what to do about india?

we had a heated discussion last thursday. anton kept coming back at his idée fix: what to do about india?

the question rubbed some people in the class the wrong way. anton's relentless persistence seemed a form of ego-trip.

but india is part of the ONE, and we are part of the ONE. we shouldn't pretend india doesn't exist. we are an individualistic society. we've had a history of political isolationism.  if we all care for what is close to us. isn't that an excuse to inaction? of course not.

helping india is helping the ONE. helping west africa, syria, sudan needs is helping INDIA. helping our homeless and our poor right here in miami is helping the ONE.

in oneness/language india is really not that far. this is where epictetus comes in with his advice of doing what is most immediate to each one of us. there was a passionate argument from angie and destiny in this regard.

what ifs "close" is too comfy?

but speaking in onenes/language, geographical distance is relative. india as near as our own backyard.

how come?

oneness cannot be segregated.

yet, anton may rejoin: "if each part is as valid for the constitution of the whole, the oneness may present --as valid-- an appeal for india proper, over our own backyard."

& in the end this point is also valid. no one can disown it. the only exception being that doing your dharma here, in liberty city or little haiti or little havana, is as valid.

from oneness we get pluralism: there is no one exclusive path in the ONE. as the gita counsels:

As people approach me, so I receive them. All paths lead to me.

so?

have the courage to do what you need to do.

so, what have you learned from the gita? (second post for comment, due wednesday 11pm)

the battle for berlin, 1945

fight this battle!

midterm behind us, next, bring your dhammapadas for tuesday 's reading

metaphoring autopoesis

what i mean by metaphoring is entertaining spiritual possibilities with the aim of producing worshiping dispositions. (worship here means just devout attention.)

devout means deliberate & disciplined.

attention means focused and persistent.

buddhist ecology (not what you think)

i found this great article by aspiring buddhist and evolutionary biologist david barash for aeon. 

Part of this sensitivity to nature is a Buddhist grasp of suffering, whose existence constitutes the first of Buddhism's Four Noble Truths. It is no coincidence that Henry David Thoreau, America's first great environmentalist, was also a student of Indian religion and the first translator of the ‘Lotus Sutra’ into English. In this classic teaching, Shakyamuni Buddha compares the ‘Dharma’ — the true nature of reality — to a soothing rain that nourishes all beings.

a buddhist idea of self can shed light on a more progressive (darker) view of ecology:

Each of us arises in conjunction with others, dependent on and inseparable from those others. Trying to locate an inviolate particle of selfhood within anyone (or indeed, in any living thing) is not like finding a solid pit inside an apricot. It is more like peeling an onion: we are layers within layers, with nothing at the centre. Or, like an eddy in a river, each of us can be identified and pointed to, but nonetheless, there isn’t any persistent ‘us’: just a constantly moving pattern of flow, with everyone composed entirely of non-self stuff, all of it passing through. For Buddhists and ecologists alike, we are all created from spare parts scavenged from the same cosmic junk-heap, from which ‘our’ component atoms and molecules are on temporary loan, and to which they will eventually be recycled.

let's be sincere about our doubts:

High on the list of such absurdities are the phenomena of iddhi, supernatural events that are supposed to be generated by extremely skilful and committed meditation. They appear often in Buddhist texts, and I don’t believe a word of them. Higher meditators are claimed to possess various supernatural abilities, becoming invisible on demand, walking through walls, on water, through the air, hearing people and other beings very far away, mind-reading, recalling past lives, even possessing ‘divine eyes’ that permit them to see the arising and passing away of karma.

barash admits the absurdity of it all. ecological poesis has an inseparable noir component.

Ecology is many things: a science, a world view, a cautionary tale. It can be nearly incomprehensible in its mathematical thickets, downright tedious in its verbal pomposity, theoretically abstruse yet dirty-under-the-fingernails practical, often ignored and derided although desperately needed as a voice for basic planetary hygiene and a practical corrective to human hubris. It has been called the ‘subversive science’, since it subverts our egocentric insistence on separateness, and with it, our inclination to ride roughshod over the rest of the natural world.

methinks some of this can still be salvaged as metaphoring auto-poesis.

