The Harsh Real World - thoughts on the practicality of Buddhism, and thoughts on Capoeiristic 'buy da game'

I'm a nice guy. Too much of a nice guy, and so people roll over me. Is it relevant to subscribe to the Buddhist belief that: it's okay, they'll get their come-uppings...and be nice to everyone? Is it that only love and compassion can pacify those who are angry and hateful?

(I've made up my mind to start a you-tube video blog in the near future)

I still subscribe to this. Hating others who hate you is simply like holding hot coal to throw at somebody. But what I need to learn is to become a good actor. Paradoxically, being self-less and considering the well-being of others can sometimes mean being firm, or being outspoken, or vocally shooting others down.

"Your car has 150,625 miles on it Mr. Poon" she said with a firm unwavering voice. "Do you know what I'm saying?"

"Yeah, I understand what you're saying," I said.

"I mean, I have pictures of your car here. Does your car have a spoiler, alloy wheels or something? No. You haven't even looked at the market have you? You haven't even looked to see if our offer can buy you a car of similar quality as yours? You just want more money because you want more money."

I'm speechless. Silent.

When I looked at cars with my father over the weekend, and test drove a manual Toyota Corolla, and then an automatic Hyundai Accent at another dealership, my father kept saying to the dealer agent (who was a really nice friendly guy), "yeah, the Corolla was better, less noisy." "Yeah, the Corolla was cheaper. Their rebate was more"

"Jeez," I said to my dad after Mike, the agent, left us in the room. "You notice that? He's all down-beaten and unhappy now because you said all those things!"

"You gotta do that," he said to me. "How else are we gonna get a good deal?"


The insurance companies are unfair. Their employees get promotions and pats on the back if they can minimize claims, give 1000$ for cars worth 2000$, 3000$ for those worth 5000$. In the end, they go home happy that they'll be promoted, and be able to put the kids through college and buy that nice boat. Why don't they go home with a guilty conscience? Is it good if I stand up to them and stop being nice, try to make them see me as a person, as a human? Maybe that way she'd reconsider the ethical nature of her job?


The point is to stay peaceful, compassionate, and joyful on the inside, but to act/perform/pretend/bluff/dance/exaggerate/flare/'buy da game(in Brazilian accent).


Future plans：
I've made up my mind. I really have. This is my last semester at Albany. I'm moving to Boston around January. Academia prevents me from reading fiction, and prevents me from writing. I already have ideas for 2 books, 1 of which I've been working on for most of the year. Academia also prevents me from interacting in the 'real world', the world of "real men" as Marx puts it, with real social interactions, real activities, not just ideas and thoughts conjured in the minds of idealists. My Capoeira Batizado on November 17th will mark my graduation, even if Batizado technically means baptizing, a sort of beginning, and this works, because every day, every second, every karmic moment is a beginning.

Peaceful Uprising and Violent Repression in Burma

If you haven't heard, there have been massive peaceful uprisings in Burma against the dictatorial government, which has responded with violence and repression resulting in 9 killed thus far. What interests me the most is that the Buddhism monks are at the forefront of the uprisings. This is really interesting, especially in contrast to my previous blog entry linking to an article by Zizek (a renowned cultural studies academic with Marxist persuasion) who critiques Buddhism for being passive and complacent and going hand-in-hand with exploitative Capitalism. Here are some quotes I've taken from this BBC article:

"monks in Pakokku briefly took government officials hostage"

"Tens of thousands of monks are now involved."

"A group called the Alliance of All Burmese Buddhist Monks has emerged to co-ordinate the protests, and on 21 September it issued a statement describing the military government as "the enemy of the people".
They pledged to continue their protests until they had "wiped the military dictatorship from the land of Burma", and they have called on people across Burma to join them."

Wow. It'll be exciting to see if anything progressive comes out of this.

