This time of year tends to be challenging for me. I would guess the same is true for many others out there. And what’s interesting to me is that although the level of activity with others is often ramped up, so, too, can the feelings of loneliness. Seems like a contradiction, doesn’t it? Maybe, and maybe not.

The frantic pace of the holidays, coupled with the darkness and unheeded calls to turn inward and reflect on our lives, make one ripe for loneliness.

Pema Chodron writes: “Usually we regard loneliness as an enemy. Heartache is not something we choose to invite in. It’s restless and pregnant and hot with the desire to escape and find something or someone to keep us company.”

How often I have felt that, and then done that, in so many ways. I bet you, too, have a fairly long list if you take a little time to reflect on it.

Yet there have been times where I have simply sat with it, breathed into that ghost inside me and watched as it inevitably changed. Not that it always went away completely, but there nearly always has been a softening of the energy when I have given it some space through breathing and meditation.

Given the increased focus on slowing down and paying attention while I’ve been with people in the past few weeks, I’m finding that there’s been less loneliness floating around these parts. Furthermore, when it comes, I’m letting go of identifying myself with it. Just like any other experience, loneliness doesn’t define who I am.

How about you? Do you experience loneliness this time of year?

Photo Credits

Microsoft Office Clip Art Collection

Loneliness During the Dark Days of Winter is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

When I’m in the yoga world, it’s not uncommon for someone to say, upon hearing about my Zen practice, “Oh, I’m terrible at meditation” or “It’s too hard for me.” Sometimes, I hear the same thing as well from newcomers on Sunday mornings down at the zen center.

However, as fellow Buddhist blogger Algernon says in a recent post, there isn’t really such a thing as a “bad meditator.”

We are difficult because even when we are drawn to meditation, when we feel some tug to sit down and wash off our minds by doing some very simple awareness practice, holding hands with our pulse, ahhh the difficulty arises: “I’m a terrible meditator. My attention goes everywhere. My thinking is out of control.”

Translation: I don’t waaaaaannnnaaaaa!!

Sometimes it feels like going to the dentist, and sometimes it feels like soaking in a hot tub. But that isn’t really the meditation – that’s coming from you and me.

I think there are a lot of stories about what meditation “should” look like that cause people trouble. Such as the view that your mind should always be quiet, or that you are supposed to force all thoughts into silence. In addition, a lot of folks have conjured up an image of the perfect location and environment to do meditation in and then, when such a place isn’t available, they decide they can’t do it. Furthermore, perhaps they believe the nonsense folks like Zen teacher Brad Warner espouse, suggesting that zazen only happens in certain postures, and can’t be “done in a chair.” (I agree with Brad, by the way, that meditation is an embodied practice, and that thinking you can do it in any old posture doesn’t fly. I just don’t get his anti-chair position, and in general, am an advocate for more flexibility around form.)

Beyond all of that, though, there’s the strong sense of compartmentalization that many of us do with our spiritual lives. Meditation practice is often viewed as something done in such-and-such-a-place, time, and manner.

Whereas I have meditated on buses, park benches, in the middle of the Occupy protests, in public restrooms, among other places. I also often chant while bicycling, and for two winters in a row did lovingkindness meditations walking in the skyway system in downtown St. Paul. Of course, I also practice in the places many consider “normal” – like on my meditation cushion at home, or in my zen center. But overall, I remain focused on breaking down walls and barriers – infusing practice into my everyday life, and everyday life into my practice.

I encourage you all to do the same.

Photo Credit

Meditation @ Flickr

The “Bad” Meditator is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Some years after the experiences which created the story See The Light, NakSanSa Temple was destroyed by fire.

An inferno in 2005, which began in the pine forest surrounding the temple, was so intense that the bronze temple bell, which I had been privileged to sound, a national treasure which dated back to the 15th Century, was melted.

It wasn’t the first time NakSanSa had been destroyed.

The temple had previously been razed by fire in the 13th Century by the Mongolian hordes. From 1392, during the Joseon Dynasty, the temple was reconstructed. It was expanded by royal order in 1467, 1469, 1631 and 1643.

It was again burnt down in the 1950-53 Korean War.

Since the fire of 2005, NakSanSa Temple has again been rebuilt.

The consecutive painstaking rebuilding of the temple is a testament to the dedication of the Korean people and successive national and provincial governments.