Notes on Buddhism

... l'homme n'est pas ce qu'il est, il est ce qu'il n'est pas.-- Jean Paul Sartre

Buddhism is a spiritual movement founded by Siddharta Gautama in India in the 6th century BC, the first multi-cultural spiritual tradition in the higher civilization of the Eurasian world.

Buddhism lasted in India for some 1500 years, until it disappeared from India as that country became progressively dominated by Islam. Buddhism moved then to Ceylon, China (first century AD), Korea (fourth century AD), and Japan (sixth century AD); eastward into Burma, Thailand (third century AD), Cambodia (fourth century AD), Indonesia (third century AD) and the other countries of southeastern Asia with the exception of the Philippines. It became the dominant spiritual movement in Tibet (eighth century AD), and Mongolia (thirteenth century AD).

The teaching of Buddha was handed down to succeeding generations in the form of a threefold refuge: the Buddha, the teaching and the community. These are three aspects of the Buddha reality.

1- The teaching itself is a form of Buddha presence. The teaching is supreme insofar as it is in virtue of the teaching that a person is guided to experience the saving illumination concerning the nature of sorrow and the way to release from sorrow. 2- The community has a certain priority since it carries and sustain the entire Buddhist tradition. 3- The doctrine would have had no inner development or preservation or propagation except through the community. Yet supreme over everything is the Buddha reality.

The Message

Buddha's teaching was transmitted orally to his disciples.

1- The theory, 2- the path and the 3- sangha. 

Reality

Reality is composed of dharmas (components) or a succession of microseconds of existence. Buddha departed from the teachings of must Hinduism by not having a precise eschatology (a theory of final things). Life is a stream, a river, of manifestations and extinctions. There's nothing permanent and thereby no fixed self. To make clear this concept Buddhism puts forward the theory of five constituents 1- rupa or corporeality or physical form, 2- feelings or sensations (vedana), 3- ideations (sanna), 40 mental formations or dispositions (sankhara), and consciousness (vinana). Human existence is only a composite of these aggregates.

Karma

Buddhists accept the notion of karma, however, this presented a problem with their notion of no-self. How could one prove that one can reincarnate with a no self, i.e. with no permanent subject? Some scholars have considered this to be unsolvable. The relations between existences has been compared to the analogy of fire, which maintains itself unchanged in appearance and yet is very different in every moment. A sort of ever changing identity.

The Four Noble Truths (hinting at the path)

There are four noble truths. 1-The truth of sorrow, 2-the truth that sorrow originates within us from the craving of pleasure, 3-the truth that this craving can be eliminated and 4-the truth that a methodical path must be followed to obtain this goal. Otherwise human beings would remain indefinitely in samsara.

The Eightfold Path

Hence Buddha formulated the law of dependent origination or paticca-samuppada whereby one condition arises out of another, which in turn arises out of prior conditions. Given the awareness of this law, the question arises as to how one may escape the continually renewed cycle of births, suffering and death. There must be a purification that leads to overcoming this process. Such a liberating purification is effected by following the Noble Eightfold Path constituted by 1-the right views, 2-the right aspiration, 3-the right speech, 4-the right conduct, 5-the right livelihood, 6-the right effort, 7-the right mindfulness and 8-the right meditational attainment.

Nirvana

The aim is to be rid of the delusion of the ego, freeing oneself from the fetters of this mundane world. One who succeeds has achieved enlightenment. The term is nirvana translated as dying out
But nirvana is not extinction. And Buddha repudiated this. Buddhists search for salvation, not annihilation. Although nirvana is often presented as negative, it can be seen as the ultimate goal for salvation in Buddhism.

what's your favorite gita theme? (post for comment)

there are specific themes in the gita:

"fight the battle," action in inaction, the importance of karma yoga, one's duty,  the idea of karma vs dharma, the gunas, salvation, spiritual discipline, ignorance of avidya, maya, etc.

what's your favorite (if it's not here bring it forth),

go ahead.

Today we're reading from the Bhagavad Gita

a (yoga) socio-political manifesto

atRifF  

Nature has priority.¹ It's here first and sustains everything.

The guiding principle is ahimsa. Non-violence translated into deep & skeptic ecology, i.e, the interdependence of human and non-human life in a world out of joint. We cannot understand ourselves if we estrange ourselves from nature, but we're already estranged!    

