Sunday, May 31, 2009

First Earth Battalion

During the years following Vietnam, the army became convinced that the Chinese had thousands of children who were clairvoyant. Somewhat mystified, the CIA, NSA and DIA did their own research into mind-control, remote viewing, and other New Age concepts.  Among the largest and most well funded of these was the First Earth Battalion which originated on the ideas and writings of one Jim Channon.

His philosophical impetus is as follows:

Chinese monks were often attacked by robbers. They developed a new fighting system based on using the force of the attacker against him. Likewise the soldiers of the First Earth will learn martial arts with the same ethical basis. No Earth soldier shall be denied the kingdom of heaven because he or she is used as an instrument of indiscriminate war. The conscience will be developed together with the ability to neutralize the opponent.

Skill sets he hoped to ingender in the armed forces included the following categories of warrior monks:

PEOPLE

All warrior monks, but an interdependence of New Age skills as well.

[The graphic shows the following skills, all emanating from a central Spirit Wizard]

  * Spirit wizard
  * Meditation leader
  * Martial arts wizard
  * Nutritionist herbalist
  * Vexillographer (flags and banners)
  * Cinematographer
  * Old tapes
  * Holographer
  * Printer
  * Minstrels
  * Video technoid
  * Satellite technoid
  * Laser technoid
  * General systems theorist
  * Physicist
  * Futurist
  * Builder
  * Conservationist
  * Indian tracker [sic]

I would hope to be a spirit wizard (which sounds neat) mixed with a futurist/indian tracker (to help me find dinner at lunch time). I would settle for Vexillographer, but to be honest, I wouldn’t want to be Printer. That sounds boring.

It seems well and good, but the research Channon conducted went on to be used in part for “enhanced interrogation techniques” and methods used at the standoff at Waco, Texas.  In short, his hippy powers were used for evil.

To learn more about the interesting goings-on and the writing of Channon, go here.

The barber’s paradox

Here is an interesting paradox:

Suppose you walk past a barber’s shop one day, and see a sign that says

  “Do you shave yourself? If not, come in and I’ll shave you! I shave anyone who does not shave himself, and noone else.”

This seems fair enough, and fairly simple, until, a little later, the following question occurs to you - does the barber shave himself? If he does, then he mustn’t, because he doesn’t shave men who shave themselves, but then he doesn’t, so he must, because he shaves every man who doesn’t shave himself… and so on. Both possibilities lead to a contradiction.

Apparently this problem gave mathematicians like Bertrand Russel a big headache at the beginning of the 20th century, and almost made some people give up on life entirely.

I don’t think it is that big a deal, because the barber could just be a woman.

Paradoxes are kind of fun though, especially ones about God being all powerful and all.  One nice one goes “Could God create a burrito so big that even God could not eat it?” I like this one because it helps me imagine what an infinite burrito would be like, and it also helps me imagine God eating that burrito in an instant.  What this would do to the divine digestive tract is anyone’s guess.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Scientist talks about reincarnation! Ideas!

An article in the National Post examines the scientific community’s response to reincarnation.

Dr. Jim Tucker, a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia who has carried on research in the field pioneered by the late Ian Stevenson, another psychiatry professor at the college and a Montreal native, said he and colleagues stop short of arguing that reincarnation is a fact.

“My conclusion is that the strongest cases provide evidence that there are times when memories and emotions seem to have survived death,” he said.

“Whether that exactly means what people think of as reincarnation—as sort of a soul moving from one life to another—that’s hard to say ... [But] there is a lot of reason to think that consciousness is sort of an independent force in the universe, and as such it may well exist separate from the physical brain, at least at times. This would be an example of that.”

The cases that prompt Dr. Tucker to remark like this are those in which patients display vivid memories of existences other than their own without any other signs of mental instability. Dr. Tucker says that while the idea of a consciousness that exists apart from the brain runs contrary to the materialist leanings of the scientific community, his own inclination is that at some point, the strictly materialist view will see a strong challenge.

