A Christianist Terrorist?

Thanks to Integral Options Cafe for posting the following about religion and terrorism.

I've written about the issues of gun violence, terrorismand the psychology of labeling in the past. And specifically, I've made comments about how media outlets and the general public in many nations routinely label violent acts done by Muslims as "Islamic terrorism," while at the same time, pointing to similar acts done by Christians, Buddhists, Hindus or others as having nothing to do with the person's religious background. Here is the first two paragraphs from the article posted on Integral Options Cafe:

Jury selection starts this week in the trial of Scott Roeder, who has confessed to the assassination last May of George Tiller, a doctor vilified by pro-lifers for performing late-term abortions.

(There's a trial because Roeder pled "not guilty''; since he considers abortion to be murder, he doesn't believe he committed a crime by walking into Tiller's Wichita church and shooting the doctor in the head.) Roeder has a history of mental disturbance but he's also deeply religious, according to his ex-wife, who says he "turned to the church and got involved in anti-abortion.'' So was his the act of a nutcase? Maybe, instead, we should consider it "Christianist terrorism''?

Scott Roeder's case was what prompted me last spring to really consider how commonplace this kind of mislabeling is. Have you ever heard the phrase "Christianist terrorist" anywhere? I know I haven't. And is it even accurate? Where in the Bible is there a call to murder doctors who are performing abortions? Where is there any justification for murder whatsoever?

There continues to be a lot of hand-wringing over the case of Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan, who murdered 13 of his colleagues and injured 30 more in November. And yet, nearly every description of this horrible act is explicitly linked to Islam, whereas Roeder's acts is almost never linked in such a way. Both Hasan and Roeder took very extreme views of certain teachings in their faiths, and then chose to act in the most extreme way possible. However, neither man represents even a conservative view of their traditions. They've stepped out of bounds with their acts, and as far as I'm concerned we need to condemn their acts individually, and not attach any religious tag on it. In addition, we need work to understand why people use religion to justify horrific acts like terrorism, and look for systemic ways to prevent such things from happening in the future. And when I say systemic, I don't mean body scanning machines, which are simply reactionary measures. Maybe they provide some level of security, but they don't root out terrorism.

Buddhism is all about going to the roots, and uprooting that which is preventing us from being liberated. I believe this is what will be necessary to change the cultures of terrorism that have stolen religious teachings, and taken down so many lives in the process. Lets begin with how we label acts in the world - using simple, clear speech instead of labels bathed in suspicion and hatred.

Resolutions Two

Thanks to James over at Monkey Mind for sharing this. It fits right in with my comments about New Year's Resolutions a few weeks back.

Also, Lawrence over at Wheel of Dharma made an effort to bypass the superficial and provide some "Buddhalicious" resolutions for us. Numbers 5 and 7 are most interesting to me. Go here to check it out.

Dream Visions

The above image is a painting my mother, Katelyn, did this morning. She's been a visual artist, writer, and spiritually-centered person nearly all her life. I've been very fortunate to have a parent who not only has supported me in countless ways, but also is a fellow traveler in both the arts and in the spiritual life.

She has started a new blog, and intends to expand the reach of her artwork and writing with it. If you are interested in the visual arts, or in someone who writes about both art and spirituality, then please check it out.

Here's a little teaser paragraph for you all:

I found it interesting in light of the image I saw this morning, when I was fully awake is that hypnagogia can be induced with a Dreamachine, which uses a pulsing frequency of light close to alpha waves to create this effect. Descriptions of exceptionally vivid and elaborate hypnagogic visuals can be found in the work of Marie-Jean-Léon, Marquis d’Hervey de Saint Denys, (5 May 1822–2 November 1892, Paris), who was French and one of the earliest oneirologists (specialists in the study of dreams). He was studying his own dreams and discovered a process we now call lucid dreaming, where the dreamer is perfectly aware that they are dreaming and can change the dream.

Enjoy!

Killing and Buddhist Teachings

Toward the end of our Sunday service this morning, a young man - maybe about 20 years - old said "I have a question." He proceeded to tell the community he was in a treatment program, living in a house with others doing treatment - for what exactly, I don't know, but I can imagine some kind of substance abuse. He then spoke about walking past a sticky trap every morning and seeing a mouse squirming in it. He said "Every day I saw the mouse alive, I was happy. Then the other morning, I saw that the mouse was dead and I thought, what's the best thing to do, kill the mouse or let it starve to death?"

He has little control over the outer circumstances. He is a guest in the house, trying to get his life back together, and the people who run the house are doing their best to make it a decent place to be. I personally despise sticky traps for the same reason this young man explained - mice stuck in them, squirming until they die. Horrid.