Socio-political should start bottom-up, not top-down.² We don't need to wait for the top to change. As actors close to the local/regional nodes of action, we can acquire the know-how to build connections and mobilize public opinion to challenge institutional and social alienation.

* From the bottom ---> up: The initial transformation is individual but it doesn't stop there. We are ONE: There is no true path without some form of dharma/activism.³ 

* The aporia of human anthropocentric emancipation: We need to see non-human life under a different optic. The Greeks of ancient times didn't realize that non-Greeks were persons. American plantation owners in the late-18th Century didn't realize that blacks were not inferior brutes. The majority of Americans don't realize that non-human animals are more than just foodstuff. We have an obligation to treat animals with dignity⁴ (our present animal farming needs to be transformed from intensive farming ----> extensive farming).

* The aporia of pollution vs. development: Blaming corporations in order to feel safely excluded from the pollution cycle, while feeding the very thing we try to prevent. We are the world's worst polluters!⁵

* Though it may be a little late, the move towards eco-conservation is a social imperative. Let's fight to stop deforestation, to protect sea life from extinction (due to overfishing), ensuring ecological diversity for future generations. Yes, it seems daunting, but it begins by understanding, doing & telling others. 

* The aporia of technology vs. emancipation: What makes us human is a result of our cultural evolution: language, rituals, arts and technology. Yet, our anthropocentric-based culture is leading us to a dead end. Let's move from an anthropocentric to a bio-centric culture!⁶  Technology = Culture.Technology is not the enemy. Humans cannot live without technology. Yet, technology has the imperative to preserve the delicate balance of Nature. 

* We must learn to curb and manage our waste: Reuse, donate, recycle! Food is the primary ecological exchange of energy. Our corporate-driven, production-intensive food paradigm needs to be redefined, from fast food ----> slow food. ⁷ Let's switch our eating habits and bring back food sacralization. Let's turn environmental degradation and human exploitation into eco-erotics!⁸

* The aporia of development vs. under-development⁹: Our post-Capitalist global society is craft-deprived. Globalization has outsourced our manufacturing and trade/skills base. Let's get back to cooking, arts and crafts, organic horticulture,¹⁰ etc. We should balance our individualistic tendencies with cooperation & communitarianism!

* Let's change our cities, fighting urban decay with environmental sustainability, changing ugliness into beauty.

* Let's become eco-Romantics!¹¹ engaging in heritage conservation, infrastructure efficiency,  mass transit, regional integration, human scale, and institutional integrity.

* Let's transform our neighborhoods, building sustainable structures, limiting urban sprawl, reducing car dependence, promoting pedestrian friendly urbanism.¹²

What to do? 

Flipping Marxist formalism, let's turn the base into the superstructure. Our bid is for a different form of emergence: 

 anti-advertising, 

social graffiti,

urban farming,

nonviolence, 

anarcho-syndicalism, 

building consensus,

civil disobedience,

use social media to advance social change 

potlatch

ACT NOW!