I am not shocked.  Materialism results out of the inability to test that which is not material, not out of a philosophical impossibility of super-material realities.  Hell, for all scientists know, we could be the imagination of some sort of computer program that has managed to simulate a material world perfectly well. Their job is not to figure out if that is true, but rather to learn all they can about the simulation.

I do think, however, that we sometimes display a remarkable lack of creativity when it comes to understanding our own minds.  The understanding of consciousness, it seems to me, is an area well-primed for a paradigm shift.  In the physical world we have come to understand that the lines we once thought were solid are indeed blurred.  This was true when we discovered that all things were made of atoms, and it was true when we learned about quantum theory.

I think that at some point we will learn that the lines we draw between our consciousnesses are similarly blurred, but it will take a long time to figure this out because we are looking at them from the inside.  It is impossible to look at one without also looking through one, and this is a huge problem.

I think though, that just like believing that physical boundaries are discrete is an example of rudimentary thinking, so does believing that your consciousness is surrounded by some sort of brick wall represent a marked lack of creativity.

In Eastern thought, each soul is atman, which is a fractal representation of Brahman, which is the totality of existence, or the Oversoul.  One way of understanding this is to imagine Brahman as a big bonfire with a never-ending source of fuel.  When someone is born, it is like putting a small stick into that fire and letting it catch.  The small flame is atman, it is made of Brahman, but it is also separate and its own entity.

In this way consciousness can be passed, manipulated, extinguished, and absorbed, it is not simply an abstraction created by the firing of neurons, it is an energy, albeit one that we do not yet understand.  I think that we may have an inclination to it, however, and I sure hope that some giant brain figures it out soon because I feel like it is on the tip of my tongue.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

On Homelessness

The defining features of a homeless man are these: long beard, unkempt hair, clothes that are dirty or which do not match.  Perhaps a homeless man is carrying his possessions on his back.  Perhaps he is pushing them in a cart.  Maybe he mumbles to himself incomprehensibly.  Maybe he walks in a way which is abnormal: a shuffle, a stifled gait.  It is possible that he will be wounded, and that evidence of his wound will be visible to the naked eye: a bandage, a cut, an arm in a sling.  His hands will be rough and worn.  He will look in places ordinary people will not look.  He will speak to you as you pass him with unnerving frequency and in an unorthodox style.  He will seek you out when and where you do not wish to be sought. 

Mr. Jesus, it seems to me, possessed many of these same characteristics.  He kept the company of prostitutes.  His hair, presumably, was rarely washed.  His clothes, when held in comparison to the well dressed people of his day, were ordinary, and likely quite dirty.  His hands would have been rough, worked, and worn.  There was dirt beneath his fingernails.  He would not say “consider the Tabernacle” in order to teach.  Instead, he would say “consider the mustard seed,” using perhaps the most lowly thing to teach his lessons.  Were Jesus alive today, He would appear to be a homeless man.  A vagrant.  A derelict.  A bum.

He spent much of his time speaking about the differences between his teachings and the teachings of the Pharasees, who were the established religious men of his day.  He said, for example “Woe unto you hypocrites,” regarding the men who dressed in fine clothes and proclaimed themselves to religious leaders.  He called them serpents, he called them a brood of vipers. 

___________________

Mr. Jesus became too powerful.  People were starting to follow him around and listen to what he had to say.  People were starting to understand His message.  So the Pharisees, working together with the Romans, had Him stapled to a big piece of wood, in order to teach everyone a lesson about bums.  The lesson was this:  Once a bum, always a bum.

Mr. Jesus had a lesson to teach too.  His lesson was this: To find God, do not look up.  Look down.

________________

Religion is such an odd thing.  Today it is a subject of many discussions, and a great deal of anger.  This is because we have forgotten the lesson of Mr. Jesus.  In America, the president is one man whose religion is very important to us.  If the president does not talk properly about religion, we get very upset.  Atheists, Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Wiccans, we get upset.

