Thoughts on Walt Whitman's "Envy"

WHEN I peruse the conquered fame of heroes, and the
    victories of mighty generals, I do not envy the
    generals,
Nor the President in his Presidency, nor the rich in
    his great house;
But when I read of the brotherhood of lovers, how it 
    was with them,
How through life, through dangers, odium, un-
    changing, long and long,
Through youth, and through middle and old age, how 
    unfaltering, how affectionate and faithful they 
    were,
Then I am pensive—I hastily put down the book,
    and walk away, filled with the bitterest envy.



While reading this last night, I was struck by a few thoughts I've tried to organize.

First, the Buddhist reaction in me contemplated the ending -- being so struck with envy. Reading can elicit many responses, of course, and well written works can certainly inspire empathy with the characters. In fact, that may be the point... to let you experience some aspect of life through other eyes. Envy of course is a very negative emotion -- and here clearly affects Whitman in such a strong way he puts down the book. The optimal reaction is not jealousy, but rather, with empathy. To feel in yourself the pleasure the characters are feeling leads to happiness, while being envious of their positions leads to unhappiness -- as Whitman clearly captures here.

Then, however, my thoughts turned to the first piece of the poem. While reading about happy lovers, Whitman encounters envy, but not when reading of generals or Presidents, nor the rich. It made me think... do people read stories of great leaders and feel envious of their actions? I cannot recall a single thing I've read of any historical person where I felt envy. When I think of generals leading troops into war, envy is far from my mind. When I think of US Presidents leading the populace, envy again does not register. And most of the wealthy people I have ever met do not seem very happy to me.

I read something recently about why people like playing the hero in video games, linked to how people want to play the roll of the liberator, the super man, who can save the day by themselves. (Well, sometimes with a sidekick.) Maybe many people want to be hero. Do they read such works with envy? And then, when they read about happy lovers, does that envy carry over?

While a sensitive caring person such as Whitman would dismiss the initial, but envy the lovers, my hypothesis is that one who envies the general dismisses the lovers. Right or wrong, thank you Walt Whitman for making me think.

Everyday Mindfulness

Just now I had finished showering and found myself at the sink going through the motions of shaving my head. As I thought about various topics mindlessly, I recalled an earlier discussion on Facebook about the Buddhist view on anger. From this thought I hit a tangent and contemplated how best to communicate via FB comments the importance of mindfulness. Then I harked back to some practices, to words from Eckhart Tolle, Buddhists teachings over the last year... I wasn't being mindful. The feeling was immense as my Watcher kicked in. I quickly assessed my state of mind.

I had been thinking about a party later tonight, looking forward to a good time (desirous attachment). I had been thinking about an early Facebook post, proud of my wording of a complex thought (Ego). I had been thinking about my impending move and all the tasks associated with that (attachment leading to worry). None of these things were happening currently. Either past or future. Not present. Right then, I was shaving my head. And that's all I did. I felt the razor bouncing across the stubble as I hadn't felt in a long time. I noticed the gloopiness of the conditioner I use as shaving cream now. I watched the water and whiskers splash around the drain. I was present. Here and now.

The party will happen later. We'll get there, we'll have fun as we always do. It shall be as it shall be. My posts and comments are out there for all to read. If I wasn't sincere and with intention to spread knowledge and help others, I wouldn't have written whatever I have written. If people comment, or disagree, or agree, or whatever, that'll be a task to address later. Right now, it's there and it's fine. The move too will all come together in good time. We took a couple steps today, a few more later, but there's absolutely nothing in my power while standing at the sink to shave that I can do to change any aspect of moving. I was shaving, there in the present moment. Right now, I'm scanning my memories while I sit and type at the computer. Things will happen later, things have happened in the past, but the most important things are happening right now. So wrapping up here to do the next tasks of the day, hopefully with some mindfulness. Peace and Love to you all.

Terrorists are Human Beings

Yes, you read the title correctly. It is important not to demonize other human beings. The threshold used to split the population into "demons" and "decent humans" is arbitrary and all in your mind.

This topic arises as we joined together last night for my Buddhist meditation class and one member asked our teacher something along the lines of "how do you treat all humans with compassion in light of the recent terror events" (in the past couple weeks we've seen shootings in Paris and Beirut, at a Planned Parenthood in CO, and in San Bernardino).