____________

¹ Aristotle's naturalism can be seen as a forerunner of eco-ethics, as expressed by his dictum Nature does nothing in vain. John Clearly, Aristotle and the Many Senses of Priority, (Southern Illinois University Press, 1988) p. 60. ² We don't have to choose between markets (Welfare Capitalism) or governments, as instruments of emancipation (Communism, planned-economy Socialism). Nor is there need to eliminate markets, trade, private ownership, the welfare state, or the institution of the corporation. What we need to do is bring about new practices for each of these institutions appropriate to a balance between prosperity and conservation. This is the force of emergence: Millions of people joining voluntary movements, discovering that the good life is more fulfilling than the endless cycle of accumulation and consumption. Professor Steven Buechler makes a similar (hopeful) point: "Movements can be crucial switching stations in the direction of history (...)  vital free spaces that promote democratization and restore a meaningful public sphere." See Steven M. Buechler, Social Movements in Advanced Capitalism: The Political Economy and Cultural Construction of Social Activism (Oxford University Press: 2000) p. 214.  Enacting Niyama at the social level can bring about a life of material sufficiency with cultural, intellectual, and spiritual abundance in balance with the environment. By osmosis, the social level can bring about needed changes in the political sphere. ³ One's embeddedness in a particular context: job, household/family, or community can lead one to recognize a problem, learn about community needs, and find a way to make life better through new -or reconfigured- social linkages.  ⁴ According to philosopher Tom Regan, animals have "inherent value" as subjects-of-a-life, and cannot be regarded as a means to an end. See, Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, (University of California Berkeley, 2005) p. 245. ⁵ The United States has 4.2% of the world's population and produces 24% of the world's C0₂ emissions. ⁶ One must be careful not to write off culture, as if humans have fallen from paradise straight into some artificial exile of civilization. This is where the ancient Greeks can help. They understood that us humans are not completely "natural" but rather the site of a collision of nature and culture, which uniquely defines us. See Bruce Thornton, Plagues of the Mind: The New Epidemic of False Knowledge (ISI Books, 1999) p. 96.  ⁷ "Slow food" goes against the received notion that cheap food = good food. Carlo Petrini, the man behind this movement defends the "unpolitical" idea that cheap food is really expensive, bad food, when compared with good, clean, carefully harvested food. He is right. In his book, Petrini advocates the idea of "gusto" (taste) and diversity. There is a correlation between slow food and health, which makes slow food more enjoyable. The locus for this revolucion is la osteria, a place where one can find "traditional cuisine run as a family business with simple service, welcoming atmosphere, good wine and moderate prices." See Carlo Petrini, Slow Food, the Case for Taste (Columbia University Press, 2003) p. 51-58. "Cheap food" is a Capitalist ploy to misrepresent real capital allocation and profit in the name of "abundance," hiding government subsidies for monoculture and intensive production which end up as profit for Big Business in food and energy. Take for instance American corn policies: We subsidize corn while (protect Monsanto's right to sell it to farmers as genetically modified seed). Coincidentally, corn is the foodstuff staple for raising cattle in the US (funded by whom?) and an energy commodity. Wonder why such a labor-intensive commodity such as meat is so cheap? Corn is heavily fertilized — both with chemicals like nitrogen and with subsidies from Washington. Over the past decade, the Federal Government has poured more than $50 billion into the corn industry, keeping prices for the crop — at least until corn ethanol skewed the market — artificially low. That's your Big Mac @ McDonald's, a $5 meal bargain, with 1,400 calories (more than half the daily recommended requirement for adults). ⁸ I thank my friend Gene Ray for his suggestion. I'd like to spin his idea of eco/erotics as an embodied striving for well-being that connects us with the animal and non-animal other (life). The opposite of eco/erotics is eros gone astray, a perversion of Nishkam Karma. A desire in the form of a will-to-control that aims to secure itself by mastering all around it. Ridden with anxiety, this eros reduces other to self. In fact, there are examples of such versions in modern times: Certain "peak" historic moments, when factors motivating nations and individuals, such as the desires for profit, security, and hegemony got transformed militaristic erotics. ⁹ It turns out that the mantra of "emancipated" Communist development in Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean throughout the 1960's-1980's consisted in mimicking the Capitalist "anthropocentric development" model: 1- constant growth, 2- domination of nature, 3- industrialization and technologization of production and society at the expense of environmental degradation, abandonment of agriculture (land reform in this case meant very little, since arbitrary and exploitative prices were set by the bureaucrats, not by the farmers), massive migration to the cities, urban unemployment and loss of crafts skills. The deterioration of nature brought by these mistaken policies, was invoked by the communist  bureaucracies as a step in the right direction for the attainment of development. ¹⁰ Who would think of pursuing horticultural studies in Miami, now, when the expected move of disenfranchised farmers is from the rural areas to the city? Precisely! This overall migration has to do with the switch from farmer-produced to corporate-produced agriculture. How can one reverse it? By encouraging a moresimple living. Diversifying instead of homogenizing food consumption; by making good, simple food (not gourmet food) a desired commodity, so that corporations are forced to alter their mode of production. Surely, one must be watchful of corporation's good intentions! It's all about awareness. Are people ready for it? After the subprime mortgage crisis, the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, andBP's gulf disaster, the answer is yes. ¹¹ The new eco-Romantic is committed to ecological flourishing, but she is neither anti-technology, nor naive in her political expectations about Messianic utopias. The traditional Romantic lived in a paradox he was blind to. (H)e deprecated technology from his studio in the industrial-brought comfort of the pre-Modern city. We must see the good and bad in technology. The Industrial Revolution cannot be simply undone (the remedy would be worst than the disease). It needs to be transformed. Technology can serve us in using the ecosystem resources more efficiently. On the other hand, there is a strong historical relationship between growth in economic output and growing human demands on the earth's finite ecosystem. We've pushed since 1950's the human burden on the planet's regenerative systems, its soils, air, water, fisheries, and forestry systems beyond what the planet can sustain. Anthropocentric "development" is not the answer. Pushing for economic growth beyond the planet's sustainable limits accelerates the rate of breakdown of the whole. It also intensifies the competition between rich and poor for the earth's remaining output of life-sustaining resources. ¹² See my  "Miami's Urban Mess.

