mary, the mother of god, advent, and dharmic wisdom

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2014/12/21/4152798.htm

The following is from this article by Stanley Hauerwas

This is the last Sunday of Advent. Advent is a time the church has given us in the hope we can learn to wait. To learn to wait is to learn how to recognize we are creatures of time. Time is a gift and a threat. Time is a gift and a threat because we are bodily creatures. We only come into existence through the bodies of others, but that very body destines us to death. We must be born and we must die. Birth and death are the brass tacks of life that make possible and necessary the storied character of our lives. It is never a question whether our lives will be storied, but the only question is which stories will determine our living in and through time.

I am limited in what I can comment about the other bits regarding the Virgin Birth. But this paragraph really resonates with me. I think part of the work of meditation practice is about learning to relate to time differently, and indeed to receive it as both a gift and threat. Meditation, in this sense, involves a certain work of waiting. Or to evoke Derrida, attente sans attente, waiting without waiting. This also reminds me of Foucault’s philosophical musings on ‘the thought from outside’:

Language in its every word, is indeed directed at contents that preexist it; but in its own being, provided that it holds as close to its being as possible, it only unfolds in the pureness of the wait. Waiting is directed at nothing: any object that could gratify it would only efface it. Still, it is not confined to one place, it is not a resigned immobility; it has the endurance of a movement that will never end and would never promise itself the reward of rest; it does not wrap itself in interiority; all of it falls irremediably outside. Waiting cannot wait for itself at the end of its own past, nor rejoice in its own practice, nor steel itself once and for all, for it was never lacking courage. What takes it up is not memory but forgetting. This forgetting… is extreme attentiveness. ~ Michel Foucault, ‘Maurice Blanchot: The Thought From Outside’, p. 55-6.

how might a buddhist interrogation of ‘the secular’ be articulated?

Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age has generated much debate and is an invaluable reference

In posting about some of the ethical, political, and ideological challenges (and indeed, the possible neo-colonial effects) of the widespread adaptation of meditation practice or mindfulness training across various settings, I’ve come to realise that I am brushing up against a broader issue about the secularisation of Buddhist teachings. That is to say, the challenges emerging from the so-called McMindfulness industry are inter-involved with the move to articulate what is called ‘secular Buddhism’.

I do not personally advocate the term as such but I have always been curious about ‘secular Buddhism’, because I am participating in it in some ways and cautious about it at the same time. Indeed, in some ways I am trying to resist it, or at least be critically reflexive about it, because I think there’s much about the notion of ‘the secular’ that needs to be thought through more carefully.

So, instead of accepting the notions of ‘the secular’ and ‘secular Buddhism’ as givens, I want to explore the question, ‘How might a Buddhist interrogation of “the secular” be articulated?”

Now, this is a huge question and I do not quite know yet how to approach it. So this will be an ongoing topic for the blog. To kickoff the discussion, I’ll use this post to signpost very schematically some of the reasons why I think ‘the secular’ needs to be interrogated.

First off, a few words about ‘secular Buddhism’. It is becoming increasingly common, especially amongst Western commentators, to express a preference for ‘secular Buddhism’. One prominent advocate of ‘secular Buddhism’ is Stephen Batchelor, who probably helped to popularise it significantly with his writings about ‘Buddhism without beliefs’ or ‘Buddhist atheism’. An Australian Buddhist practitioner-academic Winton Higgins have also written about secular Buddhism. And we also find that non-sectarian approaches to Insight Meditation tend to characterise themselves in secular terms.

On the whole, ‘secular Buddhism’ advocates an approach to practice that is not bound to any sectarian position and which does not accept doctrinal propositions unquestioningly. I do not have any issue with such a general attitude as such. However, what I think needs to be interrogated more carefully is the extent to which the notion of ‘the secular’ in ‘secular Buddhism’ rests on axiomatic, Westerncentric understandings of ‘un/belief’, ‘religion’, ‘a/theism’, and related ideas about ‘ritual’, ‘superstition’, and so forth.