When we want to know about Religion, we look up to the very top part of our society.  We say: Mr. President, what do you suppose is true about religion?  If the President claims one thing, we are happy.  If he claims another, we are angry. If a bum shares his idea on Religion, what do we say?  “Ok bum,” we say.  “Whatever you say.”  We are a strange society.

If you ask me, Religion does not come from the very high places.  It comes from the very low places.

_______

Mr. Jesus spent a good deal of time talking about the end of the world.  “The end is near!” He would say. 

Bums say the same thing, but nobody writes books about it.

_____

Mr. Henry David Thoreau once said some thing very interesting.  He said, “Beware of any enterprise which requires a change of clothes.”  I got to thinking about this, and I got to thinking about the sorts of enterprises that normally require a change of clothes.  One of these enterprises is going to work.  When we go to work, most of us put on special clothes which tell other people how official we are. 

Another enterprise that requires a change of clothes is going to Church on Sundays.  When people go to Church on Sundays, they also put on clothes that prove how official they are.  To me, this does not make any sense.

Once Mr. Jesus was walking along in a field, and his disciples got to worrying about food, money, and clothes.  Mr.  Jesus stopped the conversation right there and taught a lesson.  He said, “Consider the birds in the fields: do they put food in a big barn and worry every day about what to eat?  No.  Even so, God is giving them food to eat every day.  Consider the flowers.  Are they saving up money to buy expensive clothes?  Do they worry everyday about looking beautiful?  No.  But look at them: God has given them the most beautiful clothes in the world.”

Then Mr. Jesus said something amazing.  He said: “God is loving birds and flowers so much that they get clothes and food every day.  Are you trying to tell me that God doesn’t love you too?  Are you trying to tell me that God won’t guard you just like God is guarding the birds and the flowers?”

How interesting.  A homeless person will not change clothes to look official.  Maybe in this way, he or she is like Mr. Jesus.

________

A homeless person will usually not be on the news explaining world events.  To me, this says more about the news than it does about homeless people.

________

Sometimes homeless people are doing amazing things.  In the American Midwest, for example, there is a homeless man that dresses in a bright pink leotard and plays the saxophone all day.  As an artist, he deserves my support.  He has it. 

_________

It is about love.  In everyone, there is something to love, something which was put there a long time ago.  Many times people are obsessed with covering this thing up, because they are ashamed of it or afraid.  They are “insecure.”  Sometimes on the street I will come across a man who will say something ridiculous to me.  For example, once in California, a man yelled “I am the kite king of San Francisco!!”

At first I was afraid, because I thought the man might attack me.  Later I realized this was nonsense.  If what he says is true, then he has no reason to attack me.  I imagine that when no one is looking, he gives the kites orders as they move around in the sky.  “Go this way!” he says, and they go.  “Go back that way!” he says, and they go back.

That is beautiful.  Why was I so afraid of a man who is able to talk to kites?

________

Sometimes we think that we do not need to pay attention to what other people are telling us.  We think “I am an educated person with a sound mind.  This person is talking nonsense.  I will not listen.”

This is bad.  Imagine all those people who said this to old Copernicus, who decided to start saying that the Earth revolves around the sun.  Those people were a real disaster.  So the next time someone tells you they are the Kite King of San Francisco, think of Copernicus.

__________

Maybe we do not always understand what is right.  Imagine a person who has lived their entire life inside of a medium sized box.  They are probably real experts about the inside of the box, but would we say that they understand the entire world?

It is the same with brains.  We go through life only being inside of our own brain.  We are the real expert about the inside of our brain, but that does not mean we understand the whole world.  Maybe there are amazing things outside of what our brains understand that are waiting to be discovered.

Maybe the Kite King is on to something!  Who knows?

________

It is really about love.  That is one thing I know.  Mr. Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  That does not mean that you should stand inside your box and think about how quaint somebody is.  That means that you try to understand their box from the inside!  When I do something idiotic, for example, I am always understanding that there was a reason for my action, even if the reason is stupid.  When other people do an idiotic action, however, I sometimes think “They are just an asshole.”  This is probably wrong.  That person probably also had a reason, even if it is a stupid reason.

