The Awakening of the West

Since I've enjoyed some of Stephen Batchelor's other writings I figured I'd take a chance on the cat bookstore's copy of his history of "The Encounter of Buddhism and Western Culture".  It's a fairly quick read that delivers on its subtitle by recounting a series of vignettes linking current (as of 1994) Buddhists teaching in the West back to the Eastern teachers that founded these traditions.  The result is something more engaging than a dry chronological history of everything that happened between Menander meeting Nagasena and the Dalia Lama showing up at the Berlin Wall.  Instead, we get a much better sense of the larger than life personalities involved in each of these living traditions that have enabled them to expand and grow and transcend their cultural roots over the past 2500 years.  However, this feature is balanced by a bug (if you can call it that).  The book contains so much history in each of its dense, often partly overlapping, stories that there are a bewildering number of names associated with an ever ramifying number of traditions that we have to try and keep distinct.  While it's a not a scholarly work and is trying to appeal to a broad audience, it's attempt to touch on everyone who is anyone in the long history of Buddhism sometimes makes it feel a bit exhausting and over-written.  So it may not be a good first stop for people who don't at least have some of this history already mapped out.  

Tree of Smoke

While Dennis Johnson's novel about Vietnam is my least favorite of his works that I've read so far (though that's just Jesus' Son and Already Dead) it was still compellingly written and kinda interesting.  Halfway through I realized that while I've seen many films about Vietnam, I can't recall reading another novel set there.  The benefits of dealing with the subject in a novel are obvious -- there are lots more unrelated characters here, spread out over a much longer time span, and hence encompassing more dimensions of the sprawling mess that gave birth to the Boomers.  As one might expect though, the message ends up being rather similar to everything else we've heard about Vietnam.  That war destroyed the American soul in a unique way.  Every trip to Vietnam was a trip into the heart of darkness.  

The Buddha Before Buddhism

Having read a little bit about the subject of "early Buddhism" (mostly from Leigh Brasington) I've long wanted to read Gil Fronsdal's translation of "The Book of Eights".  This short collection may be the oldest stuff in the Pali Cannon, and hence the closest to what the Buddha himself taught in his lifetime.  While Fronsdal's introduction and afterword review the multiple strands of evidence for this chronological position, it remains speculative.  And he suggests that, in the end, it may not be all that important.  What's clear is that this text is different in both tone and teaching from the other parts of the Pali Cannon that I've encountered.  For one, it's all in short verses, instead of long stories (though there is still a question posed to the Buddha that frames many of the chapters).  Perhaps because of this, it relies much more on paradox and aporia than other suttas.  The teaching is mostly about what not to do -- chase after sex, hold onto and quarrel over particular views -- and not about the traditional Buddhist lists of characteristics and factors.  

While I've found those lists incredibly helpful devices, it's refreshing to find the message here pared down to what I take to be its essence -- don't hold onto anything, even Buddhist doctrine.  Holding fast to any belief will eventually cause us to suffer; the path to peace and freedom lies in moving through life without needing these supports.  In short, the message is very Mahayana, and if these poems indeed represent the undiluted and uncodified teachings of the master, then it's much easier to understand why Nagarjuna felt the need to renew the tradition beyond all the Theravadan apparatus.  This is not to suggest that anything here contradicts the Theravadan interpretation.  In fact, we get pretty clear statements of dependent origination and not-self and the noble truths.  But we hear these doctrines before they have been formalized, at a point where they feel less like truths to be taught and memorized than experiences to be encountered along the road to peace.  

James

I'm likely the last human alive to read Percival Everett's re-writing of Twain's masterpiece.  Fortunately, everything I heard about it is true.  The novel is smart, funny, deep, and just plain great entertainment, regardless of whether you remember the original very well or not.  

Part one of the novel (roughly 2/3rds) is roughly what I would have expected upon hearing the premise.  It sticks relatively closely to Twain's plot, but tells the same story from Jim's perspective.  It's a clever enough trope, but the real delight is in Everett's masterful execution of it.  Here, Jim is not only human being from the outset (something he can only grow into in Twain's telling) but he's sardonically literate to the point of being erudite.  Twain's thick negro dialect is recast as a put-on invented by slaves to keep white people imaging they're simple fools.  The titular 'adventures' of Huckleberry Finn that occupy the bulk of Twain's lazily floating novel are immediately converted into the terrors of Escaped-slave Jim, who now finally gets to tell his own story, rather than being forced to entrust it to a well meaning white man.  

I won't spoil parts 2 and 3 by giving away Everett's twist, except to say that his ending has all the power of Twain's, and is a good deal less open to misinterpretation. Go read it.

Stages of Meditation

I no longer remember how the Dalai Lama's commentary on a Tibetan translation of Kamalashila's Bhāvanākrama ended up in my to read list, but when I saw it at the cat bookstore it went on the pile.  I vaguely remember that the idea was that this was deemed HH's most 'technical' writing about meditation, which I probably found intriguing.  And it is indeed pretty technical.  The basic idea of the original text is that there can, perhaps paradoxically, still be stages to the cultivation of awakening despite the Mahayana view that everything and everyone is already empty.  So in a sense, it a meditation instruction manual.  Meanwhile, the commentary from HH sticks pretty tightly to the original, without a lot of tangential attempts to modernize the text or discuss how he practices with it day to day.  

The stages Kamalashila describes are pretty simple actually.  First, cultivate compassion for all beings.  Interestingly, the text suggests going about this in the opposite way from which it is often taught.  Instead of beginning with metta, we are told to begin with an equanimity that regards all beings as equal.  That is, we first cultivate an equalization of feeling towards ourselves, our friends, and our enemies -- ultimately, we are all in the same boat.  Then, when we focus on wishing beings well in our metta, we are able to extend this loving-kindness to all beings equally.  After this, a feeling of compassion for all beings will arise naturally anytime we discover that they are not doing well.  Finally this mind of universal compassion for all beings inspires the Bodhisattva vow characteristic of the Mahayana.  After establishing this base of compassion, the practitioner can then focus on developing samadhi and vipassana, here termed "calm-abiding" and "special insight" meditation.  The latter of these is the specific Mahayana insight into the emptiness of all things.  And that's basically it, both the text and the Lama emphasize that these two aspects of meditation need to be balanced to achieve awakening.

While it appears that these stages or components of the path are relatively familiar and straight-forward, I should acknowledge that I don't think I understand this text very well.  I've come away with this summary high-level view partly because the material is coming from traditions that I am not that familiar with.  It's 9th century Indian Mahayana practice reflected through a 20th century Tibetan lens.  So what feels to me like needless repetition in the text regarding the balance of calm-abiding and special insight, and then later "method" and "wisdom", is probably a subtle distinction that I just don't understand.  Like most of these older texts, the material is not meant to be read on a standalone basis, but under the guidance of competent teacher.  The Dalai Lama's commentary certainly makes the original more accessible, but mainly to those already steeped in the Gelug tradition from which he teaches.  So basically I was just not the intended audience for this one.  Interesting nevertheless.

The Sound of Silence

 Since I've been training in the Thai Forest lineage for the past year and a half, when I saw this collection of talks from Ajahn Sumedho (one of the more important teachers in this tradition and one of its key links to the West) in the cat bookstore, I thought I would set it aside for later.  But after perusing the initial talk (which is probably on dharma seed) I found the style so direct and engaging that I just wanted to keep going.  These are really wonderful teachings that one can hear on a variety of levels.  They're very straightforward, without a ton of technical meditation details or lots of pali terms; I think most anyone could get something out of them.  But they are also profoundly encouraging -- this guy has been meditating for 60 years, and yet he describes starting the process of de-identifying with his own mind again and again, moment to moment, as if he were always a beginner.  And we can all aspire to be beginners.

Cosmopolitanism

It was Evan Thompson's thought provoking Why I Am Not a Buddhist that originally made me aware of Kwame Anthony Appiah's philosophy of "universality plus difference".  Since that discovery I managed to put two and two together and realize that Appiah is also the author of the NYT column The Ethicist, which I have occasionally enjoyed without much noting who was playing the role of Anne Landers.  So, despite the fact that I was underwhelmed by Evan's presentation of the philosophy of Cosmopolitanism, when I saw the book at the cat bookstore I figured I should give it a chance  And ... I remain underwhelmed, at least philosophically speaking.  Though I enjoyed and would happily recommend the book.

Appiah is an elegant writer, especially if you're into the whole brevity thing.  One fairly wizzes through his clear arguments and entertaining stories.  There's a great deal of food for thought in both these aspects of the book, and they are woven together especially tightly in this case.  Appiah grew up in Ghana, went to school in the UK, and now teaches in Amerika, so he tells engaging stories about the many cross-cultural ethical dilemmas he has navigated over the years.  Meanwhile, he argues that despite all these cultural differences, we still share so much that we are almost always capable of understanding, tolerating, and even learning from one another, if only we are willing to put a little effort into building what my meditation teacher would call a "universal translator".  So it's both argument and lived experience together that lead him to a slogan for cosmopolitanism that he draws from one of Terence's plays -- "I am human: nothing human is alien to me".  It's an attractive idea that expresses confidence in the possibility of a coexistence without conclusion, an openness that doesn't require agreement on universals (beyond an attitude of openness).  We are all different; but we are similar enough to appreciate and live with that difference.

While this is an attractive vision, I think it's rather underwhelming as philosophy proper.  What Appiah lays out is more properly a matter of religion or politics or just plain common sense.  And much of the philosophical argument in the book is aimed at undermining the various narratives we hear that purport to order all values in light of the one true universal value.  Value-free scientism, religious and racial fundamentalisms, and even all-encompassing theories of colonial cultural appropriation are critically examined and found lacking.  Much of the task of building a cosmopolitan outlook lies in the negative work of loosening up the boundaries and deconstructing the reasons we erect to separate ourselves from the rest of humanity and reinforce our own identities.  In essence, Appiah is just trying to extend the innate moral sensibilities that evolved from our tribal ancestry to cope with a much larger modern world.  This doesn't require him to build a new ethical philosophy (and in fact he is quite skeptical of rationalist ethical philosophy) but mostly just to remove the obstacles we constantly erect to feeling interest in and compassion for people who are different from us.  So in the end it's not really a critique of the book to call it philosophically underwhelming.  Whether or not you consider it our 'natural' tendency, the cultivation of kindness to strangers is something that requires practice, not theory.