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Your koans

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Photo by Brice Bischoff, via Juxtapoz

My dear friends of Phi2070: There is a lot to talk about. Tao, wu-wei, cycles, female, duck-rabbit. Then there is TAOW & its weird strategies for battle.  

See you Tuesday with the last theme of this semester: ZEN.

Now, go ahead!

Bad temper

A Zen student came to Bankei and complained: "Master, I have an ungovernable temper. How can I cure it?"
"You have something very strange," replied Bankei. "Let me see what you have."
"Just now I cannot show it to you," replied the other.
"When can you show it to me?" asked Bankei.
"It arises unexpectedly," replied the student.
"Then," concluded Bankei, "it must not be your own true nature. If it were, you could show it to me at any time. When you were born you did not have it, and your parents did not give it to you. Think that over."

Dharma and society

Dharma is TAKING ACTION.

The Art of War

The Art of War is the most widely read military classic in human history.

People think that TAOW is a manual on how to outsmart one's opponent, so that physical battle becomes superfluous. As such, it has found application as a training guide for many competitive endeavors that do not involve actual combat.

Yet, I want to present a different view: TAOW is about our own war. Self-war.

It's called dialectics! 

(Read more here).

Your turn #3: The chun-tzu

Herb Lubalin ad for Ebony, (late 1960's)

Hi kids!

Our reading of Confucius was a nice experience. I enjoyed your insightful comments and demurrals. Elizabeth's question "how can one be virtuous if you don't know you are?" was an example. There was an interesting back-and-forth with questions and ripostes. Being a chun-tzu is not easy!

Let me start with Confucius' CHENG-MIN or "rectification of names" (or right-speech in Buddhism).* Confucius' point is subtle. It has to do with human verbalization. We do things with words. Language is a beautiful (human) form. Words can shine. They can also deceive. Words must be let free in order to shine. If my utterances boastfully exceed the sphere of my actions, my words take a form of flatulence. And people notice the smell. Confucius may not have pondered why, but he knew. Even in his worst moment Jesus knew, which is why he shuts up and lets Pilate babble. With Freud we learn that language has an unconscious side. It talks through our mouths! Confucius advises to be vigilant.**  

 Illustrator Ricardo Fumanal, via Juxtapoz.

Elizabeth's question: Does one know one is virtuous? The chun-tzu doesn't need to bring such realization to herself as such: "Wow, I'm virtuous!" Here is why: She has internalized good habits for some time. She's grown slowly by trial and error. After years of thoughtful training, her actions become automatic (Confucius says: "The cautious seldom err"). What happens now? Absolutely nothing. Life goes on. She doesn't notice anything at all, but people do. REN is a state of unafectedness that bathes her with contentment. What the Stoics referred to as ataraxia.

Objection to Confucius: Can a criminal be content?

Not exactly. He may look OK to an outsider, but something crucial is missing. What the criminal feels is world-dependent emotional roller-coaster of ups and downs. He is a victim of his moods, which are a product of the endless instability of the world. Confucius says: "The superior man thinks of virtue; the small man thinks of comfort. The superior man thinks of the sanctions of law; the small man thinks of the favors he may receive."

How about T'IEN? Heaven = people. Appearances are deceiving: Heaven is earth!

Against the grain of our infantile individualism, we must pay attention of how much we need people (see it as sangha). No matter where we are, we always long to be around our own. We must construct sangha, become nodes  connecting like-minded people.

Is LI a problem? For many it is. But as long as you understand its limits, courtesy can be beautiful. In the West we mock courtesy as a bland form of cultural submission. Why do we prefer a considerate, tactful person? LI means hundreds of years of layer-after-layer of behaviors that get internalized by the culture.

Of course, not all courtesy is good. Confucius is clear that "make-believe" or "appearance" alone will not cut it. In fact, we notice fake protocol from the real thing (it's called hypocrisy). There is something "plastic" about it.  The lesson is that we must learn to see behind the veil of LI. Everything is, at some time or another, veiled.

Let's recall the lesson from the Upanishads: Things are near and far at the same time. It's called MAYA. Learn to clap with one hand!

See you Tuesday.  Go ahead.

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*Monique made an good point: if all these people are saying the same thing there must be some truth to it. **Disclosure to the class: I'm sure in dealing with all this stuff, I must have already said "gassy" stuff in class. I plead for your forgiveness.

a face-to-face catalysis of Xeroxed presence

What are you loloking at?

Looking at yourself looking. It's art! What art?

Can art lie?

More at Miami Bourbaki (you're more than welcome to leave a comment there).

