06.30.08

Ubuntu and beyond.

Posted in Ponderings and Incomplete Thoughts at 5:50 pm by Kaihaku

I’ve been reading up on African, South-East Asian, and Native American philosophy this month.

It began with Ubuntu, a Zulu word literally meaning “humaness”. Ubuntu serves as the foundation for a African philosophy which can be summed up with the Zulu saying “umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” – essentially meaning “a person is a person through other persons.” It is in opposition to the concept of “apartheid”, a more well known African word. In practice, a person with Ubuntu is inclusive and respects all other humans as portions of their own identity. It’s also the name of a Linux distribution and I can think of few better names for an open source operating system.

A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.

Desmond Tutu

I also resumed my studies of Cambodian Buddhism and Buddhism in general, learning of Preah Samdech Maha Ghosananda who was a proponent of socially engaged Buddhism. The movement began, of course, with Thich Nhat Hanh in Vietnam. In Laos, I learned of Sulak Sivaraksa who expanded the movement to struggle against consumerism and corruption in Thailand. My language teacher, Sam Ang, knew Maha Ghosananda from before the war and that prompted me to do some study of him. It was very encouraging to learn that one of the primary contributors to the movement was Cambodian.

Daniel Quin’s Ishmael has weighed heavily on me since I read it. It is the only book that has ever drastically changed my world view through it’s merit alone. In line with that, I have been reading some Native American prayers and blessings. I find the “Leaver” perspective that Ishmael speaks of apparent.

The Creator above is the Great Spirit and the Great Mystery, His gifts are plentiful therefore you want not. He holds out a branch of love and protection and He draws you to where the ground is undisturbed, where the air is pure and the water is clear and clean enough to give life. You walk, you breathe, you feed, for you are pleasured. The times when your heart is weak, your circle is out of balance, He lifts you up again and draws you to the good Menominee road, for He is strength and wisdom.

Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin

These are themes that are echoed, as Ishmael points out, at several parts in the Bible. Perhaps this is why they resonate with me, I grew up with them. Humanity can achieve only greatness by opposing the natural order of the world, not life or happiness. There is greatness in strife but it leads in the end to destruction. It is the choice that Achilles faced.

Traditional people of Indian nations have interpreted the two roads that face the light-skinned race as the road to technology and the road to spirituality. We feel that the road to technology…. has led modern society to a damaged and seared earth. Could it be that the road to technology represents a rush to destruction, and that the road to spirituality represents the slower path that the traditional native people have traveled and are now seeking again? The earth is not scorched on this trail. The grass is still growing there.

William Commanda

If someone wants to get me the Indians’ Book compiled by Natalie Curtis, originally published in 1907 and again in 1968, I would be grateful. It seems to be source of many of the prayers, stories, and blessings that I’ve been hunting up piecemeal. I find it amazing and sad that a man named Bedagi outlined a prayer that strikes to the core of many of our modern struggles over a hundred years ago. A man who has now been all but forgotten and faded from history, his words of wisdom almost completely lost.

Give us hearts to understand;
Never to take from creation’s beauty more than we give;
never to destroy wantonly for the furtherance of greed;
Never to deny to give our hands for the building of earth’s beauty;
never to take from her what we cannot use.
Give us hearts to understand
That to destroy earth’s music is to create confusion;
that to wreck her appearance is to blind us to beauty;
That to callously pollute her fragrance is to make a house of stench;
that as we care for her she will care for us.
We have forgotten who we are.
We have sought only our own security.
We have exploited simply for our own ends.
We have distorted our knowledge.
We have abused our power.
Great Spirit, whose dry lands thirst,
Help us to find the way to refresh your lands.
Great Spirit, whose waters are choked with debris and pollution,
help us to find the way to cleanse your waters.
Great Spirit, whose beautiful earth grows ugly with misuse,
help us to find the way to restore beauty to your handiwork.
Great Spirit, whose creatures are being destroyed,
help us to find a way to replenish them.
Great Spirit, whose gifts to us are being lost in selfishness and corruption,
help us to find the way to restore our humanity.
Oh, Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the wind,
whose breath gives life to the world, hear me;
I need your strength and wisdom.
May I walk in Beauty.