When I lived in my mother's house as an adult, we had a problem with mice, despite having a trio of cats living with us. She has a big, old house in need of repairs: a perfect mouse haven. The cats were fed well enough, so they usually ignored the mice. Occasionally, one of them would chase after a mouse and use it as as toy, but mostly, it was up to us, which for me meant a steady flow of unloading live traps.

I've come to believe that because I rarely took the mice far enough away, I was often catching and releasing the same mouse over and over again. It's pretty damn funny when I think about it. And yet, I also remember taking a few of them outside during the middle of the winter. I remember in particular releasing a pair of mice into a snowbank and watching one of them scamper up a bare tree in the middle of February. How many of these little guys froze to death? Was all that effort just avoiding the inevitable?

Like the young man this morning, I found it a terrible quandary - especially as someone who vowed to liberate all beings and to not kill. Although I view the precepts and vows in a more complex way than simply black and white rules, it's still hard to know for sure what to do with issues like mice who have landed inside your home.

Environmentalists and nature lovers often talk about being one with the earth, and Buddhists love to talk about interdependence. And yet, how often does this talk simply remain in some romanticized place? When a mouse enters your house, how often do bodhisattva vows, interdependence, or your love of the earth enter into your reaction?

Those who know me are often surprised at how far I go at times to allow little lives to continue. I'm frequently found catching flies, bees, and other insects and releasing them outside, just to give one example. And yet, in the middle of the winter, it's kind of a lost cause to do so. Sometimes, I let whatever it is keep crawling around my apartment, but sometimes even I take the karmic hit and kill the bug.

Let me go a little further. I err on the side of life, and yet am pro-choice when it comes to abortion. I've never been able to see a place for a black and white, all or nothing approach to such a complicated issue as bringing a baby into the world, or not. Anyone who leans too hard to either side (I have a friend who likes to speak only half jokingly that sterilization isn't a bad idea for some people) is suspect in my opinion. I think you have to leave the door ajar, even if only a tiny bit. In my case, I've come to see that a few of those mice - like the one that was sickly thin from eating wall insulation - had little left to their lives no matter what I did. Most likely, I still would do what I did - let them go. However, when I think of the young man speaking of the mouse on the sticky trap, slowly starving and probably riddled with fear, I can't help but think maybe my response would be different.

Free Dhondup Wangchen and Phurbu Rinpoche

Marcus posted the following call to action, which I think is worth addressing.

News also came out this week that China has sentenced Tibetan film-maker Dhondup Wangchen to six years imprisonment for making a film in which he interviewed Tibetans about their views on living under Chinese occupation. Again, there were reports of torture and Dhondup Wangchen was denied his choice of legal representation during the trial. No Buddhist bloggers, as far as I'm aware, have yet initiated a letter-writing campaign about this.

Instead of arguing with Marcus about his take on the whole Brit Hume saga, I'm going straight to task at hand. Here's my letter and below that, the list of addresses Marcus provided.

Dear ----,

I'm writing to express my dismay at the recent jailings of Dhondup Wangchen and Phurbu Rinpoche, as well as the reported torture of Phurbu Rinpoche. I'm aware that China has been working hard to restore it's international image, and to be a leading member of the world community. Acts like jailing a film-maker for a positive portrayal of the Dalai Lama, and jailing and torturing a respected religious figure will not aid in this restoration process.

As a Buddhist, I am deeply pained to hear of such injustices occurring, and ask that both Wangchen and Rinpoche be released from prison immediately and that the charges be dropped. I honestly don't know what can be done to rectify torture, but I call on the Chinese government to set an example by ending all torture practices and publicly vowing to root out all practices that might contain elements of torture in them. My nation, the United States, continues to struggle with this issue. We still have leaders who aren't fully willing to break the habits of using torture as a means of revenge or as a way to get information out of people. I believe that peace only comes when people and groups start standing up and changing their actions.

The Chinese government can become such an example if it chooses to. You're place as a respected international leader is at stake. Please make the choice to be a positive example for all of us.

Sincerely,

Nathan G. Thompson

UK
Madame Fu-Ying
The Chinese Embassy
49-51 Portland Place
London, W1B 1JL
TEL: 020 72994049

US
Ambassador Mr Zhou Wenzhoung
The Chinese Embassy
3505 International Place, NW, Washington, D.C. 20008
Tel Operator: +1-202-4952000
E-mail: chinaembassy_us@fmprc.gov.cn

China
President Hu Jintao
Guojia Zhuxi
Beijing
People's Republic of China

Premier Wen Jiabao
Guowuyuan
No. 9 Xihuang-chenggen Beijie
Beijingshi 100032
People's Republic of China

Wu Aiying
Minister of Justice
No. 10 Chaoyangmen Nandajie
Chaoyangqu
Beijingshi 100020
People's Republic of China
TEL: (86) 10 6520 6706
TEL: (86) 10 8313 9065
Email: pfmaster@legalinfo.gov.ch
Email: minister@legalinfo.gov.cn

Brit Hume Post Comment Roundup

Well, it's been five days since Brit Hume made his now infamous comments about Tiger Woods and religion on Fox News Sunday. I'm surprised it's still a talking piece, given the short attention span of both the media and many of us.

