I’ve been a little snowed under technically of late, but now I’ve got Debian Testing installed and rocking, I’m back and I’d like to muse on a post that Lewis made over on A Barefootman about Shadow.

It’s important to see the parts of ourselves we keep in the shadows, the problem is we can sometimes fall into the trap of over emphasising these parts. To use Lewis’s examples, the hedonist. I don’t generally do clubs, but I’ve let that part of myself out of the shadows a few times. Usually I woke up poorer and nursing a bad head and stomach. It can actually ruin a weekend, and they call this “having fun”?

I feel that it’s important to allow these things to settle into a balance, by all means let the intellectual out, but in the proper forum. Let the hedonist play, but don’t get silly.

My own focus on the shadows has pointed at far darker aspects of ourselves, anger, violence, jealousy and others. I feel it is a great loss to a person to deny that these things exist in each and every one of us. These aspects of ourselves can serve to remind us to be mindful, to cleave to the middle path, almost like a form of mental Judo, though of course you have to catch yourself in time.

As part of my ongoing wandering on the Buddhist path, I’ve been considering things and trying to see through the hype. I’m going to go out on a limb here. Recently I wrote about my complete opposition to Capital Punishment, I’d like to return to a quote from that article.

I’ve been reading some of the letters written to newspapers calling for Capital Punishment to be reintroduced, the language is normally very much aimed at the readers emotions, the murderers are always “heinous” and “inhuman” or “monstrous”, I’ll leave my views on the “inhuman” part till another day.

I feel that this is the right time to clarify that quote. Let’s think about animals. Every day in the animal kingdom, there are examples of killing and other acts that would quite rightly arouse the wrath of the law in Human society. The major difference between Humanity and the rest of the animal kingdom (note the words “rest of”, it’s a very important point) is our capacity.

We are possessed of a greater capacity than other animals, we can reach so much higher. In fact our abilities have grown to the point that Humanity could be reasonably be considered a force of nature, which is why I feel we need to pay more attention to spirituality in the moment in a practical sense. My focus here is going to be more on an individual level, our intelligence gives us the capability for reaching much higher altruism, compassion and spirituality are three examples. But capacity goes both ways, we can also sink lower.

So when someone says a particular murderer (for example) is “inhuman”, my response to that is the thought “I really can’t think of any other animal that would commit that act for that reason”. We have acts of murder, cannibalism and infanticide every day in the natural world, but that comes from evolutionary pressure. For example, a lion that takes over a pride generally kills any young he can find, this is to better secure his genetic legacy, not for kicks.

A Human will however, that’s the difference, we can be the best of animals, but also the worst. I feel that for those of us who aspire to the middle path it’s imperative we acknowledge that honestly.

After the recent Suffolk murders, there have been a lot of angry letters written to newspaper letters pages demanding the Death Penalty be reinstated in the UK, anyone who’s been reading me for any length of time can probably guess where I stand on this.

However, I felt that it was time that I put my own opposition to this into more definite terms by writing something up in a bit more detail.  This has turned into something more resembling a short essay than a blog post, so, I’ve popped it onto my essays page rather than taking up the blog with it.

You can find my thoughts on it here: Why I oppose Capital Punishment.

For me, questioning is a large part of spirituality, I feel that an unexamined belief is not worth holding.  That’s a large part of what I like about Buddhism, that spirit of enquiry and examination, in fact I was pleasantly surprised to find a virtual Sangha in Second Life which feels exactly the same way.

The Skeptical Buddhists Sangha is a place for Buddhists (and anyone else who wants to drop in and talk on the subject) to meet in Second Life.   I have to say it’s very useful to have them there, I’m finding that Second Life is a very useful tool for allowing communities to form and interact in a new way that I’ve not quite seen anywhere else.  I’ve been involved in some truly stimulating discussion meetings in the Sangha and have to say it’s certainly helped me along the path.