Slavoj Zizek's Critique of Star Wars and (Western) Buddhism

Revenge of Global Finance

An interesting article criticizing the pop-buddhism in Star Wars Episode III, and how Buddhism, according to Zizek, goes hand in hand with neo-liberal Capitalism.

Thoughts?

Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

Thought itself is the thinker.

There is no unmoving mover behind the movement. It is only movement. It is not correct to say that life is moving, but life is movement itself. Life and movement are not two different things. In other words, there is no thinker behind the thought. Thought itself is the thinker. If you remove the thought, there is no thinker to be found. Here we cannot fail to notice how this Buddhist view is diametrically opposed to the Cartesian cogito ergo sum: 'I think, therefore I am.'

This quote is taken from What The Buddha Taught, an excellent book on Buddhism that tells it straight up what Buddhism is really about, without all the self-helpy-ness, without all the new-agey feel good stuff. It's straight up history, it's straight up philosophy. It's good.

We are merely the wholeness of our stream of thoughts and actions, and this philosophy which Gatama taught 2000 years ago is confirmed by the recent cutting edge technology of neuroscience, and neuroscientists are saying the same thing: we have no soul or consciousness per se. There is no pilot behind the helm in our brain. Our consciousness IS our thoughts.

Okay, so what? What practical use does this have? It means don't get worked up about things or people that piss you off. They shouldn't piss you off, because you shouldn't take it personal. It's just the conditions and causes and effects that has led this person to be annoying. Take it with a grain of salt, and instead of yelling back, judge the situation objectively and act in the best way for the offender. As for good joyous occasions, enjoy them, but don't grasp onto them like they're the key to happiness.

I write this not only for others, but for myself. This stuff is tough to do in real life, and it helps to get it on paper, or more accurately, get it into the network system of information known as the internet.

Meditation - Death Awareness

"If you were to fall from an airplane without a parachute you would be fully aware of death's approach. Imagine this is actually happening to you, and check what thoughts and feelings pass through your mind. The reality of your situation in life is not so different." (73)

"Think of the people you know who are still alive. Contemplate that every one of these people will die. And so will you. There are several billion people on the planet right now, but one hundred years from now, all these people will be gone. You yourself will be dead. Try to experience this fact with your entire being." (72)

"Why are we unable to accept death as calmly as we accept yesterday's fresh flowers wilting today?" (69)

"The principle benefit of practicing this meditation is that it forces us to decide what attitudes and activities are truly worthwhile." (70)

- How to Meditate, Kathleen McDonald

There have been many HIV-infected people who, of course were devastated and suicidally depressed at first, but later became happier and lived more fulfilling lives than before they were infected. Suddenly every little moment of the day became so much more important, so they treated each little moment as if it were the most important.

All of us, not just the terminally ill, should live life with death in mind. We need to prepare for death. A nurse I met who sees many people in her hospital pass away, said that those who died the most peacefully were those who held no grudges, took care of their wills and stuff way beforehand, and didn't have any other baggage hanging over their heads. Those who weren't prepared died in despair. Also, living life with death in mind avoids the problem of when our loved ones die, having regretful thoughts of "I wish I had...if only I told him/her that...now it's too late."

But more importantly, living life with death in mind makes us think twice about being lazy, makes us think twice about holding onto grudges, makes us think twice about putting off dues that we owe to others.

The Consciousness (part 4) - the heart of Buddhism is not reincarnation, nor karma