Bedagi (Big Thunder)

I was asked recently what I thought the ‘good life’ was, as the greek philosphers pondered.

What do I believe is the good life? I turn to Sulak Sivaraksa who was inspired by the Quaker’s devotion to pacifism and social justice and who in turn is now inspiring me. Is that not something like Ubuntu?

Of course, it is a great danger that those who are socially engaged lack spiritual depth, inner calm, and peace; some activist Buddhist monks (for instance, in Sri Lanka and Burma) have sometimes even become violent. But what Pannavaddho said is applicable only to a small minority of monks, those who are convinced that their prime duty is to get rid of defilements. It is unrealistic to expect that all monks should have these intentions. Even at the time of the Buddha, many monks did not. Monks should act somewhere between the minimum (following the basic ethical precepts) and the maximum (practicing for liberation); most are in between. Beyond following the minimal ethical precepts, the monk should make some contribution. In the Theravada Buddhist tradition, there is the custom of having town monks, who help and lead the people in various ways, for instance, in education and medicine; this is the traditional expression of socially engaged spirituality.

Without the spiritual dimension, however, those working socially will burn out. We must have joy, peace, and rest for ourselves, in our families, among our neighbors. If we are to connect ethical norms and social justice, we must have time for spiritual development, time to meditate, time to integrate head and heart, and then time for renewal and retreat several weeks a year, sometimes with teachers who help us and question us. This is why centers of renewal like Buddhadasa’s Suan Mokkh, the “Garden of Liberation” [in south Thailand], Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village [near Bordeaux, France], or the center I myself started, the ecumenical Wongsanit Ashram, are so important.

Without this kind of inquiry and practice, those trying to transform society will be more likely to be greedy, wanting to be big shots, or full of hate, wanting power, or deluded, wanting an impossibly ideal society or being a naive do-gooder. Meditation and critical self-awareness help one to see these questionable motivations or at least to ask oneself: “Am I doing that out of greed or hatred?” even if there is no clear answer.

But meditation alone is not sufficient–because people suffer so much. One must also act; one must do what one can.

Sulak Sivaraksa

I believe the good life is a balanced one, between internal growth and external action. I have known too many who focused on their internal growth and became eternally lost. I have also known too many who focused on external action and become equally lost. The personal and communal go hand in hand.

If I am good to someone, he or she will learn goodness and, in turn, will be good to others. If I am not good, he or she will harbor hatred and resentment and will, in turn, pass it on to others. If the world is not good, I have to make more effort to be good myself.

Taking care of others is the same as taking care of myself. Changing yourself is the first step in changing the world. When I respect and serve others, I am serving all Buddhas everywhere. This is called great compassion. Compassion is a happy mental state.

When we protect ourselves through mindfulness, we are protecting others as well. When we protect other living beings through compassionate action, we are also protecting ourselves.

Maha Ghosananda

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

Mohandas Gandhi

The struggles of every other single person on this planet affects me and my struggles affect them. By reaching out to help them, I help myself and by helping myself, I help others. Yet, I do not think this is all that there is to the good life.

Ishmael speaks of how humanity is not exempt from the laws of nature. All of existence is connected and interconnected. Is this not Ubuntu expanded to all life and not just humanity? A being is a being through other beings.

Mother Nature is not for us… she is part of us and we, like everything else that lives and breathes upon her, are her children. Your own direct connection with Mother Earth is to be encouraged daily. Paint her portraits, swim in her waters, tend to her flowers, stroll through her glorious forests, and care for her many children: all plants, people and, animals.We must live according to her principles and choose not to pollute her body. The alternative is death to our mother – and death to her children.

