Peace in Every Step

Take my hand.

 We will walk.

We will only walk.

 We will enjoy our walk 

without thinking of arriving anywhere.

Walk peacefully.

 Walk happily.

 Our walk is a peace walk.

 Our walk is a happiness walk.

 Then we learn

 that there is no peace walk; 

that peace is the walk;

 that there is no happiness walk;

 that happiness is the walk. 

We walk for ourselves. 

We walk for everyone

 always hand in hand.

 Walk and touch peace every moment.

 Walk and touch happiness every moment.

 Each step brings a fresh breeze.

 Each step makes a flower bloom under our feet.

 Kiss the Earth with your feet.

 Print on Earth your love and happiness.

Earth will be safe 

when we feel in us enough safety. 

 --Thich Nhat Hanh

 On Monday, Buddhists and others around the world will be observing the third day in an eight day memorial for Thich Nhat Hanh, known in the United States as a teacher, writer, poet and activist. His death was announced Saturday. He was 95. Several obituaries note that his reputation as a spiritual leader was second only to the Dalai Lama.

 His teachings and his example helped form an American brand of Buddhism, along with the Dalai Lama and Shunryu Suzuki, founder of the San Francisco Zen Center. That Thich Nhat Hanh was Vietnamese, Sukuki Japanese, and the Dalai Lama is Tibetan speaks to the character of American Buddhism. 

 Thich Nhat Hanh contributes an example that unifies the apparent (but not real) yet integral paradox of American Buddhism: he taught both the practice of mindfulness meditations, and the necessity of “engaged Buddhism,” of activism in the world. His early opposition to the Vietnam war (at the side of Martin Luther King, Jr.) and many projects to aid the victims of war regardless of who or where they were, are examples of his outward commitment. His many books and guided meditations express his inward commitment. Yet to him they are both mindfulness. 

 In recent months we have used selected guided meditations recorded on the Internet for our daily meditation time. One of those I find most helpful is one of his. The first instruction: “Breathing in, I know I am breathing in. Breathing out, I know I am breathing out.” The essence of the practice, it is direct and immediately actionable.

Some of his other instructions end with “enjoy.” Meditation is the discipline of relaxation. It can be richly and directly rewarding.

 A later instruction goes something like this: “Breathing in, I smile. I smile to everything—even my suffering, my difficulties. Nothing is more important than my peace, my joy. Breathing out, I release, I let go. Smile. Release. This is the practice of freedom.”

 “This is the practice of freedom” says so much to me. This is the effect of what is usually translated as “non-attachment.” Awareness both bathes us in the moment, and provides a perspective on our usual ways of thinking. For that moment we can be free from the shackles of our usual responses, obsessions, fears, anxieties, grievances, etc. or self-image based on the opinions and social pressure of others. It is a practice that can lead to clarity, and action in the world. 

 Suggestions for today’s memorial acts include walking meditations, the subject of this poem.

Soul of the Future/ Evolution of Hope: Eight Figures for the Future

“We must take comfort from the fact that human nature gives rise to altruism as well as selfishness, to conscience as well as cruelty.  The hope of the race is that passions of generosity, restraint, and goodness may prove as strong as those of egoism, aggression, and cruelty.”

Eric Bentley

 “Better to make a good future than predict a bad one.”

Issac Asimov

 “The future is not a gift: it is an achievement.  Every generation helps make its own future.  This is the essential challenge of the present.”

Robert F. Kennedy

 “I am curiously not interested in things,” wrote H.G. Wells in his 1917 book, The Future In America, “and curiously interested in the consequences of things.”

 This is the first lesson of evolution, which Wells applied to the future to shape what “the future” means to us.  The consequences of things (technologies, processes, events, inventions, decisions, etc.) in the past and present comprise the conditions of the future.

 Wells is the first of my “eight figures for the future” and sets the agenda for the rest: to fill in his outline of the future.  Most of these figures have appeared earlier in this series, so this is a kind of summation. Significant aspects of their work help form a framework for envisioning and enacting an evolution of hope.  

 From his first public writings to his last over a fifty- year career, Wells was fixed on the future. He learned as he went, and came to another seemingly simple conclusion that seems also to have escaped many other who command the mainstream of assumptions about the future: the causes of future conditions are complex. 

 It was fine for a science fiction story, or a thought experiment, to follow the effects of one change while keeping everything else familiar.  But that’s not how the future works: it’s the consequence of everything.

One technological change—or even technological changes in general—can and usually does have a mighty influence on the future.  But these effects interacted with other factors, including other changes, and with responses that were often unanticipated.  Things happen on different scales, at different rates.  They interact unpredictably.  And the consequences always include the unintended. 

Future reality would be made by the interactions within the whole, and the whole acting on itself.  Analyzing one or two strands of change wouldn’t be enough. “The end of all intelligent analysis,” Wells wrote, “is to clear the way for synthesis.”

 This is a lesson that overwhelmed the sensible futurist of the 1970s, but other more egotistical predictors persist in making the fatal mistake of leaving too much out.  This is a particular habit of those predicting the dominance of technologies, and it still happens. 

 In an online Substack piece of August 2021, the author chides those who make extravagant claims for the rise of certain technologies in the near future, and then offers his more “conservative” or realistic predictions based on current trends for life in 2050.  He issues 18 detailed technological, social and political predictions, employing hundreds of words, and never even mentions climate--not causes nor effects of the ongoing climate catastrophe, or anything involving the context of the natural world.

 Moreover, this was published during the most violently and obviously consequential summer of the climate crisis so far, which included the hottest month ever recorded for the entire planet, and which climate scientists confirm would basically have been impossible without a seriously deformed climate.  

 These are not just omissions; they are serious distortions of the future we know is coming that make his predictions worthless.  His predictions presuppose everything else is stable, and at this point that’s fantasy.  The irony is that based on chemistry and atmospheric science alone, the acceleration of a distorted climate is about the most certain prediction about the future that can be made.