I'd like to take up a few points made by commenters on this blog. Marcus, who has retired his blog for awhile, continues to be a part of the online community through reading and commenting on posts. He said the following in response to yesterday's post:

If the only time people get to hear about Buddhism and from Buddhists is when they are writing to say how offended they are, when they are angry, when they are demanding that private indiviuals make public apologies for their opinions, when they are calling that indivual all kinds of insulting thing on their blogs, well, what exactly is it that people will learn about Buddhism?

I'm really interested in this. It's definitely worth considering and brings up a quandary for Buddhists living as minorities in their countries. Those of us living in North and South America, as well as Europe and Australia, are all members of a minority religious community, and thus do not have the advantage of being the default view of our societies. I think Marcus is right to point to the fact that misinformation can spread easily as a result of the kinds of public discourse that occur in response to something said or done by a member of the majority group. Any person of color in the United States can tell you how often their valid concerns about institutional racism are dismissed as complaining, just to give one example. So, it's very true that some people might lump all Buddhists together as whiners and bitchers because of this single incident.

Along these lines, while Ethan Nictern's response on CNN to Brit Hume was excellent, I found his definition of Buddhism rather lacking. I like Nictern's work, and think his organization, the Interdependence Project, is doing some innovative things, but when he described Buddhism as a "series of meditation techniques and psychological teachings" coupled with "an ethical system," I kind of cringed. Buddhism has been a spiritual path for over twenty five hundred years, and it's incarnation in most places has been in the form of an institutional religion. Sure, there have always been people who broke off or never joined said institutions, but Nictern's definition is an example of the kind of misinformation, or at least limited information, I think Marcus was pointing to. Having listened to many of the ID Project's podcasts, it's clear that Nictern falls on the Buddhism as philosophy school. That's fine, but that view doesn't represent the majority of practitioners anywhere.

However, at the same time, if no one ever wades into the muck, and makes an attempt to correct those errors, there is a cumulative impact that makes it much harder later on to address issues of injustice and oppression. I keep going back to Katagiri Roshi's line "You have to say something." This, to me, is the challenge of being an engaged Buddhist member of society. You have to do your best to weigh the possible effects of your speech and/or action, but in the end, you also have to make a decision and then let go of the outcome. It's no easy task, but I think that sometimes we are called to do so.

Algernon from Notes from a Burning House wrote the following response to yesterday's post:

Marcus mentioned Thailand, and that reminded me that when one of my blog's readers asked me what I thought about Brit Hume's comment, the part of me that seeks context and perspective was reminded me of the demolition of the ancient Buddha statues in Afghanistan during the reign of the Taliban.

It was, in the end, just a bunch of rocks -- and the Taliban did nothing to change that, only their form.

What struck me more about what they did was the unmistakable message they were sending to Buddhists in Afghanistan. And for some reason, people matter to me more than rocks. (I know, "avoid picking and choosing." ;-) )

The intention of speech or act is very important, and I appreciate Algernon bringing up this example because it's somewhat in contrast to Hume's comments last Sunday. One of the challenges to publicly engaging discussions/debates over comments like Mr. Hume's is that even though we can infer certain intentions, there wasn't an obviousness to anything he said that demanded a response in the way the Taliban's actions did. And when I say response, I don't just mean a response from people protesting the actions. I also mean the kind of survival response you see when people flee or fight back when their lives are threatened. Those of us in the Buddhist blogging community, among others, perceived a potential for damaging consequences in the future if comments like Hume's were left untouched, but that's nothing like responding to your life being threatened, or to your entire community being repatriated against their will to a hostile nation, as some of my Hmong friends' relatives were recently.

Melody from the blog This is Me quoted me and then made the following remark:

"On the other hand, it seems kind of foolish for Buddhists to defend Buddhism, given what our practice teaches us."

I wish you'd talked a little more about this. I think it's this statement that is the main point.

This, to me, is one of the central issues we have to look at if we are going to be effective in bringing a Buddhist perspective into our public lives. One of the basic teachings of Buddhism is that there is no fixed self we can hold on to. There is no soul that passes on to the next life, nor is there anyone that stays the same even for a second. We're always changing, which doesn't mean that nothing is there, that we are just voids - that's nihilism, and Buddhism, contrary to what some people think, is not a nihilistic religion.

Just as we as people are not static, neither really are the teachings of our practice. They arise and disappear with every person, every community, and school of practice in different ways. And even though there are elements that provisionally appear in the world in very similar ways, even those elements, like the Four Noble Truths, or certain rituals (just to give two examples, emerge uniquely within the context of the lives taking them up. As such, what is there to defend ultimately? How can we defend what doesn't have a fixed position or nature?

There's more I could say about this, but for now, I think it's worth all of us Buddhists being socially active out there to ponder the origins of our desire to defend. Not just the teachings, but anything. I'm hanging with that one in meditation, and will continue to do so. May we all awaken.

A Few Observations about the Brit Hume Drama

Although this issue has lasted longer than the average Mayfly, it's probably on its way out very soon. Some other drama will appear to fill in the media landscape, and some other set of groups will be pitted against each other as a result. Before the last gasp comes, I'd like to share a few observations I've had.

1. The dramatic attracts an almost instant following.

It was amazing to me how, in a matter of about 24 hours, about half the lifespan of an average Mayfly, dozens of bloggers and on-line gawkers arrived to write something about Brit Hume's comments. It didn't matter what they wrote, only that comments were written and responded to in such rapid fashion. The speed of the internet has clearly ramped all this up and, that ramping up brings some interesting consequences.

a.) On the positive end, the ability to correct misinformation is so much easier and quicker now than any time during human history. Go back just a few hundred years ago, and comments made about, say Buddhism by a Catholic priest in a mass, might never receive a rebuttal during a person's lifetime, let alone in a matter of minutes like it is today. In addition, although Marcus, among a few others I have seen, wishes that people would have just let Hume's comments pass, it's clear that the level out public outpouring by Buddhists and people sympathetic to Buddhism - or to Tiger Woods maybe - led to a public discussion of Buddhism that might correct some biases held out there, as well as intrigue some people who might never have sought out Buddhism otherwise.

b.) On the negative end, the ability to read and respond to just about anything is so easy now that people often struggle to filter out the unnecessary. In addition, although I feel strongly that Brit Hume's call to conversion is a grave misuse of journalism, it's also true that I didn't much react to the fact that Buddhism itself was being dismissed. Others have however, which brings up a quandary for all of us out there who consider ourselves Buddhists. Namely, if someone condemns our practice, and we react to that, why is it that we are reacting? If the teachings are boats to get us to the "other shore" and then to be discarded, then what is it we are defending? Personal image? Public image? I really think this is a quandary because on the one hand, I feel it's imperative that people stop condemning religion and spiritualities, and/or claiming that their particular group is better or the only way. On the other hand, it seems kind of foolish for Buddhists to defend Buddhism, given what our practice teaches us.

2. What sparks debate and/or conflict is often trivial.

Think of any domestic dispute, fight between friends or strangers, or even some international conflicts. When you look at that which sparked the eruption, it's often pretty trivial.

In a comment made on another blog, Marcus wrote:

Gladly, most Buddhists happily shrug this off knowing that without the enraged blogs, the letter-campaigns, the us-vs-them knee-jerk reaction, it all soon goes away.

There are villages in southern Thailand where entire families are shot and killed simply because they are the last remaining Buddhists in that village – where is the reaction from the Buddhist blogosphere when that happens?

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/breakingnews/read.php?newsid=30087410

Buddhists continue to be persecuted in China, in Burma (the chanting of the Metta Sutra was recently banned there) and in other places on a daily basis, yet the Buddhist blogosphere generates moe heat over one individual Christian’s spoken opinion than any number of official regimes’ torture.

I totally agree with him that the issues he brought up are, in the grand scheme, much more important to be discussing, debating, writing about. Some of us bloggers have written a bit about some of these issues, but they deserve more attention. But let's face it, it's harder to write accurately and clearly about longstanding national and international oppressions than it is to write about a single news commentator misusing his position to proselytize. Which points to the fact that I believe Marcus' comment about most Buddhists happily shrug off this kind of issue is false. Maybe many of us let this one pass, but then someone runs over part of our flowerbed (See Ox Herding), or someone says to us that chanting is stupid, and we fly off the handle. Small, trivial events trigger deeper, unresolved attachments, gripes, and ignorance, plain and simple. In my opinion, it has been valid to call out Brit Hume's comments in a certain way, but it also points to the basic human struggle to make an appropriate response. We fail to write a lot about on going issues like those Marcus rightly pointed to, and yet we can fill volumes and volumes about Brit Hume, our "asshole" neighbor, Bill Harris, and other such story lines. It's not that the latter shouldn't be commented on, but the level of intensity around them tends to be inflated, whereas we struggle to maintain an appropriate level of intensity around issues that should have such attention, like the continued oppression of millions of people in Burma.

So, that's about all I have right now. Have a peaceful Thursday everyone.