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Postmodern buddhas

This post by Buddhist Nerd Haven (BNH) got me thinking about the relevance of Buddhism today. Undoubtedly Buddhism has been, I feel, the most adaptable of the main “religions”. Its flexibility stems from its willingness to open up to the world, see it for what it is and change with the times.

But the excuse of changing with the times sometimes (as in the case of the West) has always been open to the danger of changing for a particular agenda. Scrutiny of the proposed changes are often without rigour and before we know it is all too late. This, I guess, is what the Buddha meant by giving us the Eightfold Path – that we must be careful, to have the most correct of understanding before we act. But this care of course could also be for a particular agenda also, that the status quo is kept for a purpose. So non-action is actually is an action.

What I am trying to say is this – unless our intentions are unfettered and untainted then only a true decision can be made. To be unenlightened is to be tainted. Therefore our practice must first be to achieve enlightenment. Otherwise all our actions will be with karmic effect.

So the question of changing Buddhism for the times can only be done by those who are enlightened, by Postmodern buddhas. So most definitely that leaves me out.

Some environmental lessons from a temple

I once spent three months in a temple. That was back in my university days. I had wanted to be a monk. I had taken the Buddhist vows but that was as far as I went.

Still I had learned a lot about myself from this experience. I am most definitely a different person to what I would have been without it. Sometimes I wish I did more but the chances are I would not have made a good monk.

In the three months in the temple I had seen, first hand, how it is possible to live frugally and be happy. We had food – we grew our own. And what we could grow for ourselves we received from the people around the temple and its supporters.

I had once gone on takuhatsu or asking for food and alms while at the temple. My mother when I told her about this practice she said she thought it was undignified and demeaning. I understood the practice, she did not.

It takes quite a bit of humility to ask for food, especially directly from someone. But in reality it is an act of humility both on the part of those asking and those being asked. In other words begging is not only for the benefit of the beggar but it is also a kind of reminder to those more “fortunate” that life is sometimes about luck and choice. In a way, we are all mendicants. We are living on the generosity of the planet, in this period of abundance and environmental stability. So we should be thankful to receive what we have. There will be times of scarcity. And it is usually then that the true nature of people will become clear. But we need not be in physical poverty to see this already, by the way we treat each other now.

Coming back to the topic of the temple, in the three months I was there I received about two hundred US dollars as a kind of wage. But that was a lot considering I had only spent may be fifty dollars of it for necessities like shaving cream and a trip to the local immigration office to try to extend my visa. But really we do not need to spend that much in order to survive. Take electricity, for example. I cannot imagine how low the temple’s electricity bill would have been considering how dark the place after nine o’clock at night. The idea of working when there is light and sleeping when there isn’t is a most sustainable way of living. It is possible to live in a civilised manner and still be kind to the earth.

You might this is extreme but it isn’t. All I am saying is some effort on everyone’s part will make a difference… more than we believe we could.

Biofuel minus the "fuel" bit.

Just as I said biofuel is a mistake. To find solutions to an addiction by replacing the addiction with another is just ridiculous. This guy said as much. And I have said this much. Reduction is the only way.

It does not take a maths genius to figure this out. We are ever expanding land (deforestation) to grow more food. And now we want to grow more “bio-stuff” (more deforestation) to run our cars. Clearly we are not going to reduce our COx levels. Less trees mean less CO2 taken out of the system. We may be trying to (read: pretending to) dig less holes (coal and oil) but the reality is we are duped to think this so we have yet another source to fuel our addiction (pun very much intended).

Hello? Biff? So how do we put on the breaks (appropriate metaphor)? How do you stop this grand-tourismo addiction of ours?

One thing I learned from my money habits is that if I don’t have it I can’t spend it. I do not own credit cards now for this reason. As I have suggested before, either we wait (let everything run out) or be more responsible and adult about it and show some restraint. It will take more effort on our part. It will take a strong leader to make us realise and be frugal. But neither the current capitalist paradigm or major alternatives are up to this task.

So isn’t it about time we returned to despotism and let some benevolent ruler, some Socratic philosopher-king, take over and make decisions for us? Because we are just like spoilt children with a handful of money in a candy store and not a single parent is in sight (or is that insight).

Ending the model of endless growth

Trinifar has written an excellent post on robust sustainability. It touches on some things I have been saying which I shall reiterate here.

The capitalist paradigm of endless growth has its roots in colonialism and imperialism, the Industrial Revolution, and in the progress-driven thinking of the post-Renaissance period or Modernity.

The paradigm is also one of competition, where its grand narrative shuts out the voices of mutualism, commensalism, parasitism and amensalism, which are all valid and available models for life-organization. They are not exclusive but complementary. The paradigm must therefore shift to one where competition becomes part of the picture, not the only image. This is what is meant by sustainability.

I have been all too brief here.

Nobody Knows

Dare mo Shiranai (Nobody Knows) directed by Hirokazu Koreeda is about alienation in modern Japanese society. Set in Tokyo it is about four children who secretly fend for themselves in their impersonal apartment when their irresponsible mother does not return home one day. Hiding this from the people the four live in social limbo while those around them who may have noticed turn a blind eye or else look on helplessly. Excellent performance from Yagira Yuya as the eldest son, Akira, in his debut.

Rating – ★★★★½ (out of 5)

Why are we not reducing the consumption of the wealthy?

As if the heat isn’t enough I have to have a heated debate about population.

Ever since I started blogging a couple of years ago I have been harping at consumption more than population for a reason – that the question of sustainability or capacity would be very different if the wealthy minority (yes, minority) in the world just consumed less.

The fact is that the so-called developed nations – who are the minority – consume far more than the rest of the world. So the question is what is so good about being a developed nation? It has been argued that more wealth (what ever that is) doesn’t make us happier. I have always believed that wealth is spiritual and not material.

Because I believe this I occasionally make crazy suggestions like burn your money and live more simply. I came to this conclusion because if by injecting money into an economy we create consumption then by removing it we can eliminate consumption.

You might ask how about giving the money to those less fortunate? Well, I think it is a fine idea… that is if you don’t ask them to become a “developed nation”, because to be one of these means you will have to be a big consumer as well. The catch with receiving money from any bilateral or multilateral aid agencies from capitalist, neoliberal or cultural imperialist societies is that they want you – the poor person – to be a rich person so you can buy more, consume more of their goods. So the simple solution is not to listen to them. But this, of course, is way easier said than done.

However, if there is a way to get the entire planet to consume less, even with the population at today’s six billion, we may still able to live comfortably. But that will not happen unless we move away from urban living. Today there are more people living in cities than in the countryside. And the fact that the more traditional lifestyles based on agriculture are more productive and less consumptive on the planet’s resources means we should return to it. But I’m afraid the trend is in the opposite direction.

Ancestral return

I went into university today. It had seemed everyone took the day off because tomorrow is the start of the three days of the Ancestral return worship or Obon. According to my mother-in-law tomorrow we will go “pick up” the ancestors from the graves and bring them home where they will spend the night with us. Then we will “take them back” to the graves, bid farewell and until next year when we do the same thing. That’s the routine. I told my mother about this Japanese custom over the phone tonight and she just about freaked out (we’re Chinese).

Anyway, I was the only one in my research lab in today. I had lunch with an American friend who happens to like books, not just any books but Japanese literature also. We had a nice chat over a nice lunch (too extravagant for a income-less student/parent like myself, according to my wife).

I did some more work on Harry Potter – research – before heading home, fighting the Ancestral return traffic. When I got home my son was playing with the neighbour’s nieces back from the big city.

I had also hired four DVDs for the holidays – Lilo and Stitch, The Incredibles, Mr and Mrs Smith, and Nobody Knows (Dare mo Shiranai). The first two should keep the kids happy over the next few days while my wife and I can sit back a little… just a little.

Work and study – the craziness – starts again this Friday.

Pets, culture and fatherhood

So I went to the local festival tonight. My wife and I thought it would be nice to get the kids out of the house after a quiet day at home.

What I didn’t expect was that we would come home soon after with a new pet – a newt. I had not known what a newt was until tonight. We don’t have them in Australia. Personally I hate pets. The idea of my enjoyment at the expense of another animal’s life just doesn’t appeal to me. Just thinking about what jail is like makes me feel sorry for the animals.

In Japan they have this thing called rather paradoxically kingyo sukui or “goldfish saving”. The object is to use a paper “net” to scoop goldfish into a bucket. But the paper pretty much disintegrates in the process so you cannot catch too many. In this particular booth at the festival (all festivals have them) the guy gives them to you. So for our 200 yen (silly us paid for mine and my sons at 100 yen a piece) we got a newt and five sickly guppies.

Two new books

I picked up a couple of new books in the last ten days. One is Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers. So far it has been good. Easy to read. Straight forward explanations of some difficult environmental concepts. Written not from a point of view of activism or science but for those who want to understand the problem of our current unsustainable lifestyle and how we should live by understanding this.

The other was given to me by a professor in my intensive class on Colonialism. The book, Yoko Kawashima Watkins’s So Far from the Bamboo Grove, is about a Japanese girl living in colonised Korea just before the end of WWII. It is an eye opener to the fact that no one is without blame in the War when it comes to injustice.