

– Not-self Anattā Sutta (SN 22:145)

At some point during my university years, where philosophy proved to be the most exciting area of study for me, I reasoned my way out of many common self-identification labels. This was well before my encounters with Buddhism, so it was mostly an intellectual exercise, but it did cure me from the identity crisis that many people subject themselves to.

I began by considering nationality – nope, not me.

Then ancestry – nope, not me.

Then religious identity – nope, also not me.

Then political identity – nope, not me.

Then fashion style – nope, not me either.

And so on.

When I had stripped away all those things that were out of my control, like where I was born and to who I was born to, and also stripped away those purely intellectual labels that ultimately were just words, I found myself – “myself” – left with essentially conscious awareness. Sure, an awareness influenced by context and history, but essentially not fundamentally defined in a way that is fixed and unchanging.

At the time, other than concluding that we are all “existentially equal” on the basis that, stripped of contingencies, we’re all just conscious awarenesses, I found myself very skeptical of labels and categories. Perhaps not the most philosophically eloquent conclusion – I can only think what I could have done with it then had I been steeped in the Dhamma and had more life experience to draw on – but still an important personal realization.

What’s the expanded perspective?

At this point, I think that so far we’ve addressed the “fabrications are not-self” aspect of anatta. And it’s a huge part, given how much importance we attach to fabrications.

The problem with the instability of language manifests itself in a few destructive ways when it comes to how we think and, by extension, how we communicate.

Take political – we’ll call them “disagreements” but really it’s nuclear warfare these days. When people in an argument or debate stick labels to each other, the labels invariably express different definitions, and we easily tend to define whatever label we impose on someone else in the most negative way possible, while they do the same to use in return. That’s why you can put a liberal, a conservative, a libertarian, and a socialist in the same room and witness for yourself the aftermath of God shattering the Tower of Babel and confusing people’s speeches. We can’t have an intellectually honest discussion about policy because we can’t share coherent definitions of ideological perspectives that justify policy decisions.

Talking at cross purposes is bad enough, but discrimination is orders of magnitude worse. Because we insist on thinking about people in terms of labels and categories. And as we’ve established, an identity label is as negative as it is affirmative, which means those labels necessarily erase the individuality of an individual. It matters not a whit if those labels are associated to a biological fact. Correlation does not equal causation, and the description of a biological fact does not equal the experience of said fact nor its meaning. It annoys me to no end, for example, when scientists weighing on trans issues focus on the biological reality of sex, which no one disputes, and ignore the sociology of how gender is constructed. It’s just as ridiculous and harmful as assuming Black people are criminals, women too delicate for politics, trans people are sexual predators, or whatever other fuckwittery the bigots want to push on us.

But I have to wave big red flag here. While identity is a linguistic construct, one that is always in flux because meaning is neither fixed nor fixable, that is clearly NOT the understanding that motivates our human interactions. It would be the height of arrogant privilege to say, yup, all that identity politics stuff is nonsense, let’s call it done and move forward like we’ve gotten past it the way children grow up upon finally learning that Santa Claus isn’t real. It’s arrogant and it’s privileged because it’s easy for people who aren’t on the receiving end of negative stereotyping to tra la la their way into fantasies that we are all rational people who only make decisions, including about other people, based on objective evidence and merit. Yeah, right. When we live in a society that insists on labeling and categorizing people, and does so as a matter of lived experience, pointing out that identity is a concept with no clothes and pretending that everything’s ok we’re all unprejudiced by identity politics – this exemplifies what the kids nowadays refer to as delulu.

Identity politics are a trap. We want to live without labels, free to be ourselves, but only the privileged kinda-sorta get to do that. (I say kinda-sorta, because we can’t really be “free” when other people are not. Labelling others entails labeling oneself, with all the trappings that come with it however gilded.) Everyone else has to live with the consequences of those labels, which creates a tension between the need for safe spaces away from labelers and the need to live outside of safe spaces to maximize everyone’s experience of living with diversity so that differences aren’t perceived as threatening. It’s hard to view somebody as X if your day-to-day experience of them is Y. But as I said, red flag. I firmly believe people should be empowered to speak up on their own behalf, to share their own experiences, rather than have other people speak for them however well-intentioned (which isn’t usually the case, these days).

The Spiritual Practice of Not-Self

However, this post isn’t really about politics, even though it is, but our spiritual practice. While we can’t deny the impact of language and the cultural forces that impose identities and a politics of identity, we can aspire to something better, even if it’s the equivalent to believing that all the world’s problems could be solved if everyone was enlightened but realizing that not’s reality now and we’ve a long way to go. To put it differently: we can’t change other people, but we can work on ourselves.

There is something liberating about understanding anatta, not-self. Consider how much suffering we cause for ourselves trying to answer the question, who am I with its corollary, who should I be? We turn outward to community, genealogy, geography, ideology in a desperate search for an anchored self, something we can point to (as we pointed to a cat and said “cat”) and say, aha, there I am. And yet, there I’m not. Similarly, how much suffering do we cause for others in addition to ourselves by obsessive over who they are and, worse, try to force them into our own expectations of identity? Understand anatta means stripping away what is not-self for ourselves AND others, which means one less thing to stress about.

In case I wasn’t clear, though:

I’m not talking about ignoring reality, or acting as if reality isn’t what it is. But there’s a difference between acting with an understanding of anatta and acting without it. I’m talking about putting the Dhamma in practice, changing ourselves. Getting back to deconstruction, when it comes to language, deconstruction looks to how meaning shifts in its creation and recreation. Although we may have temporarily fixed meanings, hence successful communications, we don’t have guaranteed, Eternal Truth Meanings, which means success can’t be guaranteed or permanent. What is Dhamma practice if not a deconstruction of the mind? Not dismantling. Not destruction. But an examination of how the mind works, really examining it until we see how this sense of “self” arises and falls away. Unburdening ourselves of attachments to an anchored self is part of achieving nibbana, whatever that is.

The challenge, however, is getting past the linguistic construction of self to the other means the Buddha identifies as self-construction – forms, feelings, perceptions, and even consciousness itself. That last one is especially WTF. But even achieving some understanding of how we construct a self, an identity, by beginning with language can help clear away the weeds. Once we understand not-self, the foundation is set for understanding how we are interconnected. And from that understanding of interconnectedness, what else is there to do but to practice compassion and love?

How about some resources from ‘round the world wide web? I’ll update this page periodically, so you might consider bookmarking for future reference. And if you have any suggestions for adding to the list, please share in the comments! Who needs AI to point you to the Dharma when you can have a human-curated post instead?

Magazines

Tricycle: https://tricycle.org/

Lion’s Roar: https://www.lionsroar.com/

Inquiring Mind (archives): https://inquiringmind.com/

Barre Center for Buddhist Studies’ Insight Journal: https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/insight-journal/

News & Commentary

BuddhistDoor Global: https://www.buddhistdoor.net/

Pali Canon

Dhamma Talks: https://www.dhammatalks.org

Sutta Central: https://suttacentral.net

Sutta Friends: https://suttafriends.org/

Studies

Buddhist University: https://buddhistuniversity.net/

Buddhism: https://buddhism.net/

Miscellaneous

Fake Buddha Quotes: https://fakebuddhaquotes.com/