When people think Buddhism, they think karma and reincarnation. But it is actually a different lesson that is much more at the heart of Buddhist thinking than karma and reincarnation is in my opinion. That’s emptiness.
Emptiness is the true nature of all things, but most of us are deluded with the illusion that things are inherent and exist in and of themselves, independently of causes and conditions. This isn’t true of anything. “A car, for example, is a collection of pieces of steel, glass, plastic, rubber, and engine, etc., put together by people in a factory. We give the name ‘car’ to this collection, but if we look for a real, concrete, independently existing car, it cannot be found” (McDonald, How to Meditate, 57). Not only is this car made up of these parts, but of actions and reactions that led to the creation of it, and that will eventually lead to the ‘death’ of it when it deteriorates and separates. The same goes for people; people exist only “in dependence upon skin, blood, bones, legs, arms, organs and so forth…in dependence upon thoughts, feelings, perceptions, sensations…in turn, each of these exists in dependence upon the previous conscious experiences that gave rise to it” (ibid 57). Imagine taking all these pieces apart and look for the "I". Where is "I"? In the heart? In the brain? In the eyes? "I" does not exist concretely. Think of taking apart a bike...you got wheels, a chain, some nuts and bolts. Where is the bike? Start to put it back together again? At what point does it become a bike? Just think of a person as a product in the moment within the process of actions and reactions that create and disintegrate the body, and the process of actions and reactions that create and disintegrate they mind (because I don’t believe in reincarnation, but if you do, then the mind is not created or disintegrated, but an ever-changing flow).
So? What’s the point? The point is that ignorance breeds unhappiness. When we find a partner to “love” we think we love them because they are this quality and that, and we like those qualities so we like the person. But those qualities are empty…they don’t exist independently and concretely, they’re dependent on actions and reactions, causes and conditions…they will change. Will you still love them when they change? Another lesson to take away from this, if someone hurt us in the past, is there any reason to hold a grudge against them?

The Consciousness (part 3)

"Mind is not a physical thing that has thoughts and feelings; it is those very experiences."
(This and all the following is taken from how to meditate by Kathleen McDonald

Everyone wants happiness yet few of us seem to find it. In our search for satisfaction we go from one relationship to another, one job to another, one country to another. We study art and medicine, train to be tennis players and typists; have babies, race cars, write books, and grow flowers. We spend our money on home entertainment systems, mobile phones, iPods, handheld computers, comfortable furniture, and vacations in the sun...

There is nothing wrong with wanting happiness; there is nothing wrong with any of these attempts to find it. The problem is that we see things like relationships, possessions, and adventures as having some intrinsic ability to satisfy us, as being the cause of happiness. But they cannot be - simply because they do not last. Everything by nature constantly changes and eventually disappears: our body, our friends, all our belongings, the environment. Our dependence on impermanent things and our clinging to the rainbow-like happiness they bring cause only disappointment and grief, not satisfaction and contentment.

We do experience happiness with things outside ourselves, but it doesn't truly satisfy us or free us from our problems. It is poor-quality happiness, unreliable and short-lived. This does not mean that we should give up our friends and possessions in order to be happy. Rather, what we need to give up are our misconceptions about them and our unrealistic expectations of what they can do for us.


Not only do we see them as permanent and able to satisfy us; at the root of our problems is our fundamentally mistaken view of reality. We believe instinctively that people and things exist in and of themselves, from their own side; that they have an inherent nature, an inherent thing-ness. This means that we see things as having certain qualities abiding naturally within them; we think that they are, from their own side, good or bad, attractive or unattractive. These qualities seem to be out there, in the objects themselves, quite independent of our viewpoint and everything else. We think for example, that chocolate is inherently delicious or that success is inherently satisfying. But surely, if they were, they would never fail to give pleasure or to satisfy, and everyone would experience them in the same way.

Our mistaken idea is deeply ingrained and habitual; it colors all our relationships and dealings with the world. We probably rarely question whether the way we see things is the way they actually exist, but once we do it will be obvious that our picture of reality is exaggerated and one-sided; that the good and bad qualities we see in things are actually created and projected by our own mind.

According to Buddhism there is lasting, stable happiness, and everyone has the potential to experience it. The causes of happiness lie within our own mind, and methods for achiving it can be practiced by anyone, anywhere, in any lifestyle - living in the city, working an eight-hour job, raising a family, playing on weekends.