No nails are used in the traditional wooden construction of Buddhist temples in South Korea.

The present-day temple museum displays a wooden violin and cello built from structural wood that survived the fire.

NakSanSa Temple is as perennial as Buddhism itself.

Photo Credits

All Images Courtesy Of Wikipedia

Built On Faith is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Gonging a giant bronze bell at 3 o’clock in the morning isn’t everybody’s idea of a must-do holiday experience, but if you are staying in a South Korean temple, it’s part of the job description.

Patience is also a required skill when taking tea with a Buddhist monk. There is far more involved than a spoon for each person and one for the pot.

It may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but for those who seek to be enlightened on the daily rituals of Buddhist monks and nuns, who strive for the harmony of Yin and Yang, a temple is the place to “Yang” out.

Temple stays in South Korea are experienced by thousands of tourists and students annually, eager to learn more about the history of Korean Buddhism, which spans more than 1600 years.

It is a fascinating window on religious life.

From early morning chanting to the dignified tea ceremony, the reverential approach to eating and the humble evening meal, a monk’s life is far more than robes and meditation.

In South Korea, religion is a living history.

There are around 800 monasteries, with histories dating back centuries, which combined represent a treasure trove of sweeping, tile-roofed temples, halls, shrines, classic oriental gardens, paintings, literature, music, myth, food and tea, all celebrating the life of Buddha.

The monk SeolUng wrote: “The voice of the waves and the wind bell . . . and then the smell of pine needle, joins together. There is a generous spirit of the Saint Buddha in NakSanSa.”

Standing at the clifftop UiSangDae Pavilion, looking out to sea as the first rays of light bled over the rocky coastline to illuminate the layered roofs of NakSanSa Temple on South Korea’s northeast coast, it was impossible to disagree.

On a nearby hill, the benevolent eyes of a 16m-high stone Buddha, the largest of its kind in the orient, stare pensively out to sea. The air was warm and resin-scented, the still pines and gardens the epitome of peace on the 5am sunrise walk down the mountainside from the temple to the pavilion.

A flock of ducks, black against the rising light, flew across the red bruise of the sunrise as the grey wisps of cloud on the horizon glowed golden, then blood red, as the sun rose over the Sea of Japan.

The sunrise was a fitting reward for the strict 9pm curfew of the night before, following a welcome to temple life by our host, the Buddhist nun BupGwang. Before bed there was a visit to the bell pavilion, set amid carefully tended temple gardens alive with the buzz of cicadas.

The pavilion houses the four instruments used to pay homage and regulate temple life. The Dharma drum, covered on opposite sides with the hide of a bull and a cow to symbolise the harmony of Yin and Yang, represents earth-bound beings.

The brightly coloured wooden fish represents water creatures and the cloud-shaped gong, airborne creatures. The massive bronze bell, rung 28 times every morning and 33 times in the evening, is said to sound like the voice of Buddha, with its deep-throated boom giving relief to tormented beings in hell.

A monk beat the drum and then visitors took turns at gonging the bell, its heavy reverberations setting eardrums humming as it vibrated the air around us.

Visitors could also ring the bell at 3am. Some took up the offer, while others slept until 5am, then woke for the sunrise walk. A stroll through the grounds before bed revealed a shrine where monks prayed before a golden Buddha.

Clouds of incense and candle smoke wafted in the humid air, blending with the monks’ monotonous chanting as they made their 108 prostrations to the divine one.

The next morning, while being instructed by the nun BupGwang in the basics of Zen meditation, it became even more painfully obvious that Buddhism is physically demanding.

After fifteen minutes of focused meditation sitting in an attempted lotus position that looked something like a snapped pretzel, the leg joints were creaking and the muscles aching. BupGwang smiled inscrutably as she admitted to meditating for 10 hours at a sitting.

NakSanSa was first built in 677, during the Silla Dynasty (57BC-AD935).

Buddhist clergy live a life of humble devotion, following a demanding and sometimes lonely discipline epitomized by the formalities of the meal ceremony. Greed is abhorrent – food is looked upon as merely the fuel to drive the body to support the discipline of faith.

The food ritual, Balwoo Gongyang, means eating only that which is required, wasting nothing, not even the water used to clean the bowls, or Balwoo.