As an aside, I’m finding Second Life to be more useful when viewed as an enhancement to my Real Life and given a balance with that as appropriate.  I try not to spend more time there than I feel appropriate and always try to bear in mind my reasons for being there.

I had the Buddhist view of the self re-explained to me the other day, it made a bit more sense this way.

The example I was given previously was by Alan Watts and was of a man in a railways station who buys a ticket, sits in the queue and then finally gets on a train and leaves.

The point Alan makes is that at each moment the man has extra experiences, his metabolism has moved on, he’s had extra thoughts about things, etc. So at no point is he a static entity, the man who buys the ticket is not the man who entered the station. The man who waits is not the man who bought the ticket, and so on. A consistent self is not present, as at each stage the man has changed in any number of small ways, and thus cannot present a consistent entity.

So I’m reading “An End to Suffering” by Pankaj Mishra, it’s an interesting read so far. It’s autobiographical and is covering a bit more of the history of the British and European discovery of Buddhism than I’ve seen elsewhere. The Buddhist view of the self is presented here by way of a short story, which uses the example of a chariot.

A chariot, like anything, is made from components. But no one component can be said to be the whole of the chariot.

The question is asked “Are the wheels the chariot?”, and answered “No”. Then, “Are the reins the Chariot?”, again the answer is “No”, and so on. It becomes clear that the chariot is really the relationship between it’s parts, it can only be said to exist when the parts are together.

The same is true of a person that we are truly the relationship between our physical and mental parts. My appendix for example, is not me, just one part of me. If I have my appendix (or tonsils) out, then I am certainly not the being I was before as I am minus some parts, but those parts cannot be said to be me.

Again the point is that my “self” is really the relationship between the constantly changing components of my body and mind, not anything concrete. But there is another dimension that the author has not touched on yet, which I think underpins Buddhist ethics. It’s something I’ve mentioned on here before, the South African principle of “Ubuntu” or “I am who I am because of who we all are”.

A very important part of the relationships that make me who I am is my relationship to my environment, the society I live in and to other people within those. This makes the precepts and the eightfold path even more urgent, as they not only change my body and mind relationship, but they directly change my relationship with these external things, thus not only changing who am I am, but ultimately who we all are.

I was thinking a little about dualism the other day, carrying on from my previous post a little. Dualistic thought is covered early on in the Tao Te Ching, and from what I’ve seen around the internet and in my own writings and views, can be given negative connotations.

I’m coming to another viewpoint now, put simply, that dualism in neither good nor bad in itself; it simply is. We can’t get by without it, and it is vital to our existence that it’s there. We make value judgments every day in order to function and survive, for these judgments we need dualistic thought. The problem, as I see it, is when we get so caught up in our world of dualism that we forget that it’s only a set of arbitrary concepts.

Consider light/dark, it’s a great dualistic metaphor for things, not least good or evil. In the Taiji symbol it gets used to point out the mutual dependence of things, night and day, etc. But it’s a bit lost on a person who was born blind, similarly, a dualism based on silence and noise is lost on a person who was born deaf. As soon as you start factoring in people who don’t experience the world quite the same way we do, it all starts to get a bit more iffy.

Our dualisms can be biased by our subjective viewpoints; hot/cold is another dualism, but the exact definition varies from person to person. It seems to me that each time we “define” a dualism, we simply rope of a chunk of grey area and hope for the best.

I used to think dualistic thought was a negative thing, then realised that this was itself dualistic thought. I have to admit, I found that quite amusing for a while.  So this leads me to my current contention; Dualistic thought is necessary, not particularly desirable or undesirable, just there. The most important thing is to see it for what it is, necessary, but ultimately an illusion.

A thread on the Teahouse started me thinking again about something that I’ve been working up towards for a long time , it’s probably not the most popular position I’ve ever taken, but I do think it’s accurate.