By practicing these methods - meditation - we can learn to be happy at any time, in any situation, even difficult and painful ones. Eventually we can free ourselves of problems like dissatisfaction, anger, and anxiety and, finally, by realizing the actual way that things exist, we will eliminate completely the very source of all disturbing states of mind so that they will never arise again.

The mind is a nonphysical kind of energy, and its function is to know, to experience. It is awareness itself. It is clear in nature and reflects everything that it experiences, just as a still lake reflects the surrounding mountains and forests.

Mind changes from moment to momnent. It is a beginningless continuum, like an ever-flowing stream: the previous mind-moment gave rise to this mind-moment, which gives rise to the next mind-moment, and so on. It is the general name given to the totality of our conscious and unconscious experiences: each of us is the center of a world of thoughts, perceptions, feelings, memories, and dreams - all of these are mind.

Mind is not a physical thing that has thoughts and feelings; it is those very experiences. Being nonphysical, it is different from the body, although mind and body are interconnected and interdependent. mind - consciousness - is carried through our body by subtle physical energies, which also control our movement and vital functions. This relationship explains why, for example, physical sickness and discomfort can affect our state of mind and why, in turn, mental attitudes can both give rise to and heal physical problems.

Mind can be compared to an ocean, and momentary mental events such as happiness, irritation, fantasies, and boredom to the waves that ise and fall on its surface. Just as the waves can subside to reveal the stillness of the ocean's depths, so too is it possible to calm the turbulence of our mind to reveal its natural pristine clarity.

The ability to do this lies within the mind itself, and the key to the mind is meditation.

The Consciousness (part 2) - You can shape your own brain!

These quotes pretty much speak for themselves. They can be found on pp72-79 (Times Magazine "Mind and Body Special Issue" Jan 29, 2007):

Neuroscientist Pascual instructed the members of one group to play [the piano] as fluidly as they could, trying to keep to the metronome's 60 beats per minute. Every day for five days, the volunteers practiced for two hours...At the end of each day's practice session, they sat beneath a coil of wire that sent a brief magnetic pulse into the motor cortex of their brain...In the piano players, the TMS mapped how much of the motor cortex controlled the finger movements needed for the piano exercise. What the scientists found was that after a week of practice, the stretch of motor cortex devoted to these finger movements took over surrounding areas like dandelions on a suburban lawn. The finding was in line with a growing number of discoveries at the time showing that greater use of a particular muscle causes the brain to devote more cortical real estate to it...He extended the experiment by having another group of volunteers merely think about practicing the piano exercise...when the scientists compared the TMS data on the two groups...they glimpsed a revolutionary idea about the brain: the ability of mere thought to alter the pysical structure and function of our gray matter. For what the TMS revealed was that the region of motor cortex that controls the piano-playing fingers also expanded in the brains of volunteers who imagined playing the music - just as it had in those who actually played it...the discovery showed that mental training had the power to change the physical structure of the brain.

For decades, the prevailing dogma in neuroscience was that the adult human brain is essentially immutable, hardwired, fixed in form and function, so that by the time we reach adulthood we are pretty much stuck with what we have...But research in the past few years has overthrown the dogma. In its place has come the realization that the adult brain retains impressive powers of 'neuroplasticity' - the ability to change its structure and function in response to experience....Even when the brain suffers a trauma late in life, it can rezone itself like a city in a frenzy of urban renewal. If a stroke knocks out, say, the neighborhood of motor cortext that moves the right arm, a new...therapy can coax next-door regions to take over the function of the damaged area. The brain can be rewired.
...
Something as seemingly insubstantial as a thought can affect the very stuff of the brain, altering neuronal connections in a way that can treat mental illness or, perhaps, lead to a greater capacity for empathy and compassion. It may even dial up the supposedly immovable happiness set point.
...
Jeffrey Schwartz and colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles...had become intrigued with the therapeutic potential of [the Buddhist practice] of mindfulness meditation...After 10 weeks of mindfulness-based therapy, 12 out of 18 patients improved significantly. Before-and-after brain scans showed that activity in the orbital frontal cortex, the core of the obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) circuit, had fallen dramatically and in exactly the way that drugs effective against OCD affect the brain...concluding that "the mind can change the brain."...For the monks as well as the patients with depression or OCD, the conscious act of thinking about their thoughts in a particular way rearranged the brain.

