Sacred Bells

Sad About the Gulf

I just wrote a fairly long diary/rant on Docudharma.  I don’t want to repeat it here. I am really thinking about two things. One is that we have become, gradually, a society run by criminals from top to bottom. In the diary I make a distinction between those that violate legal statutes and those that violate society itself. I am convinced that the leaders of society have done or been accessories to both kinds of criminality. Furthermore we are each complicit in it. Our desires, our utterly unnecessary wants are what drives the rapidly cascading disasters we are facing. The oil incident in the Gulf of Mexico is one symptom and a far more important symptom or symbol of our condition than anybody in the maistream media seems to be talking about. In fact, there is almost no coverage of the incident that is worth much and it is regarded as about as important as celebrity gossip.

It is the “I don’t give a fuck for the environment, I’m just going to party” kind of attitude that is the mentality of the vast majority of the American people that saddens me the most. The convenient and calculated ignorance that has become the hallmark of contemporary society is deeply disturbing to me. But it is not just the Gulf that alarms me. It is the cruelty that results from this culture of narcissism that seen nothing as wrong. Torture, mass killings (as long as you pretend not to notice) are all fine because it’s all about us.  Environmental degradation (what’s that?) is irrelevant as long as I can watch the playoffs, Dancing with the Stars, or jerk off to sadistic porno. Is this the sort of poeple we really want to be? Really? I mean does this kind of ridiculous and absurd self-indulgence make you want to wave the flag?

On day three of the Gulf disaster the mainstream media (MSM) relegated the disaster to a kind of afterthought behind the pathentic terrorist BS at Times Square that has no set off a flurry of the picking up of suspects and torturing the bejesus out of them to get “information” on a vast terrorist threat and so on.  That’s important compared to something that is going to affect the livelihood of thousands and the massive die off of the Gulf for years to come and God knows what else that will accelerate the already seemingly inevitable die off of most life in the oceans?

Is This All There Is?

Cross posted at Docudharma and DKOS

Gradually, we have stopped really looking at the horror. Not that it is all horror. Life itself is sweet. It is that sudden gust of summer wind that carries honeysuckle and a mixture of green-tinted scents. This is life, so full and opulent. This great Goddess that nurtures us without stint, without regret, without reproach. She accepts us just as we are and always will no matter what we do. She will cry in a dark corner but blame no one. Crying and hurt is part of the nature of fecundity.

But what of us? Actually we don’t give a shit. Not really. We are able to live in a very artificial world very far away from our Great Mother who cools her heels beneath the window of our daydreams. Daydreams and fantasies dominate our world—we want fantasies to be real. It seems that we want to shape the world and other people to fit our fantasies.

Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth. We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: Is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them.

Tony Judt wrote the above in the first paragraphs of an article he wrote in the New York Review of Books. In a way he is stating the obvious but it is hard to understand what has happened during the period Judt describes unless you’ve lived through it. It seems like wondering what a good society might look like is almost forbidden. The general view is no other way of living is possible.

And yet we seem unable to conceive of alternatives. This too is something new.

The usual left/right arguments have been largely eliminated since the idea that we ought to provide for the commonweal has become heretical in mainstream discourse. But the results of the steady move away from thinking of the common good.

All around us, even in a recession, we see a level of individual wealth unequaled since the early years of the twentieth century. Conspicuous consumption of redundant consumer goods—houses, jewelry, cars, clothing, tech toys—has greatly expanded over the past generation. In the US, the UK, and a handful of other countries, financial transactions have largely displaced the production of goods or services as the source of private fortunes, distorting the value we place upon different kinds of economic activity. The wealthy, like the poor, have always been with us. But relative to everyone else, they are today wealthier and more conspicuous than at any time in living memory. Private privilege is easy to understand and describe. It is rather harder to convey the depths of public squalor into which we have fallen.

The only conclusion I can come to is that both the very rich, the poor and those in the middle are, across all political spectrums invested in a system where income disparities keep growing. Why? Why would someone on the bottom edge of the class structure want to maintain the attitudes reflected by someone like Donald Trump?

