Your Meditation Guide Blog

I actually spent quite some time wading through the bewildering taxonomy of libertarian-like positions, and finally came up with a complicated tree-like “concept map” that summarizes the basics. First off, you know how they say that in politics the extremes are often close enough to touch each other? Well, you can’t get any further on the two sides of the political spectrum as leftist anarchists and libertarians, and yet both are major branches of Libertarianism in the broad sense. How’s that for strange bedfellows?





There is, of course, a major difference between the two branches of Libertarianism: one is non-propertarian (i.e., they don’t believe in private property), the other is propertarian (for them private property is a fundamental human right). Interestingly, Noam Chomsky has pointed out that everywhere in the world except in the United States, being a libertarian means falling into the non-propertarian group, so that most libertarians in the US are actually not libertarian by the historical standards of the rest of the world.

Confused? Hold on, we are just getting started. It would seem natural to think of non-propertarian as leftist and of propertarians as conservatives, but it ain’t that simple. True, all non-propertarians are in fact left-leaning, including Chomsky’s favorite ideology, anarcho-syndicalism. These are people that fight for the individualization of the means of production, similar to socialists and communists, but unlike the latter, are strongly against state control (they are anarchists, after all!). Moreover, they think that natural resources are a common good to be shared, hence their stance against private ownership of things like land, water, and energy. Needless to say, I have extreme sympathy for this position, though I think it overestimates humans’ ability to live peacefully and to respect each other’s rights.

It is also true that many propertarians (which are often referred to broadly as “anarcho-capitalists” — not an oxymoron!) are conservative: they want a strong national defense (though they do often question aggressive military action against other countries), they endorse a conservative life style (though they do not seek to impose it by law), and they think that big business is the victim of state intervention. They are not as bad as actual religious fundamentalists, but I wouldn’t want to spend an evening in such company.

Then again, there are some propertarians who are in fact rather progressive in terms of their social attitudes (the above mentioned friends of mine who are libertarian tend to fall into this category). Not only they are against war, but oppose policies that foster impoverishment of large sections of the population, as well as any form of oppression, including in the workplace (some of them are even known to support trade unions!).

And what, you might say, about Objectivism? That’s the so-called “philosophy” espoused by non-philosopher (but highly successful fiction writer) Ayn Rand, who is often invoked by libertarians as their idol (especially by leftist libertarians). Interestingly, the two top selling books of all time in the United States are the Bible and Atlas Shrugged, from which simple observation an entire book could be written on American culture.

Well, it turns out that Rand herself despised libertarianism, referring to it as a threat to freedom and capitalism! (She despised many things, including everyone who disagreed with her.) Objectivists accuse libertarians of adopting a toothless form of Objectivism. That’s because objectivists loath any type of anarchism, including anarcho-capitalism, and think that state government is absolutely necessary, if in limited fashion. On the other side of the divide, Nick Gillespie, the editor of Reason magazine (a libertarian publication), has gone so far as to say that he is positively embarrassed by the common association with Ayn Rand and her followers. Ouch.

And then there is the dark side of things, like the infamous episode of the “Chicago Boys,” a group of libertarian economists trained at the University of Chicago who provided active, and in fact crucial, assistance to the illegitimate government of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, thereby supporting a tyranny that ended up being responsible for the death of 3,000, the incarceration or torture of another 28,000, and the suspension of civil liberties in that country for a decade and a half. Not exactly a record of which to be proud, my libertarian friends. (Of course, some excuse this sort of thing by pointing out that Chile went through a reasonably good economic time under Pinochet, which to me only further proves how uncompassionate libertarians tend to be.)

All libertarian positions, it seems to me, have the same fundamental problem in common: they do not take human nature seriously. (Yes, I know that it is politically incorrect these days to talk about such a thing as “human nature,” but I’m thinking of the general outlines of what makes us human, not of rigid biological determinism. And at any rate, that’s another conversation.) The problem is that any anarchist position — be it propertarian or not — simply puts too much trust in humans’ ability to live a good and reasonable life without societal checks and balances. For all our cooperative instincts, we are still too darn selfish and greedy for that to work. Moreover, modern societies are made of millions, often hundreds of millions, of individuals, and on that scale a society simply cannot exist without a functional government. That, of course, is not to say that we should give the government any more power than is strictly necessary, but the libertarian’s view of “strictly necessary” seems unreasonably, well, restrictive.