________

Society tells us many things about each other, but most of them are crap.  It is worth listening to other people, even if they seem crazy, dirty, disheveled, or poor. This is true because our society is based around the ideas of crazy disheveled people, such as Mr. Jesus, Mr. Henry David Thoreau and Copernicus.  Even if Copernicus was not disheveled. He wasn’t, he was quite well kept.  Not that that is a crime.  It isn’t.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

The idea of the Book of Saints

I was going to write a story once about a young man who was interested in the following fact:  Of all the people who have ever lived at any time in history, more than half of them are alive right now at this moment.  That means that there are more people alive right now as I am click click clicking away at my keyboard than have lived and died during all the time that existed on the planet earth since the cave men. 

The man is a man who is interested in God and in the saints, and so he gets to thinking about all the saints that ever lived.  In Catholic churches, there are over 10,000, he finds out, and so he figures that if you include the Hindus and the Muslims and the Buddhists and the Jews and everyone that there must be loads more that people found out about and wrote down over time.  Maybe even one million, he figures.

So he is thinking about these two facts and he decides that by the numbers, since he is also scientific, that there must be at least one million saints living right now since logically speaking the percentage of saints in the general population would stay the same, if everything was fair and equal and right, which, as a man concerned with saints, he believes it must be.

He becomes very excited and hopeful, and he takes out a notebook and goes on a mission to record the Sayings of the Saints, so that in the future people can know what the saints of 2009 had to say about life on Earth and life as Human Beings. The problem is that he does not know where to look for saints, as they are probably scattered all around, and sometimes, living in secret. 

But he is full of hope and so he begins right where he is, and he goes down to the local bar just to watch and listen.  He begins writing down the things that people say.  He continues by going to church and writing down everything that people say there, and he goes also to the mosque and he goes to the synagogue, and he goes to the VFW and he goes to the soup kitchen, and the to Kinkos and he writes down everything.

And he begins to become frustrated, because he cannot tell what is holy and what is not.

He begins to go back through the notebook and reread what he has written down in the hopes that by doing so he will discover something saintly hidden in the pages he has already.  Every night he sits with his notebook open, running his pencil over and over the words he has already written, until they become like one long line in the notebook and the words begin to run together.

(This is the meaning of the way I write using one long line.)

He continues writing and continues writing and he becomes more and more worried that there just aren’t saints anymore, since everyhting he has written is so ordinary.  He is thinking that the world has become ordinary, and that it has become too cold and too concrete for saints, and he keeps thinking that what he is up to is a failure. 

But one day he is in a Walmart and he is writing and writing everything that everyone is saying.  The checker lady and the customers talking about prices, he is writing it all down.  And an old man comes up to him and watches over the shoulder without our hero noticing.  And he sees what the young man is doing and he says

He says, “Hey there what are you writing down?”

And the young man says “I am writing down everything because I am hoping to find a saint.”

And the old man says “I think you found some.”

And the young man says “where?”

And the old man says, “All of them,” he says, “Seems to me that all you got to do to have someone be a saint is to believe they are a saint, and with the sort of records you are keeping here there ain’t no way a single person in that book of yours ain’t gonna have a decent shot at being holy.”  He says, “Seems to me that all people need to be saints is understanding, and with a book like that I figure you’ve got more than enough understanding for them.  Just gotta believe it now.”

And so that is the end I think.  The idea is that everything in the world is holy, it is just opinions that divide things into good and bad, and most of the time the main character did not realize that he had to try hard to undivide things. It did not matter if someone went to church or even if they believed in God, it just mattered that they were “called to holiness,” which is the definition of a saint.  What the main character realizes right at the end is that everyone is called to holiness, and the surprising part is not that everyone is a saint, the surprising part is that we don’t treat each other like this.