A simple meal of rice, kimchi (pickled vegetable), a thin soup and seaweed, becomes a study in the appreciation of the fundamentals of life as each is served into three bowls, with a fourth bowl filled with a measure of water.

Sitting cross-legged and straight-backed, there is no talking, a piece of kimchi or radish is kept at the side of the rice bowl to use to wipe out the bowls at the end of the meal.

The water, which should remain clean throughout the meal, is used to clean the bowls, and then drunk. While the meal ceremony honours simple food, the Korean Da-do, or tea ceremony, is about enjoying life’s subtleties.

The aim is to taste the tea not with the mouth but with the mind. Tea is one of the six offerings to Buddha, along with incense, flowers, lanterns, fruit and rice. It is brewed and drunk three times, with the ritual designed to bring out five distinct flavours – the tongue first tastes bitterness, followed by astringence, sourness, saltiness and sweetness.

During the tea ceremony, the nun BupGwang relaxed from her duties to smile and laugh as the foreigners juggled cups, lids and teapot in an attempt to serve the brew just right. Dressed in grey robes and with shaven head, it was hard to ascertain her age.

On an assurance from the interpreter that “she is not a normal person, so it doesn’t matter”, I asked the question every woman dreads: Excuse me, but how old are you?

She said she would answer later, but never did.

A Gallery Of Beautiful Image By Vincent Ross

  Photo Credits

All photos © Vincent Ross. All Rights Reserved.

See The Light is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

What has being busy done for you lately?

I have had an extended period of not working a regular job, not having multiple volunteer gigs to juggle, and generally not having a lot of “fixed” things I “need” to do. One thing that has become crystal clear during this time is how much I have, in the past, pinned my identity to what I do, what I accomplish, and what I haven’t accomplished. There have been a number of times during the past several months where someone has asked me “What do you do?” and I have fumbled about, trying to list off the things I’m working on, instead of just saying something like “I’m in transition.” I realized at some point that there was an underlying anxiety in these situations, a voice saying something like “Throw them a bone so you don’t look lazy. Or confused. Or whatever it is you’re afraid of looking like.”

The reality, though, is that the question itself, one people seem so given to tossing around, demonstrates that sense that a person is only worth something if they do something. Lurking behind the question is often another one: “What have you done in the world lately?,” which can easily turn into “Are you worth my attention or not?” in our fragile little minds.

So, when I think about why it is so many of us seem to be busy much of the time, it quickly becomes tied to a desire to demonstrate worthiness. Worthiness to yourself and to other people.

This is probably one of the main reasons why a lot of folks struggle to do practices like meditation on a regular basis. It can seem like doing nothing in the grand scheme of things, and isn’t terribly impressive to offer in response to the question “What do you do?” or similar such questions. So much of the world seems to have succumbed to the view that life is solely, or mostly, about a series of social and economic exchanges — and that living a “good life” is built around “doing” as much as possible. Think of how much, for example, people with chronic illnesses or diminished capacities — even people who have given so much of their lives to others — think of how much they often struggle to accept a mostly being existence.

The first lines of the Zen poem “Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage” by Shitou go like this:

I’ve built a grass hut where there’s nothing of value.
After eating, I relax and enjoy a nap.
When it was completed, fresh weeds appeared.
Now it’s been lived in — covered by weeds.

There’s a demonstration here, I believe, of the balance between action and non-action. Between doing and being done through. One of the problems with always being busy is that it sets forth a momentum of always being busy. Trying to get off that kind of karma train is pretty difficult. In fact, because of it’s fierce momentum, it often takes something dramatic, something traumatic, to get derailed. And even then, many of us think that this derailing is something horrible, something that is going to destroy our very worthiness as humans, and so we put all our effort into catching back up to the very train that brought us down.

What do you think is behind your “busy”? What has helped you not do so much?

Photo Credit

“Hamster on wheel” sualk61 @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

The Trouble With Living Overly Busy Lives is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Nathan spends a day in nature and encounters some strange sightings.

It was a beautiful day here in Minnesota. Sunny. Light winds. Spring time temperatures. The perfect conditions for having encounters with other creatures.

Now, I’m not talking aliens. I’m talking wild turkeys and snakes.

After parking my bike this morning, I walked behind a construction site near our zen center. Turning the corner, I came nearly face to face with two wild turkeys. Wild turkeys sightings have become more common in the city in recent years, but I haven’t been close enough to almost touch one — until this morning. As they strutted along in front of me, I just stood there, watching their funny necks move, and thinking “what is this?”