The simple way of Hun-Tzu

I'm going to take 4 points by Hun-Tzu:

1- Nature = T'ien, constant, regular, exact.

Here T'ien is not the people. Is an ideal. A sort of "thing in itself" that makes itself visible and yet, remains hidden. Let T'ien speak. Listen to its inner rhythm.

T'ien follows PSR, what happens is the best possible world. How does T'ien operate?

T'ien (T) acts without effort. It just emerges from things to show us the way. How? Poetically.

"To accomplish without any action, to obtain without any effort."

2- Rectification of names: "Names don't have correctness on their own. Their meaning depends from convention."

"Rules have a place, but they don't unveil the truth."

3- "The nature of man is evil. His goodness is the result of his activities." Men are animals (no pun intended).

4- Realization: "Any man in the street can become chun-tzu, but it doesn't follow that everyman is able to do so."

Hsün Tzu on evil

Hsün Tzu: The nature of man is evil.

Faces of evil

Evidence of ethnic cleansing in Rwuanda right after the mass murder of Tutsis, (1994).

After our discussions about determinism and/or freedom, it's too easy to report that "this is the way we are" (obvious & uninformative) or that evil cannot exist without good (axiomatic & lazy), or Facundo's interesting point about the evil's "gray areas, " i.e., the uneasy cohabitation of good and evil.

Here are my ten cents:

What is evil? This is. And this, and this  and this.

Wait... it's too easy! Those above are limit cases. We are not that. Instead, let's look for the average kind of evil, the sapping everyday evil that becomes almost invisible, the sort who-me? evil that lurks and surprises, in other words, our shocking daily companion.

I will propose a very simple idea. Evil consists of "merely" treating people as a means to an end. See that the common factor present in both limit cases and average cases is precisely that.

The world is a jungle. Sometimes we find ourselves in situations when we have to choose¹ to treat a person as a means to an end. It becomes unavoidable. What to do then? This is dharma, as momentous as it comes. We cannot become an ostrich and sink our head in the sand. so, we face the situation and try our best to practice ahimsa, i.e., we'd act in such a way that it minimizes treating a person "merely" as means to an end. This is what does violence. 

Is it evil? Maybe, but then it will make a difference between necessary ² and unnecessary evil. We have made the right choice. We can feel the instant as we own it, flowing through our veins.
  
The second interesting point is, where is this evil coming from?

Let's dispel the myth: It's not that we're intrinsically evil -or good for that matter. That's too melodramatic. We just EXIST. And to exist means to deal with our history: past, present, and future. There is past (our embeddedness), present (our surprise) and future (in the form of de-liberation).

Embeddedness is the world we inherit (not necessarily our choosing). Surprise, because this boring world, which seemed so uneventful up to this moment has suddenly become dangerous. Now we're scared shitless. Deliberation³, because this is our now-or-never moment. We'll define ourselves in the act of choosing NOW.

And who chooses? Was there really a solid "me" -valiantly defined, self-assured- before this moment?  Bollocks. This now is always anew. This door is for me!

By the way, this is not my post #3, which I'll post later today.
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¹Sartre's fundamental existential motto: l'homme, par ses choix, définit lui-même le sens de sa vie (our choice defines the meaning of our life). The idea is that not choosing is not an option because by not choosing we automatically choose. ²Obviously, necessary evil is that which can prevent further evil, or bring forth good. Unnecessary evil is simply unredeemed. ³Look what a rich word this is. De-liberation. It comes from lat. deliberatus:de- libra (scale), it also brings forth liberatus, akin to liberty.

Your turn #2: Nothing is sacred

 Ryan Riss, Life Cycles, via Juxtapoz

Thanks for a nice reading! It's time for post #2. And there is plenty to talk about. Pick any of the themes treated this week (Jainism and Buddhism) and build your own idea. Go ahead.
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Apropos of Facundo's, Jose's, Chris', Monique's, Emily's, Rosa's, et. al., cold showers in class, here is a sequent, friendly, witty, thought -on laughter- by he who endlessly wait, Samuel Beckett:

The bitter laugh laughs at that which is not good, it is the ethical laugh. The hollow laugh laughs at that which is not true, it is the intellectual laugh. Not good! Not true! Well well. But the mirthless laugh is the dianoetic laugh, down the snout—Haw!—so. It is the laugh of laughs, the risus purus, the laugh laughing at the laugh, the beholding, the saluting of the highest joke, in a word the laugh that laughs—silence please—at that which is unhappy.

I like cold showers and what comes out of them. One leaves fresh, unpretentious, light headed and yes, ready for more (I close this post next Wednesday @ 11pm).
 
The duty of the sacred? Nothing is sacred!