Judt and others who are advocating for creating a just and rational society are missing the point. This is what people want. This is really it. The most class consciousness I see among those who are on the lower part of the income ladder is a kind of sullen distrust of the rich; yet, at the same time, there are constant fantasies about winning the lottery. as if that would lift them not only out of poverty but all their personal problems. I often hear “if only I had more money.” This indicates that money is nearly everything. There is no chance, with that attitude, that any social change can happen from the bottom barring a major downturn where basic essential became very scarce. In general among rich or poor I haven’t heard any conversations with people who are relatively mainstream about social justice or about resistance to the oligarchy. There may be some anger at the Banksters but no hope that anything can be done to regulate the finance industry or any great support of reform. The usual focus for rage is, as the media has shown, aimed at outsiders of any kind particularly sexual predators, terrorists or mothers who neglect their children.

But that is to be expected isn’t it? Deep down we know that most people around us may be scared, dispirited, confused and tired but does it occur to anybody to make common cause with others? Not really. The basic movement that has been going on for three or four decades remains unchanged–i.e., moving toward ever increasing insularity and separateness and all that implies. To blame the highly refined mind-control techniques employed by the mainstream media for the current state of our society is a big mistake because the information and the tools to evaluate that information is available to all who want to use them. While the MSM certainly serves the oligarchs, people are addicted to the general narrative it provides. What else is there?

Judt wanders and wonders around the subject:

Poverty is an abstraction, even for the poor. But the symptoms of collective impoverishment are all about us. Broken highways, bankrupt cities, collapsing bridges, failed schools, the unemployed, the underpaid, and the uninsured: all suggest a collective failure of will. These shortcomings are so endemic that we no longer know how to talk about what is wrong, much less set about repairing it. And yet something is seriously amiss. Even as the US budgets tens of billions of dollars on a futile military campaign in Afghanistan, we fret nervously at the implications of any increase in public spending on social services or infrastructure.

This tells me that people have given up on the state. Is it because the state failed? Is it because they suspect that the state has lost interest in helping anyone? Is it because of the incessant right-with propaganda that dominates the media?

Social mobility is decreasing, income inequality is increasing–is this what we want? I say yes, that is what we want. We want that because we have lost any sense of there being a meaning to life other than money and materialism.

As recently as the 1970s, the idea that the point of life was to get rich and that governments existed to facilitate this would have been ridiculed: not only by capitalism’s traditional critics but also by many of its staunchest defenders. Relative indifference to wealth for its own sake was widespread in the postwar decades. In a survey of English schoolboys taken in 1949, it was discovered that the more intelligent the boy the more likely he was to choose an interesting career at a reasonable wage over a job that would merely pay well. Today’s schoolchildren and college students can imagine little else but the search for a lucrative job.

Why are kids today like that? Because there is nothing else to believe in. Nothing has been offered. There is no transcendent purpose to our lives. The right has offered various roads to meaning: 1) the worship of force and money; and 2) irrational cults and fantasies aka what is known as fundamentalist Christianity (which is neither fundamentalist nor Christian). What does the left offer? A set of agendas that are based on no grand narrative or feeling of transcendence. What the left offers is just a more sophisticated version of selfishness and even narcissism–often shown as a kind of ultimate sarcasm, i.e., punk leftism mistaking cleverness with virtue. I think the left must start to provide itself with a grander vision than just feeling superior to tea-party activists. The vision has to engage our need for meaning. This is why the left has failed so completely in recent years. It’s lack of vision and sense of transcendence has kept the left from sticking to principles–they voted for Obama rather than Kucinich why? What delusion was that?

There is no effective left in this country because there is no courage on the left. No willingness to confront the hard truths that sustains this society.

Birthday Message

This is a time of discovery for me. Something threw me up in the air and my limbs are jerking around trying to get a purchase on some solid ground but there isn’t any. Learn to love the open air I guess is the order of the day. Freedom and bondage are always in balance. My own sense of myself is that it is my task to swim in paradox.

Paradox is not an easy path, in fact in may just be the opposite of a path. Well, maybe not. The whole point of living in paradox valley is to see the extra dimensions of life that our own upbringing and culture have hidden from view. If anything is clear to me it is that.

My body gets torn up in the process of all this. It doesn’t like the insecurity and the confusion. Oh well…

I find blogging difficult even though I have a lot to say I know that I am incoherent to most people. That weighs on me. On the other hand as one who appreciates a certain incoherence in other writers (as long as it doesn’t pretend to be coherent) I should just move through it and stop trying to make sense. I think I make most sense when I avoid trying. I don’t recommend that for those of you at home. I love logic but I also know the traps of logic and coherence–the main trap is that it seduces us into not realizing that the foundation and support of almost any argument or statement is largely arbitrary. Not to say that those skilled in the art of logic are not worthy. For me, poetry and gesture are more important than logic despite the fact that I often decry the fact that logic in today’s world is almost entirely missing.