patanjali YOGA (post for comment #3)

well, that was an intense reading of patanjali's sutra!

right off my sleeve and in the mode of brain-storming:

1. the importance of a clear mind,

 1.41. When the agitations of the mind are under control, the mind becomes like a transparent crystal and has the power of becoming whatever form is presented. knower, act of knowing, or what is known.

2. the wheel of samsara, to each its own:

1.30. Disease, inertia, doubt, lack of enthusiasm, laziness, sensuality, mind-wandering, missing the point, instability- these distractions of the mind are the obstacles.

3. the importance of a ritual, of practice, of purpose in our lives.

2.2. This discipline is practised for the purpose of acquiring fixity of mind on the Lord, free from all impurities and agitations, or on One's Own Reality, and for attenuating the afflictions.

4. duck/rabbit,

2.10. These patterns when subtle may be removed by developing their contraries.
2.11. Their active afflictions are to be destroyed by meditation.

5. avidya is everywhere!

2.5. Ignorance is taking the non-eternal for the eternal, the impure for the pure, evil for good and non-self as self.

6. in the west, knowledge = power, but what knowledge? patanjali warns:

 2.6. Egoism is the identification of the power that knows with the instruments of knowing.

7. para-doxa (beyond the law)

4.12. The past and the future exist in the object itself as form and expression, there being difference in the conditions of the properties.

8. dense perplexity (as garlanded creepers & glossy undergrowth) comes before the epiphany,

 2.25. Liberation of the seer is the result of the dissociation of the seer and the seen, with the disappearance of ignorance.

9. just before moksha, wash the dishes! the sangha is here.

4:50. When the deities invite, there should be no attachment and no smile of satisfaction, contact with the undesirable still possible.

for this comment, let's try to bring forth what we've learned so far.

what's on your mind?

on jainism & ahimsa (post for comment #2)

a lot of what we discussed yesterday (tuesday) had to do with determinism vs. free will, i.e., the role of moksha as a form of getting out of the law of karma. at one level jainism seems to endorse that view. but at a deeper level, i think there is no "out."  this is why i posted (below) a more detailed discussion about punyas and papas. please, read it to inform your comments for this thread. there, i address the paradox of radical libertarianism opposing determinism (only to let it in through the backdoor).

then there was the trimurti and the five basic ethical principles. the issue of intention (mens rea) and pleasure came up. we discussed that pleasure is a deep metaphor. i mentioned epicurus as a reference from the west (i like to cross-reference east with west). for epicurus, there are temporary and lasting pleasures, the latter are superior to the former, something jainism would agree with. you see, pleasure by itself is not a liability. pleasure is structural for homosapiens. the problem is when pleasure becomes exponential. the paradox of pleasure is to enjoy it to the point of letting sorrow through the back door.

Note: For this post, let's include our discussion on ahimsa, in light of gandhi's insights. 

remember: i'm closing this post next monday at 11pm. 
 

jainism: karma, punya & papa

Actions that bear positive results and elevate a person are called punya. 

Actions that lead to a negative fruit and degrade a person are called papa.

Imagine that every person has a spiritual "ledger" showing accrued punya credits and papa liabilities. A person who wins a lottery must have had a lot of punya accumulated due to many past positive actions. A person murdered must be experiencing the accumulated effects of past papa.

One's position in life, the family one is born into, one's economic position, one's health and strength, and even what country one is born into and who one marries are considered to be the result of punya and papa. This superdeterministic position recalls (though in a diametrically different position) in existentialism. Sartre (a radical libertarian) makes the point that one is responsible for everything that happens to oneself. Even an earthquake? Yes, because one is within the earthquake's radius. What if one doesn't know? One is responsible for one's own ignorance.   