We seem to define natural as being Earth, our biosphere, by which I mean plants, animals and things arising and related to them, and anything arising there without mans contrivance. Now that’s a slightly vague definition, I readily admit that, but that seems to me to be the closest I can get without spending more time than I’m willing to.

As we’re talking dualities, ‘unnatural’ is, therefore everything that is not covered by the definition of natural. Which I take to be industry, technology and the artifacts and effects associated with them. Again, vague, but the best I can do without being here all day. The supernatural and occult I will, for the sake of completeness, consider as well; leaving aside all judgements as to the existence or not of these things.

So my question is very simple; What if we’re wrong? What if natural/unnatural and supernatural are rather arbitrary definitions, maybe even only held by Western culture? My charge is that we are guilty of not thinking outside the box, the box in this case being Earth.

We know that the first element in the universe was hydrogen, this was enormously abundant and formed the first giant stars. These star were incredibly unstable as they were so big and exploded, showering the cosmos with all the other matter including the matter that makes up the Earth and everything on it That’s right we are starstuff, along with everything else here. That by the way, includes your car, your microwave, the monitor you’re using to read this and everything else we define as “unnatural”.

So how then do we justify this line drawing? It’s seems odd taking matter that was created along with everything else in the cosmos and that, on that scale can certainly be considered to be naturally occurring things and then dividing it out like that.

I think the whole thing seems to be based on superficial form, after all nature as we seem to mean it is something built on top of the basic building blocks of the universe but not intrinsic to them. Or to put it another way, we know something of atoms, but atoms know nothing of us.

Why is it so hard to be still?  The other day I compared my Tai Chi practice to my gym practice, I have to admit that it’s more demanding to do Tai Chi.  Not so much in the aerobic way we associate with many western exercise methods, but in the manner of self observation and the level that it happens at. 

It’s interesting how little prepared all this gym and exercise business makes us for stillness, I was meditating the other night, paying more attention to my posture than usual and found that some of my back muscles were starting to complain.  For all our strength and cardio training, slowing down or even stopping is so challenging. 

Amusing, isn’t it?  Not fit enough to sit still….

I went into my local city, Birmingham, on Saturday afternoon.  It was as packed as always, crowds everywhere and an air of restlessness that almost gave me a headache.  The experience reinforced my belief that we live in a restless society, unable to slow down, or stop fidgeting, always rushing round in haste, but where to?

As everything is impermanent, I have to question our wisdom in rushing round breathlessly after temporary, illusory goals.  Wherever you’re rushing to, the things that you’re after are impermanent, is the stress really worth it?

I have a pet theory that if we slowed down, stopped rushing and noticed what’s round us a bit more, the world would change irrevocably and immensely, simply from the fact that we’d be more present in the moment.  We’d actually stop and think and notice things, and maybe we’d enjoy life a bit more as well. 

I wrote some time ago about my views of striving and grasping for things.

Those views were helped along by a few things, I’d been encouraged to push harder in the gym only to be met with pain and injury. I’d witnessed workplace politics handled in a way I completely disagreed with, this has happened more than once across a number of companies. I also found myself questioning with our national work ethic, is this the right way?

I asked myself a question, “Am I mad, or is there a better way?” In the gym I reminded myself of the 70% rule of moderation. It’s a great little rule I learned from Tai Chi, you only work at 70% of your max; energy and attention are kept back for working on a gradual improvement in your performance, also to make sure you don’t burn out on the way, it’s a long term game plan, but it offers greater potential than flogging yourself to death. I’m working at less than my max now, focusing on technique, I don’t doubt I’ll get back to the weights and performance I had, but when I do it’ll be with much better technique, I’ll be able to handle it much better than I did.

As far as the whole work thing goes, I find myself with less invested in the long hours culture we have here in the UK, as a result I don’t do overtime anymore unless it’s an emergency. Again, this comes back to moderation; whatever some might like to think, we don’t live to work.