[emphasii are mine]

My conclusion: If the average American would be as concerned about working out and conditioning the mind for greater compassion, and less self-cherishing ego, as much as they were concerned about working out and conditioning their bodies for greater abs, biceps, and triceps, we would be a much much happier nation, as well as a much much less superficial one too. Although the psychiatric practice of Cognitive Behavior Therapy is one way to condition the mind, it's very expensive. Meditation is free. You just have to learn how to do it.

The Consciousness (part 1)

"Neuroscientists find least controversial...the idea that our thoughts, sensations, joys and aches consist entirely of physiological activity in the tissues of the brain. Consciousness does not reside in an ethereal soul that uses the brain...; consciousness is the activity of the brain." - Time Magazine Mind and Body Special Issue (Jan 29, 2007)

I found some really amazing articles with profound meanings in this Time issue that I think everyone should read! So I'm going to give a little teaser here by quoting some really interesting stuff about the mind, and giving my own comments. First, let me preface by saying that science can be a precise tool to understand the universe, while spirituality can be an approximate one. I don't see how we can consider science and spirituality as irreconcilable. Some religious explanations have already understood these things that science is only beginning to scrape the surface of. The thing is just that religion usually understands these things by use of metaphors and analogies.

The Illusion of Control

Using functional MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), cognitive neuroscientists can almost read people's thoughts from the blood flow in their brains. They can tell, for instance, whether a person is thinking about a face or a place or whether a picture the person is looking at is of a bottle or a shoe.
...
Surgery that severs the corpus callosum, separating the two hemispheres, spawns two consciousnesses within the same skull, as if the soul could be cleaved in two with a knife.
...
And when the physiological activity of the brain ceases, as far as anyone can tell the person's consciousness goes out of existence.

If we have machines that can somewhat read our minds, how hard is it to believe that people with genetic mutations can too? I've had someone "read my mind" before. What he did was he would ask me to think of and focus on my mom's maiden name, and he would write it down on a pad. He did the same telling me to think of my high school's name, city I was born in, a random word, and other things. He got them all right. I think those who can't believe this are close minded. Think: there are tons of waves and things flying around us everyday - light waves, sound waves, microwaves, electro-magnetic waves, radio waves, whatever waves that are used for phones or wireless. Our human body can only detect light and sound waves. Some animals can't even detect light and sound! We had the fortune to evolve from amoebas and develop organic sensors for light and sound. How hard is it to believe that some, through genetic mutation, have developed sensors for mind waves? Our machines can do it already.

Daily Life Lesson 1

I never understood why it was that those who are most egotistical and arrogant are the ones with the least confidence. Today I learned one reason why.

People with no confidence in themselves think they cannot help others. "I'm useless, what can I do for others?" So they naturally only think about how to make themselves happy, they become selfish, only thinking about their needs, and what others can do for them. It's a cycle. They can't even make themselves happy, which reinforces the idea that they can't help others, so this lowers their confidence even more, which makes them unhappy for feeling useless.

But as soon as you start helping others, then you begin to see where your strengths are. Everyone has some sort of expertise that they can offer in service to their communities, in service to people. The people we help benefit from this, and this boosts our confidence, making ourselves happier, and giving us the drive we need to continue helping others in the way that we know how to.

Confidence is not the same as arrogance. A confident person is humble, and doesn't see the need to boast his/her strengths. His/her actions can speak for themselves, and the main purpose is to help others. An arrogant person boasts about his/her strengths. The intentions are not to help others, but to show off. People will resent this, and the arrogant person will not feel happy.