Which brings me to the crucial issue of rights. Propertarians see life, liberty and property as the fundamental rights of human beings. Non-propertarians agree on life, but think that real liberty comes only when one has free access to natural resources, which in turns means that property needs to be limited. We can have a long debate about what rights we ought to respect, or have to give priority to, but for me it is inevitable to feel that the propertarian position ends up looking mean and uncaring: according to a libertarian, if I own water on my land, and you are dying of thirst, it is my right to hold on to my resource unless you can pay for it (this example was actually brought up to me by a libertarian friend of mine). Of course, many libertarians would say that they are compassionate beings, so they would give the water away under those circumstances. Besides the reasonable skepticism one can have about “compassionate -isms”, they are still missing the point: I don’t think you have the right to withdraw a vital resource from another human being, even if in practice you are willing to gift it to them.

At any rate, given the complex structure and deep contradictions of the libertarian universe, at the very least, libertarians should all do us the following favors: first, don’t label yourself a libertarian, unless you are willing to tell us, at a minimum, whether you are a propertarian or non-propertarian; second, if you are a propertarian, ask yourself why so many people think your ideology is uncharitable, and see whether you shouldn’t reconsider it, at least a little. Lastly, please do not invoke Ayn Rand, she wouldn’t like it one bit.

From Help Bat Nha Monastery: All the brothers and sisters have been shipped to a temple Chùa Ph??c Hu? (address: ???ng Tr?n Phú, B?o L?c, Lâm ??ng, Vi?t Nam). Our Brothers Thay Phap Hoi, Phap Sy, and Phap Tu have been taken away to other areas unknown. For their safety, if anyone who is in Vietnam now or knows of anyone there, please gather at Phuoc Hue Temple to give them support and to show that we are united and have no fear. This invitation goes out to especially international practitioners who are there.

We can not be divided. When we are together, nothing can harm us. The temple Phuoc Hue is in Bao Loc on the National Road from HoChiMinh City leading to Dalat City (map). There is large statue of the Bodhisattva of Compassion on the side of the road. (photos of temple) Please be present there. Please help us get the word out through FaceBook, MySpace, or any other means at your disposal.

James: It is clear that the Vietnamese government is crushing the religious experiment in the Communist country instituted by long exiled Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. It is a dramatic turn-around of events since Nhat Hanh was allowed to return to his native Vietnam after nearly 4o years in exile. During his visit and another recent one in 2007 Nhat Hanh was welcomed by even the Communist authorities and lauded in the Communist state run media of all places. It was a sign by many that Vietnam was easing restrictions on religion.

"The Vietnamese government has won," said Sister Dang Nghiem, speaking by telephone Monday from a monastery in San Diego, California, where Nhat Hanh is visiting. "Their 'victory' is that Bat Nha is completely destroyed. Everything is smashed."

James: My heart aches deeply for not just the monastics and the loss of a foothold in Thich Nhat Hanh's home country for his tradition of Zen but I also grieve for the average people in Vietnam. It is always a great loss when the Dharma is crushed in this manner. That said, it is never fully lost as long as it lives in the hearts of those touched by it during the short time Nhat Hanh's tradition blessed the many seekers in that noble, proud country. I have confidence that the Dharma will return to Vietnam one day to flower into giving Vietnamese Buddhists a full, restoration of the Buddha's teachings. I say full restoration because while Buddhist monasteries are allowed to exist in Vietnam I have been told that they are severely limited in how purely they can practice the Dharma.

Dear Friends,

Please pray for the monastic brothers and sisters at Bat Nha Monastery in Vietnam right now Sept.27,2009. They are being physically forced to vacate the monastery. Please intervene in anyway that you can!

LIVE REPORT:
WWW.PHUSAONLINE is giving updated information on the situation at BatNha.

9:45 a.m. (VN time, September 27, 09):
*We are on the telephone with Bat Nha Monastery. The situation at the monastery is quite urgent and life threatening to the monastics.
*At the start of this current crisis, attackers gathered at 9:30am then began to destroy properties to this moment.
*Police in civilian clothes have been present the whole time, but they do nothing to intervene. It seems that they are there to direct the attack, and the attackers have been hired to do so?
*The monks are doing sitting meditation on the 3rd floor of their building, sending energy to the people who are blinded by ignorance, praying to the Bodhisatva of Deep Listening to cool the fire of ignorance in their hearts with the nectar of her compassion.
*We are hearing very loud banging sounds over the phone line.
*They are throwing meditation cushions outside the building.
*There are about 150 people attacking and destroying properties up to the second floor of the monks’ residence.