Bedagi

I believe this. The world is not for us, we are the world and the world is us. When we help the world, we help ourselves and when we help ourselves, we help the world. This sounds contradictory, but I don’t believe that it is. It is a matter of how we help ourselves, perspective determines everything, do we view the entire world and just our little individual perspective? How can we be happy, how can we live the good life if we ignore the greater part of who “we” are? Is this a greater Ubuntu?

All birds, even those of the same species, are not alike, and it is the same with animals and with human beings. The reason Wakan Tanka does not make two birds, or animals, or human beings exactly alike is because each is placed here by Wakan Tanka to be an independent individuality and to rely upon itself.

Shooter Teton of the Sioux

We are individuals and we are humanity and we are life. Change begins with us but it cannot end with us. We were never made to be whole for who we are, we part of a greater whole. I believe the good life is to find the balance between the individual and greater community.

We cannot save the world without saving ourselves and we cannot save ourselves without saving the world. Knowing when our individual strength is not enough and releasing to god, nature, the greater is a grace we must learn. Knowing when we must change ourselves is an understanding and courage that we must learn.

I believe that we have to yield control to god, stop the rebellion. Why do we struggle so to maintain the illusion of control, of mastery? Despite our best efforts, humanity has not become master of the world but instead threatens to become its destroyer. I’m not a proponent of casting aside civilization, I’m a proponent of changing civilization so that it is no longer self-destructive and that it truly values all life.

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s will. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.

Gospel of Matthew

We need to let go of our obsession with control. For the good life, I believe that we need to follow the ordinances we came to follow and have faith in god and nature. In this trust, we need to forgo the expectation that our lives will unfold according to our desires. It means releasing our illusion of control and acknowledging that god, nature, the greater is the authority.

But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us…. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

Romans

For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. He committed no sin; no guile was found on his lips. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he trusted to him who judges justly.

Peter

I personally believe that we must strive to overcome oppression in all forms if we are to live the good life. Leave judgment to god, to nature, to the greater. Leave the tree of good and evil to god, to nature, to the greater. Vengeance is mine saith the lord. Mastery is mine saith god, nature, the greater. For the good life, I believe we have to spit out the fruit of the tree. To balance justice and mercy, to manifest Ubuntu to all living things.

I don’t mean to yield everything but rather to give up judgment, it’s natural to drive away a threat or to defend one’s self from attack. It’s not natural to judge whether a people or a species is worthy of existing based solely on their threat…or more alarming their inconvenience.

Maha Ghosananda

Posted in Spero Cras at 4:43 pm by Kaihaku

Maha Ghosananda was one of the great promoters of socially active Buddhism and one of the most influential of the few positive figures in recent Cambodia history. Maha Ghosananda’s obituary in the Guardian.

The Cambodian Buddhist leader and peace activist Maha Ghosananda, who has died in his 70s, in the United States, led the restoration of Buddhism in his homeland following the killing by the Khmer Rouge between 1976 and 1979 of all but 3,000 of the country’s 60,000 Buddhist monks. Despite losing his entire family, including 16 siblings, he was at the forefront of efforts to reconcile Cambodia’s opposing factions and encouraged forgiveness by their victims.

Ghosananda was born in Takeo province, central Cambodia, probably in 1924 – the uncertainty stems from the deaths of all his contemporaries, and his own lack of interest in providing personal information. After serving as a temple boy at the age of eight, he became a Buddhist monk while still a teenager and studied with the previous supreme patriarch, who sent him for further studies at Nalanda Buddhist University, in Bihar, India.

There, Ghosananda met Nichidatsu Fujii, founder of the Japanese Buddhist sect Nipponzan Myohoji, who had stayed in Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram (or retreat). From Fujii Ghosananda learned Gandhian methods of non-violent activism, and in 1965 he moved to Thailand to study with Bhikkhu Buddhadasa, the great Thai Buddhist exponent of contemplative social engagement. The final part of his training was a five-year retreat with Ajahn Dhammadaro, a meditation master who berated the scholarly Ghosananda as a “parrot” who needed to supplement his learning with experience of meditation.