 The habit of holding on to a single through-line for the future based on a narrow interpretation of the past that requires that counter-evidence be ignored, has itself distorted the prospects for the actual future.  Such interpretations tell slightly different but mutually congenial stories about the human historical past and the biological past predating but including humanity—in particular the principles that govern the outcomes of evolution.

 The common story driving western civilization was that man and nature were separate, that at best nature was a useful source (i.e. “natural resources”) but most of the time, an enemy, a barrier to human “progress.” The dominant interpretation of Darwinian evolution complicated this story, without really changing it. The human species was placed in competition with the rest of nature, and that competition was defined as violent struggle, with a few winners—maybe only one-- and lots of losers.

 The idea that the future belonged to the best predators predated and probably influenced Darwin.  But Darwin’s positing of natural selection as determining survival became immediately distorted and supercharged by the ideology now known as Social Darwinism.  That two of its prominent 19^th century adherents were John D. Rockerfeller and Andrew Carnegie pretty much explains its dominance.

 Though the 20^th century strengthened this view through the reductive misinterpretation of genetics that produced the infamous “selfish gene” theory, it was during the 20^th century that other voices countered this view by adding new information and context. 

Much of this information was hiding in plain sight. Another brilliant synthesist (and our second figure for the future) was Paul Shepard.  Credited as one of the pioneers of the science of ecology in the 1960s and 1970s, he braided observations of the natural world and human culture into a unique field, recognized when he became an endowed Professor of Human Ecology.

 Many other ecologists, scientists and thinkers contributed to Shepard’s syntheses, but many more have followed in his unacknowledged footsteps.  He wrote eloquently about the long human development in the Pleistocene, and the deeply human need for connection with the rest of nature, beginning with childhood.  This is “human nature--” physical and otherwise-- that goes back hundreds of thousands of years, and basically it has not changed.  Shepard brought human culture back into the context that nourishes it, and shows how human destruction of the natural world is profoundly self-destructive.

 Most of what Shepard and other ecologists found did not require laboratory experiments or expensive technology.  Archeological discoveries and analysis, a certain amount of quantitative data gathered in the field were part of it, but the new picture emerging also required rediscovering the research and insights that had been ignored because they didn’t fit the dominant program.

 For after all, the behavior among primates that exhibited cooperation, altruism and empathy in a carefully nurtured social structure had been there for researchers to see, centuries before primatologists like Frans de Waal and others showed up. But those earlier researchers didn’t see it because they weren’t looking for it—and since they were not prepared to believe it if they saw it, they didn’t see it.  More broadly, the deep relationship of humans and nature was evident in the words and practices of Indigenous peoples all over the world, but was dismissed as sentimental and exotic, and profoundly threatening.

 However, the 20^th century also saw new information unavailable before, because (for example) new technology allowed researchers like Lynn Margulis to study microorganisms that Darwin knew nothing about. There she found evidence for symbiosis and other behavior contrary to the selfish gene theory and other prevailing prejudices. 

 She then eloquently described the implications of her research, inspiring such thinkers as William Irwin Thompson.  Margulis also went from micro to macro by becoming the co-author of the Gaia Hypothesis, a planetary vision of a single self-regulating organism.  She is our third figure for the future.

 Thanks to her and many others, a new synthesis and a more complex view of evolution has begun to achieve acceptance. (In a series of books, British philosopher Mary Midgley is especially trenchant on the weaknesses of the old standard view of evolution.) Whether the species that invented bombing deserves to survive is still a question.  But that humanity is programmed by its genes to self-destruct is no longer a viable scientific conclusion.

 The reality is that both competition and cooperation, both individuals and various kinds of groups, both genetics and epigenetics (when genes turn on or off), drive evolution. This vision has profound implications for the future, and offers hope that the consequences of the ongoing destruction of the natural world as we know it can be recognized more broadly before those consequences become entirely overwhelming.

 Wells came to a second crucial realization when he turned to envisioning an attainable and desirable future.  Wells believed human civilization could not survive much longer if humanity did not unite.  National, racial and other enmities were leading to global catastrophe in a world in which weapons were inevitably going to be more destructive  (Wells foresaw tank warfare before there were tanks, saturation bombing of cities from the air, and the atomic bomb.) 

 He saw that humanity needed a new vision of itself, a new story of human progress. So he wrote The Outline of History to tell that story, and it became the best-selling book of his career.  Well’s history is now outdated.  Progressives who worry about the future have for years called for “a new story.”  Elements of it are contributed by others among these eight figures for the future.

 At their best, utopian stories explore possibilities inherent in our past to create models of better futures. Today as in recent decades, dystopian stories remain plentiful, but there is still only one popular model for a better future: the Star Trek saga.  Over five decades and counting, Star Trek has evolved a capacious vision that has inspired generations spanning the globe.

  Its universe of easy travel to other planets populated by similar beings is very likely a fantasy, but beyond the visuals that delight many, Star Trek has always been blatantly allegorical.  It has championed a profound respect for life, whatever its form (“Infinite diversity in infinite combination” is the motto every fan knows) a spirit of adventure and wonder, but the wisdom of humility.

 In addition to the allegories of principles tested by the unknown, Star Trek: The Next Generation in particular models behavior: courage and civility, discipline and openness, technological expertise and explorations of art and culture, loyalty and compassion, humor, love and the ability to examine behavior and change it.  This is not a utopia without problems: it is a utopia because of how people define and attempt to solve problems together.

 This Star Trek also demonstrates the power of an institutional morality that aligns with individual commitments.  Institutions like the Federation and Starfleet have learned from history.  In their encounters with the alien, the Other, they anticipate the past.  “We are not invaders,” Captain Picard insists.  “We are explorers.”  This time, humans do not export their unconscious in attempting conquest by another name.  Though they do not always succeed, they have rules to help them (the Prime Directive), and (it’s worth repeating) the humility and the tools to reexamine themselves.

 Behind aspects of this vision were dozens of science fiction writers (Heinlein, Clarke, Bradbury, Asimov, Hamilton etc.), moviemakers and Saturday morning television shows, as well as those who contributed their talents to Star Trek itself.  But television writer and producer Gene Roddenberry began this saga, and he inspired others to add their creativity to it by enlisting their enthusiasm for a vision that functionally became theirs as well as his.  For this achievement he is our fourth figure for the future.

Other visionaries have explored enlightening and sophisticated visions of at least aspects of the future through the complexities of story, particularly science fiction.   These have not directly reached as many people as the Star Trek saga but those who have read them have been profoundly influenced.  For her unique achievements that include The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Word for the World Is Forest, The Lathe of Heaven and Always Coming Home, Ursula K. Le Guin is our fifth figure for the future, but she also represents other significant visionaries from Olaf Stapeldon, Karel Capek,  Yevgny Zamyatin, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley to Kim Stanley Robinson, Margaret Atwood and George Zebrowsky.

 Particularly in the Next Generation series, Star Trek suggested that the journey outward through space was a journey inward, and that each was at least equally important.  Or as Star Trek writer David Gerrold wrote, “"...space is not the final frontier. The final frontier is the human soul."

 In the first half of the 20^th century, C.G. Jung drew what he knew was only a rough map of our inner landscape—of the soul or psyche.  As crude as this map is, it suggests a crucial set of conceptual tools for understanding and directing our behaviors.  These tools—such as denial, projection, compensation, and the shadow—help us question and discern whether our thoughts and perceptions are actually products of our conscious mind, or are deceptions and misperceptions arising from our unfathomable unconscious.  For this alone, Jung is among our eight figures for the future.

 The future that evolves from the past is not an entirely rational process, Jung warned.  The mystery of the insistent unconscious—individual, group (or mob) and collective unconscious—persists in waves of human behavior, while the unconscious supplies deceptive reasons to keep the conscious feeling justified.  That’s why these tools are so crucial. 

(Using these tools to openly question our behavior was also modeled in Star Trek: The Next Generation.  The necessity of doing so makes the sometimes ridiculed addition of a ship’s counselor so important.) 

Jung also cautioned against one-sidedness, and called for the integration of rational thought, feeling, perception and intuition, or the head, heart and body that comprise soul.  The inner world is also complex, and the unconscious is a source of power and insight, and something that links all humanity, as well as the repository of raw fears and longings, especially those the society represses. 

 Thanks in part to the fervors surrounding two world wars, Jung saw that group delusion and a kind of mass psychosis fueled by unconscious compensation, self-righteous projection and denial are particular dangers in the modern world.  After World War II, he feared the power-mad Soviets and the suggestible Americans. The grip of this equivalent of shared and mutually reinforcing demonic possession can be broken, he felt, only one person to another.

  Towards the end of his life, Jung begged others to continue the exploration and mapping of the psyche.  “The world hangs on a thin thread,” he said in a video interview.  “That thread is the human psyche… We are the great danger.  The psyche is the great danger. But we know nothing about it.”  Despite the growing reductionism, arrogance and drug dependence of psychology since, others like James Hillman have continued the search—but not enough.

 Part of the necessary synthesis to secure the future is re-integrating the profound experience and insights of ancient traditions.  Particularly in the past quarter century, that work with Native American cultures has begun.

Leslie Marmon Silko (right) with Maxine Hong Kingston 
(left) and Toni Morrison (center.)

This synthesis is the ongoing work of many: Native leaders like Chief Oren Lyons, Native scholars such as Robin Wall Kimmerer and Gregory Cajete, non-Native scholars like Richard Nelson and Keith Basso, and non-Native synthesists like David Peat and Calvin Luther Martin, along with many Native poets, elders, activists, novelists and others. Leslie Marmon Silko, our seventh figure for the future, represents them all in the power and relevance of her writing, in Almanac of the Dead and the works that precedes and follows this American classic. (See the earlier post on The Ghost Dance future, as well as later in this post.)

 The Dalai Lama is among the great synthesists for the future of our time.  Over decades he has brought together scientists and Buddhist practitioners to reconcile religion and science, but especially to advance western science into introspective areas of the mind that Buddhists have been exploring for many more centuries than western science has existed.  These discussions through the Mind & Life Institute,  which led to new scientific experiments partially designed by Buddhist practitioners, have been public, resulting in nearly a dozen books and many hours of video, inspiring even more writing and discussion.

 The Dalai Lama also has articulated principles and ethics that are widely shared and do not depend on doctrines of particular religions, or any religious doctrine at all. “... we are all members of one human race and have the same worries and needs”, he writes.  “This ethical principle is not bound to a specific religion.  Even an atheist can follow it.  It is therefore not at all important whether we believe in God or the idea of rebirth.  We can always do good, even today when we are afraid of the dangers that the future may bring.”

 But this is not a matter only of the lowest ethical common denominator.  It is a re-orientation: the direction of a new story. According to visionary William Irwin Thompson: “...the Dalai Lama becomes not a medieval theocrat, but a global teacher precisely because Buddhism captures some of the dynamics of a worldview based on relationship, dependent co-origination, and compassion.” 

British author John Gray has tried to co-opt Buddhism and Eastern religions in general to support acceptance of inevitable apocalypse inherent in human nature by rejecting active hope for the future.  While it is true that Buddhist meditation focuses on exploring the individual’s present moment without judgment, this is only part of Buddhist tradition, and certainly the Dalai Lama has been outspoken in favor of both the possibility and the urgent necessity of compassionate action to build a better future. 

 Moreover, a core tenet of Buddhism is the value of the non-human world: of beings, of all life. The first precept of Buddhism, as Gary Snyder describes it, is ahimsa: “Cause the least possible harm.”  It applies not just to humans but to everything in the natural world, and requires judgment and forethought as well as this radical empathy.  As many contemporary Buddhists would attest, it applies to the larger questions of what harm humanity is causing to the life of the planet.

 “In order to change the external world,” the Dalai Lama writes, “first we must change within.” That inner world includes imagination and a vision for the future. “If you want a beautiful garden, in the human mind you make some kind of a blueprint in the imagination, and then according to that idea, you implement, so the garden will materialize.”  