I wanted to start a book of saints on the internet where people could contribute small snippets of things they heard or saw and I would put it all up so that everyone could read what all the holy people were up to.  Someday if there are an extremely high number of people interested I will begin this project and I think it will turn out just fine.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Mr. Issa poem regarding springtime noises

A sermon at a crossroads;
A lot of gibberish,-
But this also is spring tranquility.
-Issa

Says R.H. Blythe:

A monk is giving a sermon to some people at the crossroads. He is telling them of Amida’s vow, carried away with his own eloquence. The peasant people listen respectfully, saying Namuamidabutsu at appropriate places. Issa also stands there and listens. What the priest says is all nonsense. The people stand there half-hypnotized with it. But Issa feels no contempt for them at all, no self-superiority. This also, these good people and this perspiring monk, are part of the calmness of the spring day. He feels a warm, peaceful love of them and the stone Jizo standing by, the clouds sailing in the sky, the breeze that occasionally ruffles their hair and garments.

Mr. Blythe does a good job of explaining this poem but it reminds me of an idea I had a while ago while I was sitting in a work meeting listening to people talk.  It was a big room and we were all sitting in a circle, so that I could hear the voices coming from different parts of the room. Even though it was a drab, dull room lit with florescent lights, I suddenly got the idea that there was not all that much different between this space and any other space, these noises and any other noises.  I stopped trying to listen to the words people were saying and instead just listen to the sound of their voices as sounds without meanings.  When I did this, I noticed that the human voices were just one more of nature’s sounds, like rain hitting the window or leaves rustling. 

I do not think it is possible to do this all the time, because there is a reason to be able to understand that words have meanings, but it is an idea at least, that we people are not separate from nature and that the sounds we make and the actions we do are no more or no less natural than a those of, say, a tree.  This is maybe why Mr. Issa was able to see the whole situation as simply another part of the day, rather than something he needed to get involved in.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Thinking about Jehovah’s witnessing

This morning while I was waiting for the bus I was approached (for the second day in a row) by a Jehovah’s witness. They have taken to driving around in the morning and offering reading material to people waiting at bus stops.  Luckily, I think religions are fascinating, so I am always up for being convinced of just about anything. 

Today’s lesson was especially interesting as a large part of it focused on woolly mammoths for some reason.  Apparently some Jehovah’s witness was digging in or around the Colosseum in Rome (like you do) and discovered bones that he concluded were Elephas antiquus (“ancient elephant”).  The witnesses provide a dramatic recreation of this beast and to my eye (which is expert in these matters) it looks awesome.  Even more awesome is the fact that the ancient elephant was apparently carried to Italy by a flood.  Hmm, I thought.  Surfing elephant.  This was sounding like a great religion.

Then the Jehovah’s witness left and Jane came, and I got to talking to Jane about the Jehovah’s witnesses.  Jane told me that according to Jehovah’s witnesses only 144,000 people can go to heaven.  I called crap because to me that sounded like a low number.  But Jane was right. Here is a table I stole from Wikipedia which explains Christian views vs. the views of Jehovah’s witnesses. 

Now I have a question.  Since only 9,986 living people get in, and since nobody knows who those 9,986 are, do the Jehovah’s witnesses come and talk to me thinking that it will help them get into the 9,986, or are they thinking that maybe I am in the 9,986?  Wouldn’t they feel sour towards God if they did all the work and it was the schmuck at the bus stop that ended up getting in?

Side question: Will there be ancient elephants in heaven?

Overall the pamphlet they gave me is pretty cool, I give it a B-.  It includes lots about creatures and it mentions the end of the world.  There is also a part in there about ways to chat up Jehovah’s witness ladies (spoiler: It is against Jehovah’s witnessing to chat up ladies).

It is marked down because there is a story of a man switching from Buddhism to Jehovah’s witnessing.  This man probably didn’t know loads about Buddhism because it is possible in Buddhism to go to heaven too, but you are supposed to be non-attached to the idea of heaven because heaven requires an ego, and ego is bad.  This man is clever, though, in a way, because he is an example of hedging bets with your soul, which is probably not a bad idea, since it is his soul and all.

It also included a story about the killing fields of Cambodia as proof that Buddhism is not a nice religion.  Hint: If you are Christian, don’t complain when other religions kill people.