So this is what I hope to explore in future posts:

The notion of ‘the secular’ – or more precisely, the ‘religious/secular’ dualism – has a specific Euro-Christian genealogy. This genealogy is inter-involved with colonialism, whereby the ‘religious/secular’ dualism served, and still serves, as a tool of Western imperialist domination and control. What emerges out of the Euro-Christian genealogy of the ‘religious/secular’ is a particular ideology of un/belief (see chapter on ‘Belief’ by Donald Lopez here). This ideology of un/belief continues to constrain public debates in such a way that it often glosses over how the concept of ‘religion’ is a Latin invention that cannot be directly translated to the custom and practices of non-Western heritages, including Dharma traditions like Buddhism.

Therefore, there are serious consequences that result from the extent to which we are critically reflexive or not about such notions as ‘religious/secular’ and ‘secular Buddhism’. These consequences do not simply impact on the way we think about the world. They are consequences that would impact on the ways in which the lifeworlds of others are valued or devalued, denigrated, marginalised, or excluded – this is especially so for non-Western heritages who have long been living under the imperialist hegemony of the West. Such consequences are nicely encapsulated by the title of Tomoko Masuzawa’s book, The Invention of World Religions, or, How European Universalism was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. I have also alluded to some of these consequences in the post on ‘border protection’ against non-Western, non-white understandings of mindfulness.

To be clear, I am NOT dismissing the potentials of ‘secular Buddhism’ or the promises of inclusivity and egalitarianism offered in the name of ‘the secular’. I am simply suggesting that the development of these potentials and promises need to be cultivated with mindfulness of the historical, ideological, and even ethnocentric baggage of such framing categories as ‘religious/secular’ and ‘un/belief’, which we have inherited from the worldwide legacy of a Western European-Christian heritage.

Whether we like it or not, whether we embrace it or resist it, like one’s birth name and the language and culture in which one is raised, inheritances (with all their problematic complexities and complicities) come before us and are received by us without our choosing – hence, a matter of responsibility, or better, response-ability.

google, mindfulness, and the decision (or lack thereof) to commit to ethical reflexivity and engagement

Source: http://religiondispatches.org/google-phonics-or-what-is-the-sound-of-a-thousand-tech-workers-meditating/

The following is from this ‘Googe-phonics, or, What is the sound of a thousand tech workers meditating?’

Meng insisted that success in the marketplace is consistent with the pursuit of mindfulness. I objected, and raised the pointed question I had asked only rhetorically a couple of days before. “If mindfulness were to take root both inside and outside corporate culture,” I suggested, “we might move beyond market capitalism altogether and arrive in a world that is beyond Google. The key moment in the Buddha’s life is not just when he left the palace, but when he crossed the river and joined those who were underprivileged. So I’m wondering: What would it look like for you to cross the river?”

In reply, Meng explained that if Google ever faced a choice between the common good and the survival of the company, he would always advocate for the common good. It was a revealing answer: framing this choice in hypothetical terms implies that Google has yet to face it. It’s a choice that will rarely present itself in one consummate moment, however, but instead appears as a series of smaller decisions with cumulative effect.

Where was mindfulness, for example, when Google decided to subvert the privacy settings of iPhone users? Where was mindfulness when the Street View program ‘sniffed’ for open Wi-Fi connections and surreptitiously collected personal data from local residents? Where was mindfulness when the company decided to consolidate its user privacy policies against the better judgment of consumer groups and over thirty U.S. Attorneys General? Tellingly, none of these issues appear in Search Inside Yourself. They are blind spots within a corporate-friendly version of Buddhist philosophy.