 That change may well be underway. The current dominance of rigid denial, Buddhist philosopher David Midgley maintains, “is typical of the terminal phase in the life-cycle of a paradigm, and might be compared to the chrysalis stage in the life-cycle of a moth or butterfly...While the outer shell of the organism seems rigid and immoveable, invisible changes are taking place within, which may erupt dramatically when they reach a critical stage of development.”

 In any case, the activities of hope and personal commitment are essential to create the desirable future by enacting it now. "Whether we achieve what we are hoping for or not, it is important for us to keep hope,” said the Dalai Lama. “Hope is the basis of our future."

 The Dalai Lama is our eighth figure for the future.  But these eight are joined by newer voices, opening up new knowledge and possibilities. 

 The synthesis continues for example with books on parallels of Jung’s writing with Native American tradition and Buddhist practice (such as the connections between Buddhist mindfulness and Jungian consciousness), as well as Jung and nature, and Buddhism and ecology.  Others explore the implications of quantum physics for insights related to various mystical traditions, Indigenous practices and Jungian glimpses (such as synchronicity) into what Star Trek’s cosmic being Q called “the unknown possibilities of existence.” 

But the synthesis is also advanced with new analysis, information and insights. One of the most exciting is literally a new story, called The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow.  The authors demonstrate that the dominant received history of early human civilization is “entirely wrong,” according to a detailed article in the Atlantic by William Deresiewicz. “Drawing on a wealth of recent archaeological discoveries that span the globe, as well as deep reading in often neglected historical sources,” he writes, “the two [authors] dismantle not only every element of the received account but also the assumptions it rests on.”

 Deresiewicz suggests that this new story demolishes “the idea that human beings are passive objects of material forces.”  Societies at different times and in different places made deliberate choices: they saw the perils of their authoritarian government and changed it, they saw a neighbor’s stratified society based on wealth and avoided it, they refused to become trapped in a single mode of existence, and moved easily as appropriate among farming, gathering, herding and hunting in an “ecology of freedom.”

 “In a remarkable chapter, they describe the encounter between early French arrivals in North America, primarily Jesuit missionaries, and a series of Native intellectuals—individuals who had inherited a long tradition of political conflict and debate and who had thought deeply and spoke incisively on such matters as “generosity, sociability, material wealth, crime, punishment and liberty.”  They call this the “Indigenous critique,” and maintain that it helped inspire the European Enlightenment.

Humanity did not march from hunter-gatherer nomads to total agriculture and then cities.  They mixed and matched and did them backward and forward.  They did not develop from tribal chieftains to kings and bureaucracies.  They governed themselves in a variety of ways, with and without “authorities.”They did not always see civilization as acquiring wealth and power in a top down structure. Civilization might mean “mutual aid, social co-operation, civic activism, hospitality...simply caring for others...”

 Moreover, these weren’t just doomed experiments.  Some of these societies lasted longer than today’s. 

These were stories untold, and there are more, including the stories of women, other Indigenous peoples and subjugated cultures.  The stories include the occluded, ignored and dismissed.  They include overlooked, devalued or derided examples of cooperation, civic duty, kindness, empathy, love of nature, selflessness—the civic and human spirit of “You’d do the same for me.”

These behaviors and these stories emerge in the worst times.  Scholars Pearl Oliner and Samuel Oliner (a Holocaust survivor) studied Europeans who risked their lives sheltering Jews during the Holocaust, and expanded this research into broader inquiries on altruism and compassion.  In The Altruistic Personality and other books, they explored many more examples of altruism under pressure than are mentioned in conventional histories. 

In A Paradise Built In Hell (2009), Rebecca Solnit tells the stories of communities that responded to disaster with creativity and solidarity.  “The history of disaster demonstrates that most of us are social animals, hungry for connection, as well as purpose and meaning,” she concludes.  “Hierarchies and institutions are inadequate in these circumstances...Civil society is what succeeds, not only in an emotional demonstration of altruism and mutual aid but also in practical mustering of creativity and resources to meet the challenges.”

 This is one basis for hope, as we confront the seemingly overwhelming effects of the climate emergency.  But another basis, equally ancient yet reinterpreted for our time, is at least as vital, as we address the causes of what will otherwise be even worse fates. It can be expressed as the Buddhist principle of “bringing the future into the present path.”  It still cannot be said better than in the Great Law of the Haudenosaunee: “In every deliberation we must consider the impact on the seventh generation to come.”  

Remember the future.  Anticipate the past.

  This ends the Soul of the Future series.  I’ve decided to integrate its bibliography with a still ongoing series, History of My Reading.  But eventually it will also bear the Soul of the Future label, for direct access.

Talking Buddhism and Neuroscience

BEYOND THE SELF: Conversations Between Buddhism and Neuroscience
by Matthieu Ricard and Wolf Singer
MIT Press 

I remember seeing a public television documentary on the brain, in the early 1970s.  It was then orthodoxy that humans could not consciously affect internal workings of the body.  But the final shot was of a Buddhist monk in meditation, as the voiceover mentioned that meditators claimed to affect their own pulse rate and other functions, and this ought to be investigated.

Shortly after that, biofeedback and "the relaxation response" became New Age enthusiasms that by now have entered orthodox medicine.  The relationship of the brain and body continues to be explored, and for three decades now, the relationship of brain and mind has been explored through the agency of the Mind and Life Institute and the efforts of the Dalai Lama.  A series of gatherings of scientists and monks sparked laboratory research in which experienced meditators like Matthieu Ricard (a participant at several of the Dalai Lama's gatherings) wore sensors that recorded brain patterns, studied by neuroscientists (like Wolf Singer.)

These meetings resulted in a series of books (10 of which I've read and reviewed), with many of the more recent discussions viewable on the Internet.  This work profoundly affected some of the scientists involved, notably psychologist Paul Ekman, who wrote a book with the Dalai Lama.  But neuroscientists have also been fascinated by what they found, which clearly includes Wolf Singer.