Finally on the down side, there is a bunch of crap about thyroids which was stupid because who cares about thyroids?

I will be looking forward to the next installment from the witnesses, and if anything awesome comes up like a surfing elephant I will mention it. I will also try to get my question’s answered from one of the team members of the Jehovah’s witnesses in order to Increase My Understanding.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Not good news from Sri Lanka

There has been a lot of news coming from Sri Lanka over the past few days, none of it good.  The long standing tension between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sinhalese majority has turned into war in the north and in the east, which are the areas held by the LTTE.  This is very sad.  Nearly everybody I knew in Sri Lanka on both sides of this tension was very kind and welcoming.  No one I met wanted war.


[caption: A group of Sinhalese soldiers gets their regimental flag blessed at the Maha Bodhi Stupa, where a relative of the tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment grows today.]

Since this fighting is happening outside the eyes of American news cameras, however, it gives a very interesting chance to examine war and how we feel about it and, even more interestingly from my point of view, how religion and violence are viewed in the United States.

History

Sri Lanka was ruled since antiquity by the Sinha dynasty, which was a monarchy born out of the Sinhalese ethnic community.  They were periodically invaded by armies of Southern India, which brought a good degree of cultural mixing (most notably the introduction of Buddhism in the 3rd century), however, Sinhalese culture remained distinct. During the colonial period, starting int he early 16th century, Sri Lanka became a major center for trade and was frequented by Arab, Portuguese, and Dutch sailors all of whom had influence on the islands cultural makeup.

The Sinha dynasty remained intact as a Buddhist kingdom, however, until the early 1800s when Britain took an interest in the island as an extension of its colonial power in India.  Sri Lanka presented a challenge to the invaders due the location of its central government.  Kandy, known as the hill capital, was virtually unreachable due to the rugged terrain, thick jungles, and presence of malaria, and British armies took heavy losses on their way to the heart of the island.  In 1815, however, the hill capital fell, and Sri Lanka became Ceylon under British rule.

The British used the island to grow coffee and tea with varying degrees of success.  To cheaply harvest their crops, they brought in large numbers of indentured servants from Southern India, who were largely of Tamil origin.  Because of their proximity to the political and financial power of the British, certain Tamils were more cooperative with the British than were the Sinhalese, who remained somewhat stubborn in their opposition to colonial rule.  As a result, Tamils received noticeable benefits from the British in the form of education and political power.

When independence came in 1948, the Sinhalese, who remained in the majority, responded to underlying feelings of resentment towards the departing colonists and the Tamils by enacting policies to keep political power in Sinhalese hands and to correct what they saw as unequal distribution of resources and education.

This, unsurprisingly, resulted in push-back from the Tamils, whose increasingly agitation resulted in riots in 1958. At the same time, a population explosion was underway which produced a sort of underclass of uneducated and unemployed Sinhalese.

These factors, along with the global economic pressures of the 70s resulted in a violent rebellion by a group known as the JVP (People’s Liberation Front) which was a leftist Sinhalese nationalist party. This rebellion was brutally repressed.  During my time at Peradeniya University in Kandy, I heard stories of the government placing the heads of rebels on spikes around the school fountain as a warning to students, and this was on the more “subtle” side of what went on.

The violence begot more violence, and also begot a good degree of ethnic mistrust.  In the Northern, largely Tamil areas, groups of Tamil students began a campaign to remove non-Tamils from Jaffna University, and similar attempts took place on the Sinhalese side in the center of the country. It was a very volatile time, and both sides became more entrenched and distrustful as a result.

The following years were marked by increasing tension.  Thugs working as agents of the government worked to suppress dissenting political views, and voting fraud, including the outright theft of ballot boxes, became a political reality.  The Tamils, as a dissenting group, were heavily targeted by these actions.  In 1983, the increasing thuggery hit a breaking point, and the Jaffna library was burned down.