10:30 a.m. (VN time, September 27, 09):
Our communication is having difficulties, but we know that right now:
*The attacking mob has told the Monastic community that they have to leave the monastery within 2 days.
*The monks have been forced to go outside of their dormitories; they stand outside, chanting in the corridor.
*Two monks are in their ceremonial robes doing sitting meditation in front of their room.
*All community and personal belongings of the monks have been thrown outside.

10:50 a.m. (VN time, September 27, 09):
*The police have dragged Brothers Phap Hoi and Phap Tu outside (2 elder monks of the monastic community); they are dragging the monks by force like they would to animals.
*One Buddhist lay woman is being chased by the police; she is running and crying, calling out “We are in danger, dear teacher!”

11:06 a.m. ((VN time, September 27, 09):
*It’s raining in Bat Nha. The monks have to sit under the cold rain.
*The police is calling for large trucks to come and transport the monks away.
*All roads to the monastery are monitored. Lay friends try to come to help, but they are turned around from afar.
*The number of policemen present has increased. They have occupied all the monastic rooms; gathered all the monks to the field outside.
*The police has forced the monks to carry their backpacks outside and wait for trucks to come transport them away. Don’t know where they will be going.
*It’s still calm in the nuns’ hamlets.

11:23 a.m. ((VN time, September 27, 09):
*A large construction truck is heading towards the monks’ building named, “the Beginner’s Mind.”
*The monks are sitting together in circles under the cold rain.
*The attacking mob continues to curse and yell without stopping.
*Bells, Sutra books, clothings, personal belongings… are in disordered piles under the rain.

12:02 pm (VN time, september 27, 09):
*The monks are still being forced to sit outside in the rain, nothing to cover them. It’s still raining and very cold.
*Traffic police (in uniform) are controlling all the roads leading to Bat Nha Monastery. Police in civilian clothes are also on the scene to observe.

12:20 p.m. (VN time, September 27, 09):
*they are breaking all the doors and trying to get all the sisters to outside of the building. It continues to rain here.
*Sisters lock themselves inside.
*The mob, led by the police, are moving towards the sisters’ hamlet “May Dau Nui” (Clouds on the Mountain).
*4 taxi are going towards the main gate; can’t tell who’s inside.

James: Please forward this information to any and all practitioners of Thay, fellow Buddhists, non-Buddhists and anyone who might be in a position to help. We need immediate assistance from the international community, international media, the United Nations, Amnesty International and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASA. I emailed ASEAN/ASA via the email for the Political and Security Directorate at: ps.dir@asean.org If you are apart of any of these groups or a non-governmental organization (NGO) please help in anyway that you can think of. I'm worried that a Burma-like purge of the monasteries associated with Thay in Vietnam is coming and the best way to prevent that is to shine the media light upon this emergency.

So as soon as I finish this I am going to fire off emails to as many organizations as possible. We also need to mail the media--CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and FOX news or whatever news agencies you know about in your country. The focused attention of the world is powerful and even if we can't stop these crimes from happening we need to be as loud of a witness as possible. Some of these monks and nuns are mere teen-agers but all of the monastics are innocent, peace-loving people who are devoted to bettering the lives of everyone. Yet they are being treated like criminals and animals for doing nothing more than practicing their non-confrontational religion.

The Communist government has been trying to remove the monks for two months now claiming tension between the abbot and the monastics. However, the monastics say there is no such tension. They say the Communist government is trying to evict them because they are associated with the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh who recently called for religious controls to end and the religious police be disbanned in that country. This at a time when the U.S. has decided to remove Vietnam from the list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) regarding religious freedom!! We need everyone to urge the U.S. to change that status and put more pressure on the repressive government. You can email the U.S. President at www.whitehous.gov. If you'd like to sign a petition on this emergency please click here.

My guess is that the government is concerned with their growing popularity inside Vietnam and thus see them as a threat to their strangle-hold on the people just like the sangha in Burma and Tibet. Please, spread the word so that we can bolster our brave monastics and take up their cause as they are further and further restricted from doing so themselves. As we meditate please take a moment to concentrate upon the freedom that allows you to practice the Dharma. This incident in Vietnam is a timely reminder that our freedoms, joys, sorrows and overall lives in this moment are but a candleflame in the wind that will snuff out just as easily as it ignited.

* Guess what? There is scientific evidence that being nice to people makes for a better world. And you'll personally feel better about it.

Although the initiated cells are not considered to be reversible, the cells growing through the promotion stage are usually considered to be reversible, a very exciting concept. This is the stage that especially responds to nutritional factors. For example, the nutrients from animal based foods, especially the protein, promote the development of the cancer whereas the nutrients from plant-based foods, especially the antioxidants, reverse the promotion stage. This is a very promising observation because cancer proceeds forward or backward as a function of the balance of promoting and anti-promoting factors found in the diet, thus consuming anti-promoting plant-based foods tend to keep the cancer from going forward, perhaps even reversing the promotion. consequences.

James: In Buddhism vegetarianism isn't a requirement partly because not everyone lives in an area where vegetables are abundant such as in Tibet. That said, many practitioners are indeed vegetarians especially in the west. I have found that the main reason for doing so is often out of compassion for animals. This is in part because Buddhism teaches that we are all interconnected and interdependent, which includes animals of course. This means that it is very possible that the cow we would eat might have been our mother in a past life. That realization was a big reason I finally made the switch to a vegetarian diet awhile back. I just couldn't look at a plate of meat ever again in the same way once I heard that.

The second reason I most commonly hear for a vegetarian diet is out of health concerns and this report backs that up even more. Just something to think about but no one should commit to something that they aren't ready to do or think is necessary especially out of guilt, which is a big reason I like Buddhism. There aren't many strict "rules" to live by in Buddhism and using guilt as a tactic to get people to do what you want is very much frowned upon from what I have studied. It's a very accepting religion for the most part. It accepts you where ever you are in life as it understands and teaches we are all in different places due to different karmic needs. The Dharma allows people to practice on various levels of commitment and experience, which I found refreshing when I really started looking into Buddhism.

There isn't much need for leaders to "punish" followers as Buddhism doesn't believe in a "God" or a Savior. There is no such thing as "sin" as understood in the Judeo-Christian sense. That is left up to our karma so that in essence we will be our own judges of how well (or how not so well) we lived our lives. It's like an accurate, non-feeling, non-biased computer giving us a read out of how well we accomplished a task. It is void of emotional judgments and simply renders data from the information that was input from outside experiments (Karma--or how we lived our lives. The cause and effect of our past actions whether they were helpful or not to both us and others).

Usually when an issue of reform needs to be addressed in Buddhism it is due to the practitioner seeking out an experienced teacher on their own for advise and advisement on over-coming a problem or obstacle. Outside monasteries it is nearly unheard of from my understanding of monks chastising people for their actions other than to give them general advice in a Dharma discourse on how to live a happy life free of less suffering. Usually this is delivered to many people and individuals in the audience decide if what was said was applicable to them or not and if so how they go about changing is up to them.

However, even in stricter monasteries disobeying rules is done in a very compassionate and open manner by the community of monks so that there is less chance of personal vindictiveness being apart of it. Some might find rebirth a tiresome notion of having to go around and around until they realize total oneness but I find it compassionate. It allows us to make mistakes and learn from them through long experience over incalculable lifetimes rather than saying you only have one life to "get it right."

I like Penn & Teller, the magicians and debunkers of pseudoscience and general inanity. I regularly use clips from their show in my critical reasoning class, despite cringing every time Penn indulges in his “fuck this” and “motherfucker that” exercise in free speech (it distracts the students from the real point, not to mention the always lurking possibility of an administrator asking me about the appropriateness of foul language in a philosophy class). Heck, I even recently went to Vegas to see them in person, had a photo taken with Teller, and managed to tell him (to his surprise) about how my students enjoy stimulating discussions triggered by the duo’s antics.

But as we have learned recently from the Atheist Alliance / Dawkins Foundation / Bill Maher fiasco, “skepticism” is sometimes too broad a label, as someone can be properly skeptical in politics but not about pseudoscience (Maher), while someone else may be great at debunking astrology and magnetic therapy, and yet also unable to shed some huge blinders when it comes to politically charged issues. The latter is, unfortunately, P&T’s case, as made excruciatingly clear by the 2008 (season 6) episode “Being Green” of Bullshit! I just watched it last night, and I found myself wanting to call up Penn to let go a few expletives of my own. Fortunately, I don’t have his phone number.