I think so too. It is in line with Buddhist understandings to conceive of the commitment ‘for the the common good’ as a decision that is not taken in one consummate moment, but a decision that must be taken and re-taken repeatedly, cumulatively, over and over again. Or as my late teacher S.N. Goenka would say: ‘Start again’ (the bodhisattva vows make the same promise). By bracketing off this decision to maintain ethical reflexivity and engagement – always leaving it till ‘later’ or some hypothetical future – this is precisely the danger of the institutional mindfulness programs developed by the likes of Google and the US military, as they enjoin their staff to give themselves over to ‘the now’. To what ends? In whose interest?

who gets buddhism ‘right’?

A piece I wrote for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Religion & Ethics website:

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2014/12/11/4146841.htm

the ‘white’ science of meditation

This article ‘The white science of meditation’ connects nicely with the previous post.

This is why I would insist on giving space, extending hospitality to religious interpretations of the practice in public discussions. But not because, as some people have taken umbrage to, I wish to deny the potential benefits offered by scientific enquiry, or keep the practice inaccessible by clouding it in some air of mysticism, or reify the concept of ‘religion’, which, after all, is a Euro-Christian invention that cannot be directly translated to Asian Dharma traditions. But the fact is ‘religion’ has been imposed by the West upon the world, such that it is at once the framework by which non-Western, non-white heritages are able to seek legitimacy in public debates and also the means by which they are denigrated, demonised, excluded, and marginalised. I think one uncomfortable truth that the contemporary world struggles to face up to is the extent to which ‘religion/secular’ has less to do with ‘beliefs’ than the maintenance of racial or ethnic prejudice and superiority.

‘border protection’ against non-Western, non-white understandings of mindfulness

The following is from this wonderful article, ‘Mindfulness’ “truthiness” problem: Sam Harris, science and the truth about Buddhist tradition’

Our concerns have nothing to do with complaints that Buddhism is being diluted or whether the mindfulness movement is an authentic and accurate representation of traditional Buddhist teachings, although those who venture to raise critical questions are often immediately pigeonholed as out-of-touch Buddhist purists. To be clear, we know of no one opposed to meditation being employed for reducing human suffering of any kind. But we do take issue with the troublesome rhetoric that the Buddhist tradition amounts to nothing more than an outdated set of cultural accretions. Author Sam Harris exemplifies this in his essay “Killing the Buddha,” when he characterizes the Buddhist religious tradition as an “accidental strand” of history and tells those in the mindfulness movement that they “no longer need to be in the religion business.” Dan Harris, co-anchor of ABC’s “Nightline” and “Good Morning America” and the author of the best-selling book “10% Happier,” decries “meditation’s massive PR problem,” code for shedding any associations with anything that smacks of Buddhism. This kind of deprecatory, at times hostile characterization of the Buddhist tradition betrays a terrible lack of understanding of what it means to engage meaningfully with a religious tradition, and a naïve belief in the unassailable authority of science as the sole arbiter of truth, meaning and value.

This policing of Buddhism’s perceived ‘religiously’ or ‘culturally’ or ‘tradition’ bound features by dominant scientific discourse is a colonizing gesture. In other words, this particular mode of science (not all science) is playing the role of Homeland Security. The following comes to mind. It is referring to the Western philosophical tradition’s treatment of non-Western wisdom traditions but it is applicable here too:

‘In effect, indigenous wisdom traditions of the non-western world are separated from their western counterparts at customs and forced to travel down the red channel. This is because, unlike western philosophies, they are believed to have “something to declare” – namely, their “religious,” dogmatic or “tradition-bound” features which mark them out as culturally particular rather than universal. Before being allowed to enter the public space of western intellectual discourse, such systems of thought must either give up much of their foreign goods (that is, render themselves amenable to assimilation according to western intellectual paradigms), or enter as an object of rather than as a subject engaged in debate.’ ~ King, Richard 2009, ‘Philosophy of Religion as Border Control: Globalization and the Decolonization of the “Love of Wisdom” (philosophia)’, in P Bilimoria and A Irvine (eds.), Postcolonial Philosophy of Religion, Springer, London, p. 45.