This is an important question.

I had already thought about this some previously. I found a way to humanize people who perform such violent acts by contemplating their life as a human. I realize they were not born terrorists. No one is. Everyone you read about spraying bullets in a crowd was once a child. Picturing them as an eight year old running around a soccer field helps me to see them as fellow souls who have lost their way. The turn of events in their lives to lead to such radical behavior is difficult for many of us to comprehend, especially for those of us who live in suburbia America. But we haven't had generations of wars destroying the world around us, uncles being murdered because you family's religious practices are a minority sect in that part of the world. So that's one way I've thought about this - all terrorists were born as innocent human babies.

Our teacher shared a couple other possible ways to look at this.

These radicalized men and women are just seeking happiness like the rest of us. Now, from our perspective, we know you can never find lasting peace through violence. Yet Most violence in the world is motivated by personal morality.  So yes, their world view has become so skewed that their justification of their actions exists on a plane of morality that we find difficult to comprehend. By using compassion and empathy, it is possible to see yourself drawn into a society with different teachings where the ends justify the means. And the ends one seeks is to find eternal happiness. So indeed, terrorists are human too.

Next if one has faith in Karma (and by that I mean the Buddhist view of karma, not the belligerent Facebook posts about someone stealing your parking space at the mall), you can use this understanding to help empathize as well. By committing these acts of terrorism, the perpetrators are heaping loads of negative karma upon themselves, and will be suffering in future lives in ways well beyond all the combined suffering they have caused here on Earth through their actions. In feeling compassion for all living beings, I wish no others to experience such horrendous suffering and wish that they had never taken on those actions. I wish all living beings to be forever free from all suffering, including terrorists.

There is another way as well I thought about later. Buddha teaches that all human beings have a seed within them to achieve enlightenment in this very lifetime. We all have that potential, and thus we should see that potential in all other living beings. This is challenging. It would seem that you need to be a Buddha, or at least a Bodhisattva, in order to see this special gift in those who perform unspeakably violent acts. But that seed is there because terrorists are human too.

To wrap up and bring back the opening statement, I in no way condone the violent actions of other human beings. However, if we demonize them, either as individuals or as a group, we are doing a disservice to all living beings. Only by treating all living beings with loving kindness can we individually travel the path of enlightenment. There are no exceptions. Even humans who have sadly not been touched by Dharma in this lifetime and have succumbed to the delusions offered by other delusional humans deserve our compassion.

 A man who conquers himself is greater than one who conquers a thousand men in battle.
-- Buddha

Buddhism + Yoga?

I am looking for some input on this. My primary Buddhist teacher is a wonderful speaker and shows great compassion, but he does not practice Hatha Yoga. My primary Yoga teacher is another wonderful soul and exudes the Eight Limbs in a humbling yet noble way, but he is not well versed in Buddhist practices. 

Om Ah Hum

This is a breathing meditation found in many Buddhist circles. My experience with it is within the New Kadampa Tradition via the teachings of Geshe Kelsang Gyatso. There are numerous articles and books on the topic with great depth, so I will keep this explanation intentionally short to focus on my question at hand. 

The general concept is that you think "OM" when you breath in, "AH" between the inhale and exhale, and "HUM" upon the exhale. This breathing meditation is useful for calming the mind, although does not replace in any way the contemplative meditations one undertakes when practicing Buddhism. The "thoughts" of those sounds is a summary, but what you should actually be concentrating on is not so much the sound, but the meaning. These are each linked to three things: OM links to Buddha's Body; AH to Buddha's Speech; HUM to Buddha's Mind. One could argue (I think with some success) that replacing the old Tibetan sounds with English words Body Speech Mind would be just as effective if the intent is the same.  With the links to the enlightened body, speech and mind in these sounds, we should be contemplating the meanings in some detail for the full effect, but it is beyond my expertise to provide a teaching on this subject in this space at this time. If you are unfamiliar but interested, a simple internet search with reveal numerous learning paths.    

Hatha Yoga

The practice of Hatha Yoga focuses on the poses and positions used to strengthen, heal, and re-center the body. Breathing is obviously an important component of such practice, and teachers will often instruct students on this. Maybe it's a simple reminder to breath during long poses, as one's tendency may be to hold the breath in during exertion. Across various poses, different breathing methods are more or less appropriate. Sometimes deep belly breathing, filling the lower lungs first by pushing down the diaphragm, then filling the upper lungs last, is correct. At other times, expansion of the upper chest is applicable. 

Quandary

Where my question arises is the point in poses when one breathes deeply, holds for a moment, then exhales. At this point, my mind wants to link this action with the breathing meditation. Often I will think OM AH HUM during this set of poses. I do not know if this is correct. To my mind, the benefit is calming the mind while strengthening the body. However, it may also be a cause of distraction. If I am focused on the teachings of Buddha during a yoga session, I am not focused on my teacher's words nor my body's responses to the poses. If I lose concentration during yoga, I will not receive the maximum benefits of the practice. 

Open Question: is it good practice to combine a breathing meditation with yoga poses?

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself. -- Leonardo da Vinci

On Same-sex Relations and Religion

Starting with Christianity, I searched for web site with vested interest in the topic of what the Bible says about same-sex relationships. There are many such pages out there, and I found one here that was well-written and non-argumentative. Across both the entirety of the Old and New Testaments, there are only a handful of places where it's mentioned explicitly, and a few others where it could be read implicitly. Most references are from that massive list of rules, Leviticus. In the New Testament, the topic was aligned to "proper sexual behavior" and so if one follows from Leviticus, same-sex relationships fall outside of there, and so that chunk may apply too. There's some modern discussion around the meaning of the "act" but not the "feelings" to be sinful, but this is one place where language and interpretation fail us. In legal decisions, sometimes it comes down to the specific wording, but I don't think it's the same way with Religious texts.

First off, almost every religious text, and all of the ancient ones, do not have their original words available to us. For those that we do have good original sources for, most of us do not speak the native language the text was written in. And so we have a translation effect added on top of the following discussion.

Religious texts, like any book, are written in specific time periods, and often include specific words or points that are appropriate for their current audience. Not one of any of these authors remotely suspected we'd be pouring over their words with a fine toothed comb thousands of years later. They were writing for their current followers, their current leaders, their modern day peers. In this way, they use the traditional language constructs available to them. If we were writing in America a few years ago, there'd be lots of "he/she" or "his/her" usage that we wouldn't see just 10 years later. We were clearly struggling linguistically at that time with gender equality issues. (Personally, I usually land on using "they" and "them", even when the intent is singular.)

The modern Christian Bible has some things to say about same-sex relations. One can make various arguments as to why it needed to be addressed (ancient taboos, encouraging reproduction), and it doesn't matter too much for this discussion. The words are fairly clearly stated. If a televangelist were writing his gospel today, I guarantee entire paragraphs would be dedicated to this subject, along with reasoning, a list of "do not's", and the appropriate punishments. 2,000 years ago, they clearly didn't think of it with this importance, and they treat the subject largely in passing when making other moral points.

As I read ancient texts such as the Upanishads, and as I read Buddhist teachings from a large range of years, I cannot recall a single sentence spelling out anything explicitly in regard to same-sex relationships. One can extrapolate from this a lack of a view to a position close to the modern progressive striving for all-inclusiveness, especially in the context of Oneness and Love. [n.b. I'm intentionally not counting the stories involving shape-shifting gods here, as the crux of those stories were various moral teachings and examples, and the gender of a specific being at a specific time really didn't matter to the teaching point.] However, there are many references where "wives" are discussed in various ways. When relationships do appear, it's often husband and wife, with traditional gender rolls.

My conclusion is that, based on the above arguments around writing for your audience, and translations across time and languages, these ancient texts were written by men, for men, and drew from their daily lives when needing examples. People in the stories wash in the river and trek through the jungle because that's what they all did in that time period. Or modern day fables of moral examples would have people commuting to work and vacationing in the sun. It's what we do. And back then, if there were literate people to be found, they were largely male. And society was often structured in that more primeval hunter/gatherer model (vs. modern misogyny), where men went out and took care of business while women stayed home to cook and rear children. Thus, when inditing their religious stories to paper, they would write in the role of the husband with a wife, washing in the river, walking through the jungle. The wording for "same-sex partner" would be as unfamiliar to them as the fundamental concept, and so I don't believe they had any reason to contemplate or to write about same-sex relationships. Similarly, even though we who study Buddhist writings are used to pouring over words for deeper meanings (after all, the first paragraph of the introduction to some of Geshe Kelsang Gyatso's books would give you enough to contemplate for a solid week!), when we hear Buddhist teachings that include traditional gender roles, I do not think we need to spend them any mind. And the deeper meaning of that passage lies in other words, regardless of the gender of the participants.

One final thought from the Buddhist side:  In general, attachment to worldly pleasures such as sexual gratification are viewed as distractions on the path to Enlightenment. Given that, there's probably no need to specifically ban same-sex sexual unions when no sexual unions are condoned.

Maybe this is all obvious to everyone, but I had to spend a little time contemplating it. My initial thoughts of "I wonder why the Bible even said anything about same-sex relationships" expanded down this path. Thank you for sharing the thought process, and as always, I would love to hear your thoughts.


Then said he: 'Lo, verily, not for love of the husband is a husband dear, but for love of the Soul (Ātman) a husband is dear.
Lo, verily, not for love of the wife is a wife dear, but for love of the Soul a wife is dear.' 

Upanishads Brih. 2.4.5


"Buddhism has in it no idea of there being a moral law laid down by some kind of cosmic lawgiver." -- Alan Watts

Thoughts on Compassion

Countless other beings are suffering.

Most are suffering worse than me.

It would be wonderful if we could all be free from suffering.

Or being sick, or poor, or in pain. Whatever the ill or strife, the saying works. Compassion for others. Yes, I may have pain. But so do countless others. And most of those others are worse off than I am. And here's the compassion part:  it's not about my pain, but everyone else's. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all be free from pain?

I have quoted the Buddhist Second Noble Truth a few times - either in writing or to friends. The crux is that all suffering is related to uncontrolled desire. It's deeper, but that's enough to make the point. I generally skip over the First Noble Truth - that life is suffering. That you need to know suffering. When I first hit upon this, that one didn't click for me. Almost like an obvious preamble. Like in a mathematical proof that starts with "consider two line segments of equal length...". Got it - two line segments, nothing interesting there. Similarly, I figured "got it, there's suffering". Duh. 

But I realized last night there's more than that. We did a meditation exercise around compassion - where you go one step beyond cherishing others more than yourself, but to really care and wish for an end to their personal suffering. So picture a large flat field, or a big stadium, like Nascar that seats 100,000 people plus the infield and so many more. Drop yourself in the middle there and start filling it. The ideal goal is to picture yourself surrounded by all living beings (not just humans, but animals too) and then to collectively imagine an end to everyone's suffering. But start small - picture your immediate family and those you interact with every day around you. Feel their individual suffering - physical ailments, poverty, emotional hardship, whatever challenges you know they have or they may have. Now start expanding out. Add in friends of friends you met once, extended family of cousins and aunts and nephews. Add in work acquaintances. Keep going! All the people on the last plane flight you took. All the people you saw in the airport that day. All the people in your graduating class, all the people you saw on the beach last vacation, that couple you met from England and their whole town. Expand, expand, expand. And realize they all have suffering. Because we all do. That's part of life. First noble truth - to feel compassion, you have to really understand there's suffering. Now you've got everyone grouped around in this massive stadium. Now everyone looks up at the endless ever-changing sky, we take a deep breathe, and then let it go. All at once. Everyone. And with that breathe, goes their suffering. At that moment, everyone is free, totally free, from suffering. It's not really a thought, but a feeling. Standing as one with all living beings, and you're just there. No suffering. Grasp that feeling and hold it for as long as you can in meditation. When the stray thoughts pop in, recognize them as stray, shoo them off, and gather your beings again. Refocus, and exhale again. Wouldn't it be great if all living beings were free from suffering!

OK back to life. You've got your job, your tasks, your relationships and interactions. And we've all got suffering. Now what? That's where to choices and the paths come in. Someone at work is dealing with a tough issue. What do you do? You follow the path. You understand their suffering, you feel compassion for them, you feel with your gut that yes, this person is suffering - and it would be wonderful for them if that could end. That's the starting point. From there, you go with intention to help in whatever you can to minimize their pain, to help them overcome. Because wouldn't it be great if all living beings were free from suffering?

That leads into the Third Noble Truth and hopefully may blog post later!