P&T have been very good at showing that just because one is concerned about the environment it doesn’t mean that one can think critically or act rationally. Their demonstration of well meaning environmentalists signing up to ban the “dangerous and ubiquitous” chemical known as dihydrogen monoxide (i.e., water) is priceless. In “Being Green” they pull off some of the same useful cautionary tales by showing how easily people can be duped by “green guilt” into all sorts of nonsense, like walking around with gravel (for which they paid real money) in their pockets in order to feel “connected with the earth.” Even more disturbingly, the episode raises some serious questions about large scale exploitation of pro-environment sentiment by web-based companies selling “carbon offsets” that are calculated in ways which the companies themselves have a hard time explaining.

But you know even our smart debunkers are running out of arguments when they choose to introduce former Vice President and Nobel winner Al Gore as an “asshole.” Again, there may be some legitimate criticism of Gore’s arguments and even tactics, but to give him the same treatment Penn & Teller usually reserve for real assholes, like con artists who sell snake oil to gullible people, just seems the kind of ad hominem attack that reflects badly on the attacker.

And going back to the issue of carbon offsets for a moment. It is one thing to alert people that they need to look into the companies that offer them, how the offsets are calculated, and how they are used. But P&T explicitly compare these offsets to the indulgences to avoid hell that were sold by the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages (and which eventually helped bring about Martin Luther’s Reformation and the rise of Protestantism). I admit that it is funny to see P&T in medieval church garments, but really? Do they seriously mean to imply that the two are on the same level? Hell doesn’t exist, and the Vatican is a corrupt operation for making money and inducing misery (as P&T themselves masterfully showed in a more recent episode of their series), but we really are fucking up (to use Penn’s florid language) with the environment, and it is no joke.

Except, of course, that P&T’s libertarian blinders simply do not allow them to accept something that is so obvious to anyone who looks at the data and listens to the actual experts in atmospheric science: yes, Penn, global warming is happening; and yes, Teller, a good part of it is caused by human beings. Instead, the best P&T can do is to resuscitate a television weather man from the 1970s to assure us that global warming is a myth. And of course we have the predictable appearance of a guy from a libertarian think tank (the Cascade Policy Institute), who has no credentials that we know of, except being President of said think tank. (Note to self: create own think tank and declare yourself President. Make sure to have web site and business card. No thinking is actually necessary.) Needless to say, no one with a knowledgeable alternative viewpoint is presented during the show.

Instead, our libertarian heros keep telling us to relax, enjoy life, and drive SUVs, despite showing at the beginning of the episode a good number of frightening examples of all too real environmental destruction. Even Penn and Teller, however, have limits. Right at the end of the show, Penn enters a confessional (again with the Catholic Church!) and admits that he isn’t sure that there isn’t global warming, and that he isn’t positive that humans don’t cause it. But he tells us that even if that were true, heck, nobody knows what to do about it, so once again, go out and party all night long, because somehow technology and the god of free markets will solve every problem for us.

That, my dear Penn and Teller, truly is Bullshit!

That video was brought to my attention by Budding Buddhist and it has become one of my favorites. I watch it often. Recently His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama visited Taiwan and this was my favorite moment of the event, which I read in this article.

At the beginning of the ceremony, the Dalai Lama asked that a small table in front of his seat be removed. However, as officials were in the process of removing it, it collapsed, to a complete silence in the audience. The Dalai Lama broke the silence with loud laughter, which triggered more laughter and applauses from the crowd.

James: I can't get enough of the DL's smiling, laughing and relaxing demeanor. Every time I see his warm, cheery face I can't help but smile too and the same goes when I see or hear him laugh. His laugh is infectious and sincere like the unstifled belly laughs you hear from kids. They (like he) are usually unencumbered with feelings of low self-esteem or a compulsive neurosis over their laugh and body language. That said, at the same time he's that big brother who has seen a lot and traveled many places both in our physical world and within the dungeons of the mind. The older brother who gives you the exact advice needed without being condescending, mean or grumpy.

In fact I can't think of a time when I've seen or heard of the Dalai Lama being grumpy--have any of you? He seems like the kind of person who can give you criticism with a smile and a laugh to where you thank-him for it. He truly is a great master and I really like that he goes against a common view of a Buddhist master as being stern, cold and always intensely serious. I'm not anywhere near the understanding of the Dalai Lama or Thich Nhat Hanh but I'd say that laughter and enlightenment go hand in hand. It's certainly a great way to reduce stress and suffering and besides that; in the end (as Shinzen said recently)what's their to do but laugh at this silly world?

~Peace to all beings~

* Olivia ("Dr. Tatiana") Judson on why British libel law is bad for science and for democracy.