I’ve seen the results of office politics and crackdowns on more than once occasion and in more than one company, striving for more results, more controls, a greater bottom line. I’ve seen it reach a point that employee goodwill was lost, people refused to work overtime, wouldn’t go out of their way for their employer; the workplace spirit was lost.

This is a way echoes comments in my previous post, crackdowns and tightening up have their place, but if you take it too far it hurts far more than it helps, you can wind up flogging the horse to death if you’re not careful.

This comes back to moderation, the middle way. Yes, you can keep driving people harder towards business goals, “Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes”, but in the end the human cost will be huge.  We already see this, lots of stress and work-life imbalances and not just in the UK, sooner or later we must settle into a steady state, not the greed driven relentless drive for better growth; for the sake of our own collective health and sanity.

I think that this excerpt from chapter 23 of the Tao Te Ching sums up my thoughts on this:

Sparse speech is natural
Thus strong wind does not last all morning
Sudden rain does not last all day
What makes this so? Heaven and Earth
Even Heaven and Earth cannot make it last
How can humans?

I was reading about the new legislation in the Queen’s speech today. It seems that we need to have a new law passed for everything, further invasions of our privacy and our rights eroded.

It’s amazing what they can push through, mention the word Terrorist since 9/11 and you can wave through almost any measure you want, consider the new National DNA database, there are people on there who haven’t been convicted of a crime!

It’s almost as if we’re considered suspect simply by default, though Lao Tzu does have advice for us on this one:

“The highest rulers, people do not know they have them
The next level, people love them and praise them
The next level, people fear them
The next level, people despise them
If the rulers’ trust is insufficient
Have no trust in them

Proceeding calmly, valuing their words
Task accomplished, matter settled
The people all say, “We did it naturally”“

This is illuminating as it suggests a position far removed from the one we currently see in public figures. Lao Tzu suggests a more humble approach, indeed I’ve recently read comments by people saying that our leaders need to take a moment and remember who they really work for. The lack of trust they have in us is unsettling, the need to remember that somewhere in all the rules and cameras and the surveillance the spirit of the society that they’re trying to protect will get lost.

They are so attached to the idea of defending Britain and it’s people from every imagined aggressor that the country will be stifled by the grip they’ll have on it; the people will eventually be injured both in spirit and prospects, maybe even physically by the very measures and officers supposed to protect them.

I personally think they’re taken the exact wrong approach, the threat of terror needs to be tackled on a community level, it’s not a matter of arresting people it’s preventing them becoming extremists in the first place. I remember a point made by Robert M. Pirsig that when someone is deemed insane they’ve possibly subscribed to a view of the world that has higher quality for them than everyone else’s. I think the best view to take with those who would destroy our society is to reach out to them and show them the higher quality in our society.

Imagine a way forward that doesn’t involve more expenditure for the military industrial complex and security services. I wish it would catch on, I can’t see much of a future in mistrust and fear.

I was reading an article which summarises the book “The 7 habits of highly effective people” today.  One of the habits is getting a proper understanding of the other person in any situation or dialogue.  The point is made that we all want to be understood, but we don’t try to truly understand.  I think this goes for more than just people and applies to working practices, technology and belief systems as well as everything else.

It’s a well made point, in my view, we never really see, hear or understand clearly.  Everything is coloured by our minds desires prejudices or conditioned thinking, that we rarely see clearly, if ever.  This point if made by Steve Hagen as well, that a fundamental point of Buddhism is to simple see properly and that a Buddha is simply someone who has awakened and sees clearly.

One thing I noticed was that speech wasn’t mentioned in the article, which is odd as I think that the factors that cloud our perception also cloud our speech.   Seriously, how often do we say what we really mean?

Think of all the times the message didn’t get across when you were talking or when you said something that just came out completely wrong.  The more I think about it, the more I realise how right the Buddha is, our speech is not from a position of awareness, how often do we stop and actually consider what we mean to say properly?