Is a person born into a family of privilege and class a result of punya? As we know, riches don't guarantee goodness. Is a person born into a hellish condition of war and disease a result of papa? There are said to be heavenly and hellish realms "above and below" this earth that beings are born into as a result of high and low levels of punya and papa.

The expression "seventh heaven," for example, comes from a Hindu idea of heaven. Above this earth there are many levels of heaven and similarly, below this earth there are many levels of hell. The "seventh heaven" is the highest realm, but a heaven and a hell are never permanent.

Caveat: One may go to a heaven as a result of accumulated punya, but once that punya is exhausted through enjoyment, one will move to lower levels of existence (even hell). Think of my mentioning of Patanjali in regards to the implicit paradox contained in moksha.

Similarly, one may fall to a hell as a result of great papa, but once that papa is "burned off" through suffering one will begin to raise again to higher levels of existence.

Earthly regions are considered middle ground where there is both happiness and suffering and because most actions are neither all good or all bad, the results are mixed. Therefore, our lives are mixed in terms of happiness and suffering.

jainism: an introductory text

a good summary on jainism by Sri Jayatilal S. Sanghvi.

big? small?

it may help a bit with our brahman/atman discussion.

on hinduism (post for comment #1)

thanks for a good class. we had a nice discussion introducing some of hinduism's basic categories.

1- the atman/brahman apparent duality, which is really one. ONE leads to this idea of monism and even pantheism (here is a previous phi 2070 post focusing on spinoza's monism).

2- yajna, or sacrifice, as local exchange for the sake of sovereignty. that is to say, one can see yajna as turning upside-down received notions of economic exchange. how? yajna for its own sake. of course, we'll expllore this deeper when we read from the gita

3- maya brings forth what i call hall-of-mirrors effect. some think that maya expresses our ignorance (avidya) but that is too simplistic. maya is constitutive of the side or reality that we call appearance, & appearance and reality are co-terminal, they need & support each other.

take this paradoxical morsel from the gospel of sri ramakrishna:

Disciple: Why has God created wicked people?"
Master: "That is His play. In His maya there exists avidyā as well as vidyā.

very clear. so, maya loves to play games. 

4- ineffability is another term discussed in class. in the upanishdas there is this idea of neti, neti  
which tries to explain brahman as undifferentiated, how can you explain the inexplicable?

i propose this alternative.

5- moksha, the oneness with the ONE. what is the soteriology of hinduism? let me put it in a different way, salvation is brahman's digestion, i.e., eventually --as ONE-- you get reinserted in samsara.

karma: this is a difficult concept and i ask you to be patient with it. i prefer for now to talk about how we reincarnate constantly ourselves as different individuals that evolve from earlier experiences. more of this as we get deeper into hinduism.

____________
say what you want in at least 150 words. please, wear hinduism's clothes. even if briefly, make an informed comment based on the concepts we've discussed. of course, you could remain skeptical and say it, as long as you show you are primed to hinduism's angle. you can post more than one comment, and sometimes that makes for great discussions. i'm the moderator and may interject but this is YOUR forum!

i close the comment option wednesday at 11pm. if you have not made your comment by then, you loose the opportunity to comment for that particular week. remember that comments-to-posts is a for- point assignment and part of your final grade.

List of terms for the final (we'll go over the terms in class on Thursday)

Confucianism and its principles:

T'ien, chün-tzu, jen, zhong-yong and li. Find a detailed explanation of all these terms here.

Taoism and its principles:

Tao (the Way), YING YANG, Being/ Non-being, Cycles, Te and Wu-wei; all here.

Zen and its techniques:

Find a summary of Zen techniques here. See also koan.

if you have not done the remake do it before it's too late

if you didn't pass the 1st quizz, you need to makeup for it and it should be very soon. please contact me. you know who YOU ARE.

post for comment (on the philosophy of Xunzi)

dear ones: feel free to comment on any of these themes as they show in the philosophy of Xunzi:

1- heaven
2- learning
3- the chün-tzu
4- how to govern
5- li (for Xunzi)
6- the danger of obsessions
7- the consequences of man's nature

man's evil can be turned through self-governance, the avoidance of obsession, the observance of heaven and the respect for rituals

For Xunzi's excerpts here.

Mencius

For excerpts from the Book of Mencius: here.