What is this? Not just the turkeys right in front of me, but the whole experience of living at that moment. Their appearance startled me out of morning sleepiness and that general apathy we so often have towards our lives when things aren’t “exciting” or “dramatic”.

Apparently, being startled into the moment was the story of the day. This afternoon, as I biked on a trail along the Mississippi, I felt myself lost in “gaze”. The sun shining over the river, and all the little green plants shooting from the ground after a long winter were just too much. Gazing at it all as I peddled, I felt a bit punch drunk, loving spring for being spring. At one point, I vaguely saw something lying in the middle of the trail, and before I knew it, I had run over a snake.

It was a small snake, and I’m guessing I only hit its hind end because almost immediately after I registered it’s snake-ness, and my tire going over it, the snake was gone into a patch of brush. I stopped and went looking for it, but couldn’t find it.

Later, I took a hike in the woods — maybe a mile away from where I had hit the snake. It was a section that had been partially cleared away, where shrub trees mingled with upturned soil, broken beer bottles, and chunks of stone near the river shore. I was enjoying walking around down there when a train came along the tracks and slowed to a stop not too far from me. Figuring I was trespassing, I decided to make a quick exit, walking back up the hill from which I had come down into the wooded patch. About halfway up, I looked down just as my foot was about to land on — you guessed it —another snake. Two in fact. Almost exactly the same size and color as the one I had hit.

I watched as the snakes slithered away, and then I finished the walk back to my bicycle. No creatures were upset the rest of the way home.

Photo Credits

“Wild Turkey” guppiecat @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

“Plains Garter Snake” A. Jaszlics @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

The Zen of Wild Turkeys and Snakes is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

When the emotional/energetic patterns stored in your body don’t resonate with the intentions you have for your life, there is a conflict. Fortunately, there’s a solution.

One of the scientists from the movie What the bleep do we know?, Joe Dispenza, has a book called Evolve Your Brain, in which he speaks about ways in which the body and mind interact to produce how we see reality. In particular, I was interested in the ways in which he spoke about the emotional memory of the body, and how that memory can either disrupt or aid our intentions. He writes:

“Our body reproduces different kinds of cells on a regular basis. Some cells are reproduced in hours, others in a day, others in a week, some within months, and some cells even take years to reproduce. If high peptide levels of shame and anger are maintained on a daily basis for years on end, then when each cell divides to make daughter cells, it will respond to this high demand and alter the receptors on the cell membrane. This is a natural regulation process that takes place in all cells.”

He goes on to says that when the emotional/energetic patterns stored in the body don’t resonate with the intentions we have for our lives, there is a conflict. You might intend to be peaceful and patient during a disagreement with your partner or co-worker, but because of the patterns that have built up in your body/mind during the past, that intention can’t quite manifest itself — or it’s only partially manifested in a stew of conflicting thoughts and actions.

In my view, one of the important things in all of this is that even if you have years of destructive patterning built up, the insights of scientists like Dispenza suggest that our bodies/minds possess a lot of elasticity, much more than the vast majority of us believe there is.

We not only can break the grooves that keep us trapped in repetition and narrow mindedness, but have the potential to think, feel, and act in ways that are entirely unknown to us today, in this current moment. This elasticity doesn’t disappear when we get older – which means that even if it might be more challenging for someone with years of thinking and reacting in certain ways, it’s never impossible to change.

This goes again conventional thinking in so many ways. And for many, it might be their attachment to the view that “I am just this way; it will never change” which is the greatest hindrance. Certainly, some of our habits and ways of being won’t significantly shift in a lifetime. However, I think it’s foolhardy to believe that once you reach a certain age, your life is fixed and that’s that.
What do you think?

Photo Credit

“Dr. Joe Dispenza”

Evolving Your Brain is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Nathan Thompson explores the effect anger has on us, and Buddhist approaches to dealing with anger in all kinds of situations.

My old friend anger has shown up in discussions here, as well as on some other blogs over the past couple of days. Given how powerful, confusing, and often destructive anger is, it’s really good to let discussions and teachings around it come right in whenever they appear. Because you never know when you might need them.