The library was a significant symbol to both sides.  To the Tamils, it was rightly considered a point of pride as one of the most complete and treasured collections of ancient and modern literature in that area of the world.  To the Sinhalese, it represented the privilege that Tamils enjoyed under British rule.

In response, a group of young Tamil students struck back, calling themselves the Tamil Tigers and later the LTTE ( Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam).  The first strike was an attack on a military convoy in which 13 Sinhalese soldiers were killed. 

This was 1983, and is often considered the start of Sri Lanka’s civil war.  It is also used as the point from which “total casualties” of the conflict are measured in the media.

Shortly after the attack, Sinhalese around the country launched viscous raids on Tamil homes and businesses. In brutal and sad neighbor-to-neighbor violence, an estimate 3,000 Tamils were killed, and there are many harrowing accounts of Tamils fleeing or hiding in homes of sympathetic Sinhalese neighbors while their own homes burned to the ground.

In the aftermath of this violence, 150,000 Tamils left Sri Lanka creating a sizable diaspora.  Those who remained congregated either to the central hill region (where there is little ethnic conflict today) or to the north and east (the centers of today’s conflict).

Since, the Sinhalese and the northern Tamils have hovered between high tension and outright war.  The LTTE, though weak by conventional standards has survived by employing unconventional tactics.  They are credited with inventing suicide bombings, and are also accused of using child soldiers.  They are famous, among other things, for equipping their cadres with cyanide capsules intended to be bitten in the event of capture to avoid interrogation.

The goal of the LTTE is to create an independent state called Tamil Eelam in the northern and eastern portions of Sri Lanka.  The goal of the Sinhalese government is to eliminate the “terrorists” and unite the country under (what realistically amounts to) Sinhalese rule.

Though there is a great degree of dispute on this point, my impression is that a good amount of the violence that took place during the 20 year stalemate was committed by the LTTE against Tamils.  Conditions in the North and the East have steadily worsened, and those civilians not affiliated with the LTTE are harshly intimidated into either voicing support or serving among the LTTE cadres. It is highly inadvisable to be a prominent Tamil politician who does not support the LTTE. There were also notable attacks on Buddhist religious monuments, with reprisals and crackdowns following from the Sinhalese.

Today’s “blood bath” is the result of Sinhalese armies moving in to Tamil controlled areas in the north in an effort to finally crush the LTTE. The LTTE, probably expecting little mercy, are fighting a guerrilla war and using human shields in some cases. It is sad, it is brutal, but it has been going on for some time and is in many regards not surprising.

In 2005 there was a lot of news about global trends towards global religious conservatism. Examples included the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East and Central Asia and the growth of the Christian right under Bush in the United States. Under the radar, a similar trend took hold in Sri Lanka.  The 2005 election was between Mahinda and Ranil.  Mahinda was a Sinahalese Nationalist, who vowed to fight the terrorists. Ranil was more militarily moderate, less nationalist and more open to the global community.  Mahinda won the support of politically active Buddhist clergy who commonly appeared at his rallies, and Ranil’s Buddhism was questioned. Similar to other areas of the world, religious nationalism won the day, and Mahinda, for all intents and purposes, has been carrying out exactly what his campaign rhetoric suggested he would.

What I learned from it:

Now, this situation can teach us a lot about religion, nationalism, and violence, especially when it is compared to other global conflicts.  Mahinda, by combining Sinhalese pride and paranoia with the imagery of Buddhism tapped into a very deep well of emotion, and has succeeded in mobilizing his nation to take violent action without significant dissent.  This use of Buddhist themes runs contrary to the view of Buddhism in the West as a simple philosophy of peace, or as a religion about self-improvement rather than politics. 

At the same time, the island’s Muslims, numbering somewhere around 40,000, have been almost entirely passive throughout this conflict.  They tend to keep to themselves among both Sinhalese and Tamils.  They practice their religion freely and in the open and have rarely been the targets or instigators of violence.

Looking at this situation, there seems to be nothing inherently within Islam that makes it a violent religion.  If there was, Sri Lankan Muslims would be involved in the violent acts seen on the island.  At the same time, common conceptions of Buddhism have been turned on their heads.  It is now Buddhism, a “religion of peace” that is being used to promote and justify violent actions towards another ethnic group.