The basis for dialogue between Tibetan Buddhists and brain scientists has been that both investigate the workings of the mind.  Tibetan Buddhist meditators have complied centuries of data and conclusions, based on what the meditators experienced.  This is the first person perspective, but with such elaborate data and systems that these scientists, wedded to the objectivity of only the third person perspective, could not ignore.  They also could not ignore how different the brains of very experienced meditators worked.

It's all come a long way and this book is one of the results.  It also turns out to be the  best book I've read on neuroscience, period, and the clearest explanation of Tibetan Buddhism and its approach to meditation.  More specifically, this is the clearest discussion I've read so far on the relationship of Buddhist meditation and the brain.  (I've tried to read James Austin but I failed.)

Ricard (in monks robes) at a Mind and Life dialogue in DC.

Jon Kabat-Zinn is speaking to the Dalai Lama.

Ricard, who is a trained scientist as well as a Tibetan Buddhist monk, has done a few of these dialogue books and he's very good at it.  He and Wolf engaged substantively and for the most part succinctly, which must be partly a product of the editing, as this book reflects dialogues over eight years.

 One impression I got is that at least the particular kind of Buddhism that comes from Tibet and neuroscience are very similar in their view of the brain.  Tibetan Buddhism as I observe from the Dalai Lama and others, and now Ricard, is highly logical.  It comports well with the mechanistic approach of neuroscience, though Wolf is pretty clear on where the mechanistic model runs up against limits.

There are six broad topics that expand to inevitable problems of epistemology and perhaps even (in "why is there something instead of nothing?") cosmology. That they agree on so much may surprise some readers.  The expected disagreement on on the ultimate nature of consciousness is minimized, and Ricard leaves it as an area for further research.

The logical rigor of Tibetan Buddhism may also be surprising.  I remember when as a Catholic boy I first read anything about Buddhist tenets (usually in popular literature), the romantic and mystical elements jumped out, like "enlightenment" and Zen koans.  The koan that seemed to capture everyone's imagination was: "what is the sound of one hand clapping?"  It promised such depths of paradox and maybe even, the Answer.

But Ricard uses it in a different context, to explain how a heated argument needs two participants.  "So, as the Tibetan saying goes, 'One cannot clap with one hand."  So it seems that for Tibetan Buddhists the answer to "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" is exactly what common sense tells you: silence.

Within the broad topics and technical discussions, I found at least one answer I've been seeking.  As Ricard says, the concentration of meditation is not rumination--in fact, ruminating is a distraction to be avoided.  I always wondered how a creative person reconciles meditational rigor with the creative fruits of rumination, daydreaming, imagination.

The answer is akin to the sound of one hand clapping--because the relationship is the contradiction it seems to be. Wolf surmises that unstable states (the wandering mind) could be a prerequisite for creativity.  Ricard agrees, citing a neuroscience study: "brain states favorable to creativity seem to be mutually exclusive with focused attention."

Which of course is not to say that writers and other creative people shouldn't meditate, for it certainly helps in many other ways which eventually contribute to the creative life.

For myself, even though Tibetan Buddhism presents the closest thing to a practical and congenial belief and value system, there are limits to its application. (Plus as much as the Dalai Lama laughs, I find Zen funnier, in that paradoxical way.) And there are many more limits to neuroscience, in my view.  It's interesting that to some this book is a revelation that Buddhism actually has something to say about the brain.  That's been clear to me for decades, but if its clarity finally gets through, then it has done its job, with elegant rigor.

Catching Up with the Dalai Lama and other matters

Over the past week or so I've bookmarked some items that caught my eye:

Speaking of eyes, fans using powerful laser pointers to distract opposing quarterbacks risk causing blindness--a problem that would seem to transcend this particular use.

The latest alternative weekly to bite the dust: the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

This is from a few weeks ago but it got little attention: South Africa denied a visa to the Dalai Lama for a peace meeting by Nobel Laureates--and the other laureates rebelled, causing cancellation of the event.  Stories suggest it was to mollify China--which may seem surprising, except that China is investing heavily in Africa, which is beginning to attract notice in the West.

Apparently, certain problems within the Secret Service are not at all new, but have long been part of its culture.  A very troubling report of the impact on the JFK assassination.

Scam Inc: How Government Pays for Privatization and Other Matters

Probably the biggest scam this side of Wall Street banking is privatization.  Promoted in the Reagan years as giving the private sector the chance to cut costs and be efficient in what normally was done by the public sector, the result time after time has been that a few folks are getting rich by privatizing prisons, the military and now higher education--all primarily with tax money.  Notes an opinion piece on the New York Times site:

"The worst problems, though, occur at for-profit schools like those run by the Apollo Group (which owns the University of Phoenix), the Education Management Corporation or Corinthian Colleges. These schools cater to low-income students and veterans, but too often they turn hopes for a better life into the despair of financial ruin.

Nearly all of their students take out loans to attend, and the amounts are staggering. Among holders of bachelor’s degrees, 94 percent borrow. They take on median debt of $33,000 per student, compared with just $18,000 at the nonprofits and $22,000 at the publics. The for-profit graduates have trouble finding jobs that pay enough to afford their debts, and 23 percent of borrowers default within three years, compared with just 7 percent from nonprofits and 8 percent from publics."

 So how do they stay in business?  Like those big "security firms" and prisons, they are lapping it up at the government trough.

"Congress, by loosening regulations, permitted for-profit colleges to thrive on the government’s dime. These schools, which enroll nearly a tenth of college students, use nearly a quarter of federal student aid dollars allocated through Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, and they account for nearly half of all student loan defaults. A 1998 rule allows them to gain up to 90 percent of their revenues from Title IV alone — a figure that does not include their substantial use of military education money. Even during the 2008 financial downturn, the top publicly traded for-profits enjoyed growth. Their upper management and shareholders benefit at the expense of American taxpayers and students."

Other matters:

The Obama Derangement Syndrome Comes Home: This demonization of President Obama has its most obvious and unprecedented consequences in foreign affairs, as Josh Marshall noted.  But it has become the excuse for Republicans to avoid dealing with domestic issues like immigration reform, as Kevin Drum writes in Mother Jones.

However, there's some statistical evidence that while President Obama's reelection has made mad-dog GOPers even madder, it has (temporarily, I would guess) deflated officially designated hate groups.

Paul Ryan has been caught cooking the research to support his war on the war on poverty.

On the subject of poverty and the Rabid Right, is there an alternative brewing within US conservatism?  Or was listening to the Dalai Lama just a stunt?

Speaking of cooking the research, a catalog of Putin's lies about Ukraine.  Nevertheless, Josh Marshall warns that fears of at least some members of the new government aren't baseless: there is a strong fascist faction.  But Marshall's chief conclusion is that Putin is showing weakness, not strength.  As well as showing his true KGB colors.

Potpourri

Now that potpourri is legal in Colorado, it's only a matter of time before it is in California.  Anticipating that, here's a potpourri of links from 2013 and early this year that I didn't get to in thematic posts.

For Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh Pirates fans, here's a great story about Pirates manager Clint Hurdle.  I can go on about what's wrong with Pittsburgh, pro sports and the lamentable level of American profundity but this is a Pittsburgh story that says a lot about what is best about the place.  There are just enough stories like Clint Hurdle to justify realizing that there's a certain special character about this city.  Some other reports note various characteristics, such as healthful living  here (though I hate to link to Queen Ariana's slave quarters) and articles in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette series retrospective on the past 30 years: the increase in green spaces, and the overall change from "hell with the lid off" to a perennial "livable city."

                                   
Some years ago I read and "reviewed" the books that came out of several years of the Mind and Life conferences convened by the Dalai Lama, bringing together scientists and Buddhist practitioners to see what could be learned by both that went beyond the limits of each.   Brain scientists in particular were interested in meditative states attained by trained and veteran Buddhist meditators.  I've followed some of the ongoing work in this area since.

Most of what scientists have "proven" with brain imaging etc. simply confirmed what meditators observed.  But this study caught my attention: that meditation could influence gene expression.  How genes are "expressed" and interact in given situations is the new frontier of gene research, now that the prior belief that the presence or absence of particular genes determines everything is no longer tenable.  Gene expression may turn out to be much more important, in the still mysterious complexity of our beings in the world.

Research on some bones of Neanderthals made news late in 2013.  One conclusion: "The ancient DNA reveals a long history of Neanderthals interbreeding among at least four different types of early humans living in Europe and Asia".  Another study of bones suggests that Neanderthals had the same vocal capacity for speech as modern humans.  These studies are among those that suggest a closer relationship among earlier human species.  As one of the researchers of the latter study said, "Many would argue that our capacity for speech and language is among the most fundamental of characteristics that make us human. If Neanderthals also had language then they were truly human, too."

This may remind us that we tend to err towards the extremes.  Either earlier human species (or other animals, or even other nationalities of humans) are entirely different, or they are entirely the same.  Our conception of our human ancestors seems to have been expressed and then set in cartoon stone with the Flintstones.  But there's much to learn about ourselves from a more accurate idea of real life, now and hundreds of thousands of years ago.  Paul Shepard in particular repeatedly made the point that the human history we know is a small fraction of human time--10 thousand out of hundreds of thousands of years.  That span of time is when we evolved, and yet we know little about how we responded to those early environments, and therefore in large measure what we actually are now.

Finally, a couple of stories in the political realm.  The first is an under-reported but significant story about the alleged complete lack of security for President Obama at the Nelson Mandela memorial.  Coming so close to the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination, this was chilling.  And even more troublesome was the lack of attention it got.

The others are Cold War history revealed, sort of.   One story: For Nearly Two Decades the Nuclear Launch Code at all Minuteman Silos in the United States Was 00000000.  It's about how the military undermined the attempts by JFK and other "civilians" to install safeguards against accidental or premature launching of nuclear missiles, and ipso facto, apocalypse.  Though this particular revelation has since been disputed, it is of a piece with others, for example, in recent books on JFK and/or the Cuban Missile Crisis.  General Jack D. Ripper was not entirely fictional.

Another looks at the Soviet side, and a submarine commander who "should" have but did not start a nuclear exchange.  As we look back we ask, do we actually think we are less crazy now?  Look around.  What we are is more complacent.  Assassination, even nuclear war are still present possibilities, and we ignore them at our peril.  We should read these stories and reflect, because a huge element in our complacency is not understanding what these things would really mean.

Last but not lease---happy birthday, Kath!

                                     I still believe in global warming.  Do you?

The latest Rabid Right madness manifested as a billboard showing Ted Kacziynski (The Unabomber) with those words under it, "I still believe in global warming.  Do you?" It was sponsored by the increasingly notorious Heartland Institute.  It immediately drew more attention than any effort of say 350.org to publicize their Climate Impacts Day of action, which is today (Saturday May 5.)

What is actually newsworthy about this is that a firestorm of criticism--including from GOPers--forced the Institute to take it down.   And presumably to scuttle their announced plan to add to the series the faces of Fidel Castro, Charles Manson and Osama bin Laden.  I wish I could say this story is from the Onion, but it's from a Bangor, Maine newspaper.

But good marketing ideas never die.  I'm starting my own series right here, with the image above.

 Meanwhile, NASA has been studying the changes in Arctic ice:  "And it now appears that changes in Arctic sea ice affect everything from weather in Europe to the amount of sunlight the Earth absorbs. "The once seemingly insignificant and remote Arctic region is now understood to be intimately connected to the rest of the planet," noted Goddard Space Flight Center's Nathan Kurtz in a post from the field in late March."

A study of Greenland ice says that while melting is not at a worst-case-scenario speed, it has speeded up to a faster rate than UN projections from 2008, and threatens the world's coastal cities with a 3 ft. rise (together with other factors) by the end of the century. “’Glacial pace’ is not slow anymore,” said study author Twila Moon, a glacier researcher at the University of Washington.