I’ll give another example. I think logic and rational thought are powerful in that they provide a basic playing field for discourse. But the important part of discourse is not the field but the action. When I discuss things with people I notice that rarely, if ever, is there much value in the actual in the logical content of the discussion or any common conclusion a discussion comes from–rather it is the dance of two or more people with words as arms and legs. The pleasure comes from touch and movement. I just have to say that. I notice that the actual content makes sense mainly when we understand the context. It is dangerous to take thoughts out of content because of the false sense that we are approaching truths in the abstract sense. The only truth there is exists in ourselves. Are we being honest–are we rejecting fear and embracing courage? That’s really the question I want to ask myself this year. This is the time for me to do that.

What Do We Do About Society?

I’ve talked about consciousness as the center of the universe —  not only our own as individuals but it is the center of everything. In Aikido this is called “one point”. We can call it God if we want. It doesn’t matter. It is consciousness in the now and it is the only truly real thing we ever experience. Everything else is a story. Doesn’t make reality “bad” it just isn’t real. Still we are in the story and might as well live in it since we’re here — clearly there’s stuff for us to do and experience.

Society is an elaborate chord of stories. It’s a beautiful work of art, in fact, it is the ultimate work of art. This is the milleu we live in. When I ask what do we do about society what I mean is how do we think about it and how do we become good social actors — to make the story really cool.  As members of a society we are invested in it — our psyches are made up of socially constructed ideas, concepts, morality, values, stories, theories, music, art, and just plain crazy shit. My question is really asking us to determine what kind of society to we want to live in. This idea or meme is actually present with us. Somehow, it is a deep part of our society to think about and make decisions about such things. Some peoples ride horses on the steppes and wield a sword ane others plow the seas. We think about what kind of society we ought to create — or at least that is our inheritance. We can choose to ignore that.

Here’s how I think of it; I believe that once we realize that consciousness is the center of everything within us and it is the only truly real thing we can experience (always in the now) then it follows that society should encourage us to realize that truth. We ought to be setting up situations wherein we can find our true Selves and directly experience the truth of this moment. It seems to me that the endless cycle of violence and punishment creates dramas of revenge, dramas of pain and suffering, anger, fear, depression and so on. This is the direction that a certain segment of our society wants to encourage. Many, many people believe we ought to live in fear. We ought to distrust others and protect ourselves even before there is a danger (pre-emptive war).

The foundation of a good society is that it encourages us to pursue and inner life through performing outer actions. The Benedictine monks were and other religious societies are examples of this. And that life may work for some — I think for us we have to have a life that is full and that delights in itself and that this life is not just a preparation for a future but, rather, a celebration of the present.

Political activity should involve this sensibility. We need to ask questions — what do we want to do about society? I find that fear and violence moves me away from consciousness into a very limited stance of self-protection. So I want to work towards a compassionate society. That doesn’t mean that I want “government” to take control of our lives. Society is not the same as government. Government reflects social ideas and ideals. If the gov’t sucks it is our own fault–particularly in a society that prides itself as being democratic.

Despair is Cool

Despair is cool. I’ve learned a lot by leaning against it. It used to freak me out because I thought it was terrible to feel despair so I felt terrible and avoided it. Now having been brainwashed by decades of meditation I’m getting the joke. Oh yes, that’s one of the most freaky thing about it — it’s a fucking joke!

Ok I admit that “despair” means no hope and in some forms of Buddhism no hope equals enlightenment or at least enlightenment provides us with no hope only reality which is always present. If you are present there’s no need for hope because things just are whatever they are so how could anyone wish for anything different? Wanting things always different takes a lot of energy.

Hope and despair are two sides of one thing what that thing is not describable in fact the best way to describe it is that it is an explosion so deep we can’t feel it. Imagine the fondest possible hope the most beautiful castle in the air you could make and it all comes true! That is the fullness of hope! Now imagine the fullness of despair the complete negation of everything with absolutely nothing to hold on to a complete and utter abyss. Well the answer is kind of obvious isn’t it. Abyss, Castle — well combine it and what do you have. One big orgasm right?