Here’s a quote from Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg:

When we step back and re-vision our understanding of life then we don’t need to get so lost in our anger. When we look at anger as it arises, what’s important is to look at the very feeling, flavor, and texture of anger. We don’t say, “This is wrong,” “This is bad,” “I shouldn’t have this anger.” Just pay attention to the feeling.

Once I was sitting at the Insight Meditation Society, the center I cofounded in Massachusetts, and one of my teachers, Munindra, who was visiting from India was guiding us. I was very upset at this moment. Anger had come into my mind and I was thinking, “I’ve been practicing for four years, I shouldn’t be angry anymore but I am. What’s this still doing here?!” Munindra could hear how disgruntled I was, how dismayed I was, and he said, “Imagine that a spaceship has landed on the front lawn and these martians have come out and come up to you and asked, ‘What is anger?’ That’s how you should relate to anger.”

You don’t think “I’m righteous. I’m going to do this or that, get revenge, etc.” You just ask, “What is anger?” “What’s it like in my body?” “What are the layers of this mood?” “How much sadness is there in it? How much fear?”

I like the “What is this?” focus here. Instead of thinking you know what’s happening, you investigate. I know that there have been many times when I have thought I was angry, and actually saw something else when I looked. Grief. Confusion. General irritation. Physical illness developing. Hunger. So, it makes a lot of sense to pay attention, and see if you can see what’s there, even if you are in the middle of an argument with someone.

But you know, I also find that Salzberg’s example typifies the way privileged, middle class Buddhists tend to talk about anger. Anger is considered in the context of individual relationships, and mostly in individual relationships where the potential for grave damage — like rape, murder, or some other awfulness is unlikely.

Petteri and I had a discussion that bled over into a new post, and which offers some challenge to the “standard Buddhist” view. He writes:

Rather than face the anger, I pretend it’s not there; pretend that I’m the kind of person I want to be, or you’re the kind of person I want you to be.

I think a great many of our problems comes from this turning away.

Maturing karma is a messy business, and I don’t think there are any magic solutions to completely get rid of the mess, even if there are particular medicines that work, to an extent, against particular poisons.

The upshot is a particular pattern of unskillful behavior. Covert aggression. Exhortations to “abandon the ego” and “let go,” to become a Zen zombie floating above it all, like a corpse in a river. Resolution avoidance by walking away from conflicts. Hidden vices. Things left to fester, sometimes for years, until they explode in a fountain of pus. I have a hunch that many of the Zen scandals that have been plaguing the scene lately have to do with this pattern, and I think I can see it playing out in a small way among a quite a few Buddhists.

Avoidance is something I’m aware of in myself. And it’s also something I have watched members of my sangha being forced to face in recent years — fallout from our own teacher scandal. Too often, I, we, stuck to just watching, just sitting, and trying our damnedest to speak and act non-violently. Some of that was very skillful, and some of that was noble stupidity.

Petteri talks about times when maybe the best way to “mature karma” is to go at it with each other — to get the pissed off out in some manner or another. I think that might be true, but it also might be a poor idea. I’m convinced that one of the skills to being an awakened being is learning to read situations, so that you have a much better sense of how to approach what’s happening. Which is almost impossible if you’re really angry. But it might be the case that if you’ve trained yourself to read situations well, you might get a decent sense of things before you get pissed off. And then perhaps be able to handle being angry within such a situation. Does that make sense?

But there’s another level here that isn’t on the table — the anger that arises during life threatening situations. The anger that arises from deep, collective injustices. The anger of entire cultures, groups of people who have been oppressed for generation after generation.

Working with this might include a lot of the above discussion, but also requires a different view. A different set of “solutions.” For example, shuttling the collective anger of indigenous peoples into individualized patterns and approaches is actually not changing the roots. Collective rage requires working towards collective transformation. And that means working towards justice, and seeing that rage as a manifestation – at least in part – of conditions that must be changed by the multitudes.

While it might be true that certain individuals within a group might have entirely too much attachment and fixation on being enraged — and thus might really benefit from something like doing zazen or examining their fear — it’s also the case that there’s something much larger than any individual going on there. Which is actually why — going back to Salzberg — the skill of paying attention and saying “what is this?” is really valuable. When enough people experiencing and/or witnessing injustice recognize that what they are experiencing is injustice, then there’s an opportunity to address the roots.