As for Connect the Dots day, I wish I could say that I even understand what they're doing, but I am clearly not their demographic.  Best of luck to them anyway.  For the record, here is what Bill McKibben says is happening:

"We desperately need to put real human faces on climate change — to make sure that people understand it’s not an abstraction and a future threat, but a very present and very real crisis. And a crisis with solutions — in many places people are putting up green dots of hope, at their solar panels and windmills. (At my mom’s retirement home the residents are heading out to dig a big new community garden!)

So please: if you can spare an hour or two for the planet on 5/5, make sure you go to climatedots.org to find out where the nearest action is, and make sure you call a few friends and get them to come with you. We won’t solve climate change in a single day — but if we don’t manage to show our fellow citizens that it’s a problem, we’ll never solve it.

And here’s the thing — you’ll have a good time. On too many occasions we ask you to do really hard things, like get arrested. This action is crucial but simple — just lend your body for a little while to make the most important point we can make right now.

We’re asking everyone, at every local event, to take a photo of their “climate dot” and upload it to our website — and we’ll assemble those images into a global mosaic that puts a real human face on climate change. Our crew at 350.org will do everything we can to deliver your photos and stories to the media and decision-makers the world over. We can't let our elected officials pretend that this crisis is still in the future, and we’ll make sure our actions on 5/5 are a crucial first step to get global leaders to connect the dots on climate change."

I'm taking a little flak here for writing too much and too enthusiastically about Barack Obama, most of the comment being good-natured so far. I mentioned the North Coast blogger who links here not with this site's actual name but as an Obama blog. Now "cousin Lemuel" (old joke, between two old jokers) has broadened the charge in a comment, referring to my "propensity for hero worship of charismatic personalities." Could it be he's still sore because I backed Bobby Kennedy over Gene McCarthy?

On the more general charge, I'll say this: I've never been successfully accused of being an optimist, nor do I have a record of being uncritical (I do dispute "cynical" however). But I have shown evidence of preferring pop culture heroes and phenomena that represent the light over the dark, hope over despair, the commitment to good over the bad boys: from Superman to Spiderman and Harry Potter; Star Trek and Doctor Who over those s/f stories that are predictably described as "gritty." I even chose the Beatles over the Stones.

Whatever this says about me, here's what I say about context. The dark, the apocalyptic, the "gritty" are said to better represent reality and human nature. But it's not just half-empty or half-fullness in how you view this.

A century of Darwinism made the Social Darwinist analysis of ingrained, genetically programmed selfishness and cruelty in the struggle for survival into dogma, so dog eat dog capitalism, the rich preying on the poor and the sectarian violence serving the greed of those who make weapons for profit etc. have become enshrined as unalterable Human Nature.

This conveniently supports the rationale and lifestyles of militarists (and their video games), capitalists (who pay good lecture fees for intellectuals supporting this view) as well as TV and film writers who can't come up with a plot that doesn't depend on violence and the same old motives of jealousy, greed and revenge.

But now that even evolutionists are admitting that humans and other animals are also cooperative, caring, empathetic, compassionate, altruistic and yes, heroic creatures, human nature has room for all of this. Human behavior and the culture that supports it become matters of emphasis, of the value placed upon behaviors. But even those disposed to good may need models, and a sense of possibility. Heroes can personify those possibilities.

As for the function of charismatic figures in real life, particularly in politics, they can be powerful forces for bad or for good. But they are powerful, they do get things done. Here in the U.S., we had a series of Democratic Party candidates who would have made decent to very good Presidents, but they weren't, because they couldn't get elected. Barack Obama had the charisma, if you want to call it that, to inspire people to action.

Bobby Kennedy had two advantages over Gene McCarthy: he could have been elected, and he could have been a transformative President.

In Barack Obama (as in JFK and RFK), I value what I perceive as a complex intelligence, which includes complex feelings and a consciousness monitoring it all. I trust him and his judgment accordingly. But I don't worship him. I don't think he's infallible. And neither does he. That's partly why I have confidence in him.

Let me put it another way. I have long been interested in the insights of Eastern religions, but I had enough of priesthoods in my childhood, and my suspicion of gurus and their true believers probably stopped me from finding even a teacher. But I admire the Dalai Lama, partly because he doesn't believe in gurus either. He doesn't believe he's always right. Yet he has strong views and commitments, strong abilities to communicate, and--something else I value highly in RFK and Obama--a great sense of humor, including a saving sense of irony.

But here's the main point: we're up against a terribly crucial moment in human history. Humanity sliding into self-destruction and a long Dark Age is a very live possibility. Things in the U.S. are particularly dangerous. What happens in the next decade may tell the tale for America and quite possibly the world for centuries to come.

At least at the moment, the President of the United States is in many ways the psychological king of the world. Everyone projects onto the President their hopes and fears, and especially what they won't face about themselves. I've seen this with every President but of course it is more obvious to me when the President is one I voted for. I saw it clearly with Bill Clinton, who I kept called the President of Projection.

Though uncharismatic leaders can do just about as much damage, charisma in a leader can be dangerous. I was more than immune to Reagan's charisma but apparently he had it, and there wasn't another politician alive who could counter it. We got through that decade only by the charisma of writers and (for some of us) musicians. The critiques of the age came in songs by Joni Mitchell, Sting, Jackson Browne, Paul Simon, etc. They inspired us to hang on, by giving form and voice to our intuitions and observations.

But all charisma is not created equal. Barack Obama is a positive role model and a force for good in so many ways. We're going to need every ounce of his charisma, his ability to speak and inspire, the personal power to make and effect positive change and to hold off the gathering forces of evil.

He's the best hope going and I'm sticking with him until convinced otherwise. And because I trust his judgment I'm going to give him every opportunity to explain and convince me he's right, or at least that he's made the best possible choice.

I choose to emphasize the good he does, though some expect him to never disappoint them, to do everything they want immediately. Who is being unrealistic then?

I am not going to attack him and try to weaken him, as some on the left are now doing, because he isn't measuring up to their preconceptions of what he should be doing on some particular issue that's important to them. He isn't Bush. I don't see that weakening him is ultimately a positive.

Is that hero worship? I don't think so. I may look for the good and underestimate the bad, but I am not deluded and I gave up worship a long time ago. A couple of other dangers in hero worship are passivity and narcissism. I'm not passive, at least beyond my own fatalism, laziness and personal self-delusions. I believe that people find direction and hope by identifying to some degree with heroes and role models. Sure, I see the danger of such identification becoming psychotic, especially in this celebrity-crazed culture, but let's not throw out the planet with the bathwater.

We follow the leader who is leading in the direction we believe in, and in whom we have confidence. We follow what in a hero defines for us what we value, what we want to be, where we want to go, who we are committed to being. For those defined by their fears there is Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and a host of others, mostly to the right, but also left and center. For those defined by their hopes, there are lots of quiet heroes, lots of role models past and present, but mostly, there's Obama. Or maybe I should say the Obamas, because women (among others) are inspired by Michelle, and children (among others) are inspired by Sasha and Malia.

It's all a matter of emphasis. I'm for tipping the delicate balance towards equality, compassion, empathy, freedom, "truth, justice and the American Way." Technical adjustments may be necessary to get there, but we need more than technicians. There are powerful forces in opposition that are inside us as well as arrayed in the shared world. This looks like a job for the Superman inside. Out there, too, we need all the heroics we can get.

Dreaming Up Daily Quote

“What every person can and should do is help others. It is therefore not at all important whether we believe in God or the idea of rebirth. We can always do good, even today when we are afraid of the dangers that the future may bring.”

Dalai Lama

The Torch

It would have been comic if it wasn't so serious:
neither supporters or protestors could find the
Olympic Torch in San Francisco yesterday because
they kept changing and shortening the route. But
protestors disrupted it anyway, and they had more
obviously in London and Paris. China's behavior in
Tibet and its attitude towards Tibet is the proximate
cause for the protests, but many have added China's
support of genocidal violence in Darfur and Burma.

China has tried to use its new wealth and power earned
from its capitalist surge to change its image, but this
situation has revealed the naked totalitarianism underneath.
For example, the Chinese people aren't allowed to see these
images of protest, and China's ongoing program to "re-educate"
Tibetans on the Dalai Lama that was a spark for the violence
there is only set to get bigger.

Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi called for peaceful protest in SF but
also commended the protestors in a cause she supports. Hillary
Clinton called for Pres. Bush to not attend opening ceremonies, and
the White House is suggesting he might not, as several European leaders have already said they won't. Barack Obama said: " "If the Chinese do not take steps to help stop the genocide in Darfur and to respect the dignity, security, and human rights of the Tibetan people, then the President should boycott the opening ceremonies" but he said the actual decision to boycott the opening ceremonies should be made "closer to the Games," which has the political effect of giving the Chinese the opportunity to make progress on these issues in the interim.

Nancy's Journey

An extraordinary event took place Saturday, to very little notice here, after a week or so of tragedy in Tibet: the U.S. Speaker of the House, third in line to the presidency, traveled to India to meet with the Dalai Lama, to speak out on behalf of human rights, the political rights of the Tibetan people, and against oppression and violence perpetrated by the world's most successful totalitarian capitalist regime, in China.

At a time when the Chinese government is recklessly accusing the Dalai Lama of fomenting violence, Nancy Pelosi and a small congressional delegation traveled a great distance, to a fairly isolated part of India, to show their support.
At a time when the U.S. administration is selling high tech weapons to India and urging military and nuclear expansion, Nancy Pelosi visited the memorial of Mahatma Gandhi, performing the traditional tribute of throwing rose petals.

At a time when U.S. politicians and corporate leaders are afraid to criticize China for anything (including collusion in the Darfur genocide) because they essentially own our government and make everything we buy, Pelosi called for the world to condemn China for killing demonstrators as only the most recent acts of its murderous brutality in Tibet. She said this crisis is a challenge to "the conscience of the world."

At a time when the U.S. is feared and hated around the world, Tibetan exiles and others wrapped themselves in American flags because of her journey and her committment.

I get occasional emails from an organization trying to run a more radical candidate against Pelosi because she doesn't support impeachment, or hasn't done enough to end the Iraq war. They get no support from me. She's an imperfect politician, but Nancy Pelosi did more for this country this past weekend than anybody in government I know of has for a long time.

Those who share her concern for the Tibetan people can help through organizations such as the International Campaign for Tibet and the Tibet Fund.

Cultural Genocide

The Dalai Lama calls for an international probe into
cultural genocide in Tibet, as China cracks down
with violence.

Big Trouble in Tibet

What's really going on in Tibet is not precisely known, but it's likely to be very, very bad. Protests against what the Dalai Lama called "cultural genocide" have resulted in threats and violence by the Chinese government. According to Tibetan exile groups in India ( who "have provided some of the only reporting" from Tibet "since last Monday" said an ABC story), many have been killed.

"People have been saying they're shooting our people like dogs," Tenzin Norgay, the spokesman for the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy, told ABC News, citing his sources inside Tibet.

The Times of London is reporting close to to 1,000 Tibetans are under arrest. Now the Dalai Lama says if Tibetans engage in violence he will resign.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government is accusing the Dalai Lama of ordering the rebellion, charging as well that it is an attempt to stop the Olympics from being held in China. China is also blocking YouTube so that Chinese can't see the only video coming out of Tibet. So the situation doesn't look like it's going to get better soon, and may get a great deal worse.

Over the recent past, China has been busily destroying ancient Tibetan structures, especially those associated with Buddhism, and turning cities like Lhasa into perverse imitation Tibetan shopping malls for tourists. They've apparently murdered thousands of Buddhist monks in the process.

China has proven that capitalism and totalitarian iron-fisted rule work pretty well together. They make most of what Americans buy, and they've financed the Bushite wars and tax cuts for the wealthy by buying up federal government debt. So it's no wonder that the Bushites recently removed China from the list of the world's top ten human rights violators.

The Dreaming Up Daily Image