So back to despair in it’s more mundane sense. You sit around feeling like everything you’ve worked for or tried to do is for naught and that, furthermore there’s no gas in the tank — you just can’t get it up do do anything and you sink into depression. If you take meds, cool, you may get out of that state. But what is that despair and depression about anyway? It seems to me, as someone who has suffered from moderate to severe depression in my life, that it is a case of lack of faith in the natural order of things. Somehow we believe that things ought to be different. Often, I believe, this is because we feel isolated and we lack relationship with not only other people but with our own bodies and our own self. Alienation and depression are very similar though I’m sure there are forms of depression that are due to organic brain damage but even then I know there is some reason to believe that our brains are much more able to heal than was thought in the past (see the work of Robert Ornstein and others who have popularized new discoveries in brain science) . If people hugged and smiled and touched others continually would depression ever arise? Fact is it is hard to know since it is pretty obvious that friendliness is not exactly encouraged by our culture. What is encouraged is competition and greed and that is profoundly alienating for all healthy human beings. We need to touch each other.

Despair need not lead to depression. Despair is an attempt to be honest with oneself about the nature of the world — if you feel it, then see where it leads you. If you get depressed then congregate with people who care for you and accept you as you are. If you don’t have those people then make that a priority — makes sense doesn’t it? Let me know if it does — I’m often wrong so I welcome criticism.

The Choice

Here is a list of three possible paths to take in this life:

1. We can fall into various kinds of fundamentalisms that focus on getting “back” to some kind of certainty whether it is some sort of fundamentalism or version of scientism (the cult of science that refuses to accept data that does not fit into current theories) or any other kind of retreat into traditionalism that does not integrate with reason and science.
2. We can avoid the contradictions and pain of our situation by tuning into popular culture which focuses currently on radical materialism, hedonism, conformity and status-seeking.  This is the path of addiction to mass media, drugs, cults, and oneself.
3. We can take up the challenge we face by understanding that there is no going back to some ideal past structure. To follow this path we must follow the truth wherever it leads. I started on this path with my two previous posts — if not the path I described something very much like it starting with fundamental principles is required. Unexamined assumptions just won’t do.

I suppose we each are involved with all three paths but in the end only one

Path three directly threatens the forces of repression, fear an violence represented by the dominant part of the oligarchy. All media messages are geared to encourage the forces I just mentioned and people need to have no illusions about it. It’s not only obvious but logical because there is every reason for the power-elite to encourage negativity in order to maintain control. A self-sufficient and strong public could dramatically change the balance of power.

So here we have to take leave of those who prefer option 1 and 2. Go ahead and follow those paths — of the two, I recommend the fundamentalist course — it is healthier, has a relatively consistent set of values where it is easier to understand what is expected of you as a spouse, a parent, a worker and a citizen and that give great peace of mind. Option 2 is just asking for confusion and being led by the nose into whatever horror the power-elite have for you.

If you choose option 3 then it will take some work, effort and discernment. But mainly, it will take a renewal of some of the traditional virtues particularly the most obvious one that is missing from our society and that is courage.

I Continue Into Paradox and Our Collective Situation

What if the most important thing in each of our lives was our experience of pure being? What if I said that experiencing pure being means that you feel like you now have everything you’ve ever wanted (view my first post)? Actually, it’s true and that’s the sad part. The reason it is sad is that even if you experience pure being you will want to return to your petty concerns and ego issues. Truly enlightened beings do just that consciously and willingly.

We live in  Paradox. I capitalize it because I think that Paradox accurately  describes, not necessarily the nature of the world, but our nature. We seek happiness, joy and fulfillment often by chasing just those things that can never be captured. All the while the key to our happiness lies right under our noses. By encountering and nurturing that part of us that moves towards pure being — gratitude, love, being in the present moment, focus — we can achieve something sublime but the cost is usually to high. The cost is giving up something that has come to be known as “ego”. This ego is a kind of operating system that runs our lives. Ego is based on a tentative self established and “sung” into being by a personal Narrative. This Narrative is real — it includes are particular tendencies that spring up a result of encountering the world, our parents, our friends, our culture and so on.

We cannot forget this Narrative no matter how wrong some of the assumptions behind the Narrative are.  We face the music and learn to live with it. When it comes to changing the Narrative or if the Narrative contains within itself the idea that change must occur then that constitutes a “call” that we must answer no matter what. Here though is the beauty of the whole thing: if you truly fill yourself with being (to the extent you are able) then your Narrative (your life) begins to take on the qualities of pure being and conversely your sense of being, your consciousness becomes wider to take in and comprehend the world as it is. Thus whether you look at your inner life or your outer life, you can see something more profound than you previously have.

When I look at the world around me and truly try to take it in as much as I can take it (to the extent I am able) I see us living at a time when we can neither live the life of contemplation or action but must learn to be contemplative in action and active in contemplation.

Just to begin to solve the problems we face collectively will take and extraordinary rebirth of human capacity for several reasons:

1. One, this is the first time in human history that “mankind” as a species is aware  that it faces collective problems; there is no way to avoid our interconnection however much we dislike the idea because mankind is, after all, very much of a tribal species.
2. We have built a technological society that we don’t understand — technology exists not only in the gadgets and machines but in the very setup of our lives. Almost everything around us is dominated by techniques — we live in systems not communities. Do you see the difference?
3. As, I’ve said on this site before, we live at a time dominated by confusion. We face an avalanche of facts and ideas — there’s so much to see and hear that it feels odd to actually concentrate on something or see connections. Confusion is very, very dangerous. It causes us to falter, to be easily spooked, to take sudden arbitrary stands that feel good to take but when looked at, crumble in their absurdity. Therefore the best alternative is to cut part of our consciousness off so we can easily flow into an efficiently designed Narrative like fundamentalism, or any number of other “simple answer” movements.

I Begin

To find the beginning we need to go in the direction of asking ourselves what can we be most sure of? Things come to mind — I know who I am, I have a name etc, a history. But can we be completely sure of that? If I look closely at those facts that determine my identity they become fuzzier and fuzzier and lack a sense of vividness that certainty would have. and seem like stories to me just sitting here writing that. I mean it’s in the past and here I am now — this is where it all happens! So I can be sure of being here now? That is too abstract for me. What is being? Rene Descartes tried to answer this kind of question by saying “I think, therefore I am”. This brought him to certainty. We can know something without doubt! Descartes knew he was thinking from that knowledge Descartes could know he exists! But we get into a paradox here — how can we think if we don’t first exist? Why do we need to think to realize we exist? Or more accurately, why do we need to notice a movement (of thought) and realize we exist. In fact, existence has to be there before thought is noticed.

Being precedes thought — seems kind of obvious and is in line with Eastern philosophy which generally teaches that being is “enough” — thought and action are not necessary and essential. Eastern philosophical systems train you to focus on being all the time so that thought emerges from the ground of being and takes shape and you get to watch it happen which deepens your understanding of what you are thinking.

We tend to not even notice our thoughts because we often identify with our thoughts. Though we know that we aren’t our thoughts since they are constantly changing the flow of thoughts create our story. We rehearse and re-tell our story to ourselves. This flow or narrative is something Western psychology has tended to label as the “self”. Others in the East feel that this self is not real and it is the goal, particularly of Buddhism, to teach the art of not identifying with this self. You can have such a self but know that it is only a story — essentially, the teaching says, we need to stop fooling ourselves. This is critical because since our culture has tended to denigrate introspection our sophistication in the areas of consciousness is pretty low. We have mastered technology but know very little about consciousness. This is not, in itself bad, but we have landed ourselves in a situation historically that looks like a dead-end so some deeper kind of thinking or deeper kind of knowledge is required. Descartes mistook the thinking (narrative) for being. Because he had not been trained to observe his thoughts with the idea that the part that notices the thought is the essential being.

Within each one of us there is an observer/experiencer. But the most subtle Eastern teachings focus on that sense of being fully present. The fuller is your presence (that is, the presence is not deterred by fears or negative emotions) the more intense and complete is the world that one perceives. Suzuki Roshi said that once one is enlightened (being fully present) the whole world is enlightened. This is important because there is not, if you look very closely, any true separation between ourselves and the world around us. The separation is created for the sake of contrast which we humans need to feel at ease — we need to live as though there was a separation between ourselves and the world. Otherwise we’d just sit around like stoned hippies saying “wow” pretty much all the time. It’s hard enough to keep track of our own lives — imagined if we paid attention to everything! The human brain can’t do stuff like that and live a physical life. Why should we live a physical life? To sustain this consciousness — or at least this line of consciousness that needs to unfurl itself. Physicality is, like consciousness, essential.