The religious rhetoric floating around in this conflict suggests that it is not religion itself that is the cause of the conflict, as is sometimes thought to be the case in the Middle East.  Instead, religion is a rallying cry used to mobilize forces in an existing conflict; it is a shared language through which to express frustration, but it is not the cause of frustration.

It seems to me that the root causes of violence in Sri Lanka are not religious but rather 1) perceived or actual economic disparity and 2) perceived or actual ethnic divisions that correlate to economic disparity.  There is a similar situation in Palestine, though the actors are different. What we have is the simple reality of too many people competing over too few resources in the context of a power vacuum left by colonial withdrawal.

Does the conflict suggest that Buddhists and Hindus are two diametrically opposed groups that have been warring over a piece of land since time immemorial? No. Does it suggest that opposing religious beliefs are proof that the conflict will never be resolved? No.

If anything, this conflict shows that religious beliefs are one of many types of rhetoric that can be deployed to stir up populations which are already opposed for historical and economic reasons.  Religious rhetoric helps solidify a strong tribal mentality which paints the world in two colors, and which insists that there is a marked inequality and injustice extant between the two groups. It also doesn’t hurt that both Sri Lanka and Palestine experienced significant colonial intervention and subsequent irresponsible extraction.  God help Iraq in 50 years, so to speak. It is also worth taking stock of how religious themes are used to codify and amplify tribal and cultural divides in our one’s own society, as certainly recent American actions abroad were helped along politically by pseudo-religious language.

At the end of the day, I return to my initial point which is that on both side of this conflict I have met kind, friendly, warmhearted people who only want to raise a family and get on with life. Buddhism is not functioning in an “evil” way, just as Islam is not functioning in an evil way in the Middle East.  What it is doing is exploiting decades old prejudices and insecurities which remain unaddressed despite the violence.

What is happening now is sad, pure and simple, and we can all hope that the violence comes to an end.

Thursday, May 07, 2009

Mr. Henry David Thoreau: Ideas regarding clothing

An idea by Mr. Henry David Thoreau used to be one of my personal mottos.  It was “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” This was a good motto because it gave me a handy explanation for why I was unemployed, and why I did not wash my clothing enough.

Since it is nearing time to put my clothes on for work, I am thinking about clothing related quotes from Mr. Henry David Thoreau.  Surprisingly enough, there are lots of these.

  * Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts
  * I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes
  * Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new
  * Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends
  * It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes

I have noticed that Mr. Thoreau has used the word “interesting” in his ideas about clothes.  For this reason I am reinstating this word in my vocabulary even though Robin told me that it actually means “boring.”

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Ideas by Mr. Huang-Po

Mr. Huang-Po is an ancient person in my book of ideas which I read it every morning to gather courage. Today I was reading about Mr. Huang-Po, who is extremely ancient (he died in year 849 c.e.) but also very clever.  Believe it or not, he talks about hive-mind quite a bit.  Soon I will write all about hive-mind, but for now I am “engaging the subconscious” which is something I was taught to do by a nun who was also my teacher.

Mr. Huang-Po’s idea:

Your true nature is not lost in moments of delusion, nor is it gained at the moments of enlightenment. It was never born and can never die. It shines through the whole universe, filling emptiness, one with emptiness. It is without time or space, and has no passions, actions, ignorance, or knowledge. In it there are no things, no people, and no Buddhas; it contains not teh smallest hairbreadth of anything that exists objectively; it depends on nothign and is attached to nothing.  It is all-pervading, radiant beauty; absolute reality, self existent and uncreated. How then can you doubt that the Buddha has no mouth to speak with nothing to teach, or that the truth is learned without learning, for who is there to learn?

He is a genius Mr. Huang-Po.  When I read this I imagine him sitting in a field explaining all of his ideas to some sort of caterpillar, because I imagine that a caterpillar is about the only thing that would understand what he is trying to say.