So, the way I see it, understanding and working with anger requires that we widen our views of what skillfulness might mean, and realize that while there probably is an individual piece within any manifestation of anger, it’s possible that said anger is also arising from some broader, more collective place. Maybe 80% of a given person’s anger is just attachment, fear, and shoddy attempts to claim power. But the other 10-20%? That might be something bigger, something calling for larger questions and larger answers.

Photo Credit

“Letting go of negativity” jennnster @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Right Reserved.

Buddhist Anger Strategies is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

The film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly sparks Nathan Thompson to reflect on the body-mind connection, and what it means to be human when that connection is broken.

Last night, I watched a recent film based on the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby who was a French journalist and author. In his early 40s, he had a massive stroke that left him totally paralyzed, without speech, and with only one working eye. Sounds entirely bleak, doesn’t it? The movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly chronicles the last year of Bauby’s life, during which he learns to communicate by blinking to called out letters, and then uses this skill to dictate a memoir to one of his therapists. The actual memoir, which goes by the same name as the movie, was released just two day before Bauby’s death. It sold 150,000 copies in the first week, and went on to become a best seller across Europe.

One of the most powerful things about the movie is the sense of care given to ordinary details of life. Much of the film is shot through the eyes of Bauby. You’re in his mind, seeing what he sees and, given his circumstances, what he sees is fairly limited. However, there’s an almost reverent quality to the way this film pays attention: long pauses on the faces of people who come to see Bauby, and work with him; and repeated appearances of the beach outside the hospital, shot from only slightly different angles each time. Even a fly that lands on Bauby’s nose in the middle of the film is given its due.

In addition, the amazing capacity of the human imagination is on display in the film, as Bauby constructs alternate realities filled with romantic dinners and unwritten manuscripts finally written. He also reconstructs his past, partly in an attempt to make amends to those he had harmed.

During an interview clip, artist and director Julian Schnabel says he actually didn’t want to do this movie. It was more like it came to him, and he had to do it.

“I used to go up to read to Fred Hughes, Andy Warhol’s business partner, who had multiple sclerosis. And as Fred got worse, he ended up locked inside his body. I had been thinking that I might make a movie about Fred when his nurse, Darren McCormick, gave me Bauby’s memoir, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Then, in 2003, when my father was dying, the script arrived from Kennedy. So it didn’t feel quite like taking on a commissioned job.”

Towards the end of the interview, Schnabel says that the movie is kind of Buddhist, and I think he’s right. One of the strong elements present was a sense that the condition of one’s body — one’s form — does not make or break being human. In some ways, Bauby was much more alive and awake during the last year of his life than at any time before then. And Schnabel’s film doesn’t show this by separating him from his body — it’s through embodying exactly where he was at that Bauby exudes aliveness. Even his dreams and imaginings always come back to the present, sometimes almost seamlessly.

A friend of mine used to volunteer in a program founded by Matthew Sanford, a paralyzed yoga teacher. This quote from Matthew rings a similar chord to the movie:

“It took a devastating car accident, paralysis from the chest down, and dependence on a wheelchair before I truly realized the importance of waking both my mind and my body.”

Odds are that many of us will never experience this kind of physical devastation, but nearly everyone seems to face, at some point or another, a traumatic event or series of events that provide great opportunities to see life clearly and live it more fully.

It’s so easy to get swamped in the negative, letting difficult circumstances take your life over until you have lost yourself completely. The beauty of this film is that it reminds us that nothing is unworkable, and that anything, even the most traumatic of events, can be used as a vehicle for transforming your life into its own greatness.

Photo Credit

“Butterfly” Prairiekittin @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

Life Lessons from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Rick Bateman explores the philosophies of The Buddha and Ayn Rand, two revolutionary thinkers whose ends are the same, but whose ways and means differ dramatically.

Why on earth would a Buddhist recommend reading Ayn Rand, whose philosophy expounds the Virtue Of Selfishness, for whom thought is the only tool we possess to know reality, and who views achievement as the sole purpose of our lives? All these, and many more of Rand’s philosophical axioms, are in direct opposition with the teachings of The Buddha.

The answer is that The Buddha and Ayn Rand are the two most revolutionary thinkers I know of and both of them wanted above all for those who heard their message to be free and happy. Their ends are the same; only their ways and means vary. Both thought deeply about the same subjects and both, each in his or her own way, have constructed profound teachings.