While on retreat, Ghosananda heard of the Khmer Rouge genocide and, distraught, wanted to return home. Dhammadaro instructed him that retaining a peaceful mind in the face of Cambodia’s calamity should be his path to self-mastery. Ghosananda later said he had been seeking peace so he could pass it to others.

When Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia in 1978, expelling the Khmer Rouge, refugees flooded into camps in Thailand. Ghosananda left his retreat to establish simple “shack temples” in each camp and began his social ministry. Faced by the refugees’ suffering and with a brutal civil war raging, he taught meditation and repeated the Buddha’s teaching that “hatred cannot be overcome by hatred, but only by love”. As a senior monk who was skilled in healing, social work and meditation, his influence was gratefully received.

With the help of a devoted group of activists, Ghosananda launched many humanitarian programmes in the camps, in Cambodia itself and among the Cambodian diaspora: in all, he founded more than 50 temples outside the country. He was sought out by bodies such as the UN economic and social council, and in 1988 was an important presence at the first UN-sponsored peace negotiations, though he saw his role as simply reminding the parties of the value of peace.

Ghosananda offered a link with Cambodia’s Buddhist past while engaging with its present difficulties, and in 1988 Cambodia’s monks elected him their supreme patriarch – an appointment later reconfirmed by King Sihanouk. He moved to the US in the late 1980s at the invitation of a Buddhist order in Leverett, Massachusetts. But he continued to live simply, teach informally, work without a staff and have no formal ties with the many activities he inspired.

The most significant of these were yearly dharmayeitras (or truth walks). On the first walk in 1992, Ghosananda guided a large group of refugees from their camps, through guerrilla territory, back into Cambodia. The walkers were greeted by enthusiastic crowds and the event struck a chord nationwide. Later walks took groups through areas affected by civil war, landmines and deforestation, offering a way for thousands of ordinary people to register their desire for change.

Ghosananda was a leading figure in the “engaged Buddhism” movement, and he met many international political and religious leaders, urging them to support peace and reconstruction in his country as well as fostering inter-religious understanding. He was nominated four times for the Nobel peace prize, and was awarded the 1998 Niwano peace prize in Japan and the 1992 Rafto human rights award in Norway.

While some conservative monks criticised Ghosananda for his activism, the contribution of his work to healing in Cambodia – and his powerful yet simple personality – made him widely respected and deeply loved in the country and beyond. For all his learning and his mastery of 10 languages, he built his work on a belief in the transformative influence of inner peace. Asked about Cambodia’s future, he replied: “We take care of the present moment. The future will take care of itself.”

A poem published in Ghosananda’s 1992 book, Step by Step, expresses his faith in the profound influence of an apparently simple commitment to peace and personal transformation: “Cambodia has suffered deeply./ From deep suffering comes deep compassion./ From deep compassion comes a peaceful heart./ From a peaceful heart comes a peaceful person./ From a peaceful person comes a peaceful family and community./ From peaceful communities comes a peaceful nation./ From peaceful nations come a peaceful world.”

· Samdech Preah Maha Ghosananda, religious leader, born c1924; died March 12 2007

Vacation

Posted in Life and the happenings there of at 2:31 pm by Kaihaku

I had a wonderful vacation back home in the states, made possible because of the generosity of several members of my family. The trip lasted for just over a month and fell nearly in the middle of my three year term here in Cambodia. I traveled over twenty thousand miles in that time, passing over the great ocean and crisscrossing the American continent. It was short, intense, and mostly wonderful. I admit though that the experience was a bittersweet one and as draining as it was restoring. Now, it is over and I have returned to Cambodia as renewed spiritually and emotionally as the trip left me drained physically. I was struggling with a bout of depression earlier this year but between this trip and my trip to Laos, I think that I’ve come through.

As for the roots of my depression, there were many and many still remain but I will say one of them now, how difficult it is to follow Ghandi’s advice when one has to write regular progress reports. “It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there’ll be any fruit. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”