I recommend you read Ayn Rand because more than any other author, she will make you think about what really matters: about values, virtue and integrity; about how you live your life and its impact on your own happiness and the happiness of others; about the future of our world. In this century, when the folly of our short-term thinking is becoming glaringly obvious to all, we desperately need to question our personal philosophies and the part we are playing.

If you are a Buddhist, no other books I know of will challenge your beliefs like Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. They will do so because they dig into the very same issues, and, with very persuasive logic and story, argue the opposite of The Buddha’s teachings. Rand chose to convey her philosophy via her novels rather than non-fiction works because of her views on art and romanticism. The worlds and characters of the novels are intentionally stylistic as they are not intended to reflect realistic individuals but rather to symbolize concepts.

“My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness
as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity,
and reason as his only absolute.”
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

In case you think Ayn Rand is some obscure author who is no longer relevant, consider that sales of Atlas Shrugged exceeded half a million in 2009 and in June of 2010 it was ranked #39 on the Amazon Bestseller List. There are 35 employees who work at the Ayn Rand Institute, her theories are taught at the university level, and the Institute’s essay contest is the largest such educational competition in the United States. Atlas Shrugged is perhaps the most controversial novel in America literature.

I am somewhat qualified, in a non-academic sense, to make this recommendation. I have studied and practiced Buddhism for ten years, I teach an introductory course in historical Buddhism, facilitate a weekly Secular Buddhist practice group and maintain my own daily practice. As the years have gone by, Buddhism has gradually become the central focus of my life; everything else is increasingly being required to be supportive of and in alignment with my practice.

On the Rand side, I have read every book I could acquire by or about Ayn Rand. I have read her magnum opus Atlas Shrugged, which at over 1100 pages is one of the longest novels in English literature, six times and The Fountainhead four times. There is copious underlining in both my copies of each book. I have studied her philosophy of Objectivism in detail as well as her works on art, ethics and politics. Note: I recommend you read both Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead but I recommend you read Atlas Shrugged first.

I respect Ayn Rand enormously and both agree and disagree with some of her most fundamental points. For example, she holds the individual as the ultimate social unit and his or her own rational self-interest as the purpose of life. Yet humans are social animals and, like lions, wolves and killer whales, are engineered by evolution at the most basic levels to only function optimally, in both the physical and emotional senses, as a group. Secondly, individualism depends on limitless resources. However, on “spaceship earth”, a reality we are currently entering, the good of the many must outweigh the good of the few if we are to survive as a species. Such “thy brother’ keeper” thinking is antithetical to Rand’s philosophy.

How, as a Buddhist, can I embrace any part of Rand’s Objectivism? For children the world is black and white, good and bad, made up of absolutes. Adults accept that the world is rife with paradox, inconsistency and contradiction and that the answer to many questions, often the most important questions, is, “It depends.”

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.  And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Although I have made my choice with regard to who got it right, there is a great deal to be said for Rand’s views and I am open to hearing out more than one teacher. The teachers of my younger days, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Carl Sagan etc., were the first to open my mind to seeing the world in new ways. Over time, I learned that some scientists, like Albert Einstein, embraced a spiritual view of the universe while others including Jacob Bronowski, another of my personal heroes, despised the spiritual.

“I am infinitely saddened to find myself suddenly surrounded in the west by a sense of terrible loss of nerve, a retreat from knowledge into – into what? Into Zen Buddhism; into falsely profound questions about, are we not really just animals at bottom; into extra-sensory perception and mystery. They do not lie along the line of what we are now able to know if we devote ourselves to it: an understanding of man himself.”
—Jacob Bronowski

I will not however throw the baby out with the bathwater. I still love Jacob Bronowski and agree with much of what he taught. As a Buddhist I remain open to the views of many teachers, including Ayn Rand. I find they often bring new insights to aspects of my Buddhist practice and generally they only help to clarify and deepen my own convictions regarding my chosen path.

If you are a Buddhist, Rand’s novels will challenge your beliefs in a positive way by presenting cogent and appealing arguments. Her novels address the most central issue of Buddhism and perhaps of life itself: what is happiness and what is the way to happiness?

Photo Credits

Ayn Rand, Author and philosopher Ayn Rand. Photograph: Hulton Archive/New York Times Co./Getty

Atlas Shugged, courtesy of Wikipedia

Buddhism and Ayn Rand is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN