Jihad and the Meeting of Cultures

Jihad for me is walking into the Mesjid. As an American, it is a good exercise for me to see the things which are deeply wrong with my culture. They aren't easy to miss. However, walking into the Moscow Islamic Center, I can't help but remember the deeper problems which the many cultures which have embraced Islam have. This is despite the vast strength and profound benefits which I believe Islam has to offer the world. (I must believe this, or I wouldn't have decided to become a Muslim.)

Islamic-culture problems like inferior treatment of women, sexual violence, a kind of "culture nazi" view of shariah, hiding in the closet in Western cultures, conflating religion and politics (sometimes to the point of violence), are easy to spot for an American observer. Part of this is because these problems are emphasized by the media. Part of this, though, is that these problems quite obviously exist. And I can't deny that. And that is why walking into the Mesjid is jihad for me.

As I journey through the world of being a Muslim, I see a great deal of hope and offering in the religion of Islam. I believe it is the best religion in the world. But it's always difficult for me to walk into the Mesjid, knowing my staunch unwillingness to discard my Stetson cowboy hat as a North Idaho Libertarian, nor to set aside my uniquely American beliefs about the world. I am an American. And I hold a far less cynical view of American culture than many of my Muslim sisters and brothers.

This makes the Eid al-Fitr gatherings and the public worship very difficult for me. Sometimes, I decide just to pray at home. It's too frightening to go to the Mosque. I willingly adopt the ideology which France would jam down my throat — I keep my religion private. I realize it is difficult particularly for my Muslim brothers, too. At first, I was hurt by the marked lack of "Aslaam-o-alikum" greetings at the local Eid al-Fitr feast. But then, upon reflection, I realized that a lot of the people there probably didn't know I was a Muslim. And, quite reasonably, they were afraid of me; a North-Idahoan wearing a Stetson cowboy hat is not someone an Arab Muslim immigrant wants to piss off. I don't want to make things this difficult for these Muslims, but I have to.

Why do I have to? Because of the ease at which the 12-year-old Pakistani Muslim came up behind me, said "Aslaam-o-alikum," and shook my hand. He treated me as a true brother: with a child's courage, undaunted by the baggage of Islamic-American relations. He will return to Pakistan with a positive view of North-Idahoans wearing cowboy hats, which insha'Allah has tremendous impact on the world's path towards peace.

Muhammad (sallallahu aleyhi wa salaam) said that the second best deed for a Muslim to do, just below belief in Allah (subhana wa t'alla) and His prophets. So I suppose I still, with the help of the more courageous of my Muslim brothers, will visit the Mesjid. Sometimes, with my punk-Libertarian upbringing, my Islamic-Buddhist beliefs, and my Stetson cowboy hat, I feel like my very existence is an act of jihad. But I have to do it. Because I feel I have a positive contribution to make. I hope, earnestly, that all these things help.

Eid Mubarrak.

**Note: Saying Islam is the best religion in the world in no way invalidates my Buddhist perspective. Buddhism has religious aspects, which I believe are Islam — or, at the very least, if you want to get technical, they are proto-Islamic. But primarily, Buddhism isn't a religion, but rather a system of mind-yoga which leads to truth, including religious truth, which was formulated as a radical contre-puntal to Hindu yoga. Buddhism is a philosophical mind-training technique and world-outlook, not so much a religion.

On Control

I want to share something about control. There's internal control, and there's external control. Control is binary. There is a one, and there is a zero. There's assent, and then there's no signal. The essence of control is to isolate information down to the point of it being binary. That is control, and there is an internal aspect and an external aspect. The internal aspect of control is called self-control. The external aspect goes by social control, propaganda, or perhaps occultism, psychiatry, science, and so forth. Then, there is the union of internal and external control. That is important.

Enlightenment is where external control meets internal control. It's like two electric circuits connected by a wire; really, when you connect them, they are one circuit. That's union. There is no enlightenment without control, both internal and external, because without control there would be no clarification of concepts, no transmission of purity, no essence of the divine. You need control to have enlightenment. With control, you are controlled by Buddhas, and you control yourself. Everywhere there is nothing but control. And with this control, both internal and external, comes the transmission of purity which purifies the mental continuum to the point where it can continue on its own without further guidance. That is the ultimate point: clarifying information, purifying data, ruling out the decay of existence that marks the ordinary, unenlightened state.

In the Internet, we have transmission of data, and we have streaming. Streaming is like transmission of data, except there's more control. The pathway of data becomes one circuit, to the point where the two computers are indistinguishable, and then you get music coming through the wire. You can't have live music over the Internet without streaming. Control is what makes it stream.

When we receive a teaching, it doesn't matter if the teaching is secular or religious or what-have-you, there is a great deal of control. Language itself is control. When someone says something, we can't help but experience that thing. In some ways, this can be traumatic; someone can say something which triggers something in us that makes us feel uncomfortable, and we don't like it because we feel we have no choice. But in other ways, it is quite useful. Mutual control through language is what makes us so powerful as human beings. It's what builds societies. The trick to avoiding the trauma is to be open-hearted. Sense the essence of the word entering your mind. Feel its emotion. Feel the totality of it, and all the energy and light and soul behind it. Feel what it means to be that word. It will still control you, but the control is open-sourced, and you get to contribute, too.

That's something that Westerners, traditionally, have had a hard time accepting. Control is always two-sided. If you seek to control, you will always be controlled. Control is control. Control of others is others' controlling you. Control begets control, from node to node, point to point, everywhere on the network. It is never one-sided, as much as we may want it to be.

Consider the United States of America. It is a very powerful country. What makes the United States so powerful? Because of all the control. But America is a democracy. The citizens of America control the government, and the government controls the citizens, who control the government, who control the citizens. All this control is what makes us so powerful.

Now you may be wondering if there is something beyond control. Of course there is. Once you've achieved control, you can simply allow the energy to radiate throughout the nodes of control, providing love, inspiration; inspiring dialectics of power; granting crowns and relieving others of the oppressive weight of the same crowns. Once union between the nodes of control, being two, (internal and external), has been achieved, you have a blossoming of creative energy which can spill into the universe and settle among the Earth. This is the meaning of control. It is its ultimate end. If you hang onto control, you get a headache. If you loosen up, once control has been achieved, you achieve grace.

A lot of people are against the concept of control. I am not. However, I do understand that an extreme of control causes headaches. Control is necessary and important, but best to let it arise naturally, as the product of open-hearted investigation, inner and outer, into the nature of the world. Perhaps it may even be better to let the whole world control you first, before seeking to control the world. But once the control has been achieved, being open-hearted and loose and letting go returns us to that state of nature from which the control arose in the first place.

Practical Religion: Pray Five Times a Day to Increase Efficiency

Everybody knows that prayer is what keeps us in touch with the Ultimate, with the Source of Life. Certainly this is true in Islam as well. But did you know that there are practical benefits to offering salat five times a day as well?

When we organize our lives, it's best to have some kind of routine. We have to know when we're going to get up in the morning, how we're going to plan our day, and when we're going to go to bed. We have to have this routine to get our lives in order so that we can most effectively use our time. Muslim salat is a great way to do this.

Muslims everywhere pray five times a day according to the prescribed times of the day. The five prayers are: Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, and Isha. Fajr time is when light first glints over the horizon, and when the birds first start singing. Dhuhr is when the sun is highmost. Asr is in between Dhuhr and Maghrib, and Maghrib is when the sun has just finished setting. Isha is when all light from the sun is gone.

Since I've started praying five times a day, I've noticed a definite change in my ability to get things done. For one thing, I get up at the same time, regularly, at around 8am or 7am. After I get up, I have plenty of times to get my day in order and get some work done before Dhuhr. After Dhuhr, I usually find time to work on a primary project of mine, and then after Dhuhr usually I work on secondary projects. I can work a little bit after Isha as well.

It's nice to set your life rhythms in synchronization with the sun. This helps relieve exhaustion and gives you a broader view of your life's work. I find being in sync with the sun allows you to see life from the sun's perspective, that there's always another day, that you don't have to do things in fits and starts. You can become comfortable with the fact that the work is never really fully done. You just get up, get your work done, and move on to the next day.

One point to keep in mind is the nature of the prayer. If you are a Muslim, the best prayer of course is the salah according to Muhammad PBUH. But if you're not Muslim, you can still find benefits from praying five times a day at the prescribed times. Keep in mind, though, that prayer should be a break. You should take a break from the world and acknowledge that there are greater things than just keeping busy doing your life's work all the time. The nature of the break from the world should include some kind of contemplation—inner contemplation and spiritual contemplation. It should be maybe five to ten minutes of contemplation.

While I don't think it hurts to pray according to other traditions, I feel there is no need to resist learning to pray according to the Islamic fashion. The Islamic method of prayer is nice because it incorporates many different aspects of spirituality. You have a form of hatha yoga, where you place your body in a specific pose to reflect an inner state. You also have mantra—saying mind-protecting verses which help you contemplate. Also, you have specific, liturgic contemplations, and when your head and nose are on the ground, you get to improvise and come up with your own requests and speak from the heart.

In the Christian tradition, there's a lot of speaking from the heart, but the other aspects are lacking. There's no yoga, and no liturgy. Or maybe there's a whole lot of liturgy, but very little speaking from the heart. Or maybe it lasts too long to be practical five times per day. So it's not quite the same.

The Buddhist tradition is an interesting case to compare, and illustrates why I feel I am a Muslim-Buddhist rather than just a Muslim or just a Buddhist. I feel the Buddhist vipassana meditation technique is present during the whole salah, and indeed, according to the Islamic tradition, the instructions on how to keep your mind state focused during salat is pretty much the same as in Buddhism. In fact, vipassana is a meditation technique that can enrich any spiritual tradition or religion, and it will improve your Christian prayers as well, or even your occult practices if you get into that. Vipassana will improve pretty much everything except doing evil, because it will transform your evil acts into compassionate skillful means to combat demon-enemies. But the fact that vipassana is so generalized can be a bit of a weakness. In other words, it's nice to have ONE prayer that you do, all the time, which you know is being done by millions of other Muslims, at the same time. The spiritual connection, as well as the practical benefits, and sheer convenience, are some of the benefits of doing salat.

If you have trouble discovering what time salat is, there is a great website called IslamicFinder.org, which has prayer times on it. Additionally, it has apps which you can download to your mobile device which will keep track of prayer times in your area, and automatically adjust them as the Earth shifts on its axis. If you wish, you can even allow these apps to automatically play a call to prayer (called "athan") during prayer times.

Practical Religion: Binary Buddhism

I'm sure you've heard of applying Buddhism to improve your spiritual quality. But there are very practical applications as well. For instance, the practice of breathing meditation, in combination with binary counting, can be used to tell time. This can be useful for telling time at a bus stop when there isn't a clock, or for timing sesshins or meditation sessions without a clock or phone or timer.

Here's how it works. First, time how long it takes to breathe in and out twenty-one times. This means one in-breath, one out-breath, times twenty-one. For me, it takes about two minutes. Then, make a strong habit of counting up to twenty-one breaths then returning back to one while doing breathing meditation. Do it like this: "In-breath, out-breath, 1. In-breath, out-breath, 2. ... In-breath, out-breath, 21. In-breath, out-breath, 1."

It will take some attention at first to get used to counting up to twenty-one when you breathe. Here I find the motivation to religiously follow the practice comes in handy. If you are able to count up to twenty-one without skipping numbers and without losing count, it means you're paying attention. If the religious goal of your practice is to know how to pay attention, this can be a strong motivation for keeping track of numbers. Pretty soon, you'll be doing it automatically.

Next comes counting in binary using the fingers. You can count up to 2047 in binary using your fingers. To do this, you must understand the math. In binary, there are only two digits: zero and one. In base-ten, the system we're used to, there are ten digits, and when you get to the last digit (9), you reset back to one in the second column and zero in the first, and so forth. In binary, it's similar, except you reset once you get to one. So, for example, the first four integers in sequence from one to four in binary are, 1, 10, 11, 100.

When counting in binary using the fingers, for the right hand, use the thumb as the first digit, the pointer finger as the second, and so forth. Treat the thumb of the left hand as the sixth digit, and the pointer finger of the left hand as the seventh, and so forth. When the finger is held up, that indicates a one. When it is closed, it indicates a zero. Thus, for the number 1010, which is ten, in your right hand, your pinky will be closed, your ring finger will be open, your middle finger closed, your pointer finger open, and your thumb closed.

You'll want to practice counting with your fingers until you're very proficient at it. The whole idea for the purposes of telling time using the breath is that you are going to count in binary the number of times you reach 21 breaths. Remember, each cycle of 21 breaths (for me, anyway) is 2 minutes. So ten cycles of 21, or 1010 in binary, is equal to 20 minutes. Fifteen cycles, or 1111 in binary, will be 30 minutes. An hour will be 30 cycles, or 11110 in binary (pinky, ring, middle, and pointer fingers up, thumb down).

Depending on the setting, you may not be able to use your hands to count the number of times you reach 21 breaths. For example, if you're leading a meditation session, you won't be able to use your hands. In this case, it's best to visualize counting in binary by holding up imaginary fingers in front of you. One thing which will help you remember which fingers to hold up is to remember that each zero digit represents a dedication to the buddhas, while each one digit represents the body of a new buddha to be dedicated. That way, when the digits switch, the meaning is significant and more easy to remember.

This method is accurate to the minute. If it is less accurate for you, you may breathe more slowly or more quickly. Instead of trying to change the rate of breathing, change the number of breaths in a cycle or the number of minutes each cycle is worth, or both. Work out a system that works for you.

In addition to being useful for telling time, this method also helps improve concentration in general. Concentration has a number of practical benefits, helping you to better do a variety of tasks including studying, listening to lectures, conversation, cooking, etc.

Thoughts about Anonymous's Project V

This is a clarification of Anonymous's new project, "Project V." This came on the heels of their "Operation V," the goal of which was apparently to take over the United States government.

I've noticed, just looking around at society today, that there are thugs involved in my government and perhaps corporations and so forth, taking things over and not really doing positive actions or behaving in an awake manner. So I'm not at all surprised that there is a movement to try to take over the government, or to protest the government. I support a lot of what these people do.

The reason I support many of the people who fight government and corporations and so forth is because of the thuggishness I've seen. The thuggishness itself is the first part. The second part is the fact that thuggishness is not merely the natural, human sort — an understandable sort which you can expect to be some part of any society — but something which is slowly becoming law. We cannot have "thug law." Thug law, in this case, involves people in office, and running corporations, who don't care about listening to other people, especially the people they affect. Thug law involves things being created for their own purpose, to multiply like viruses, such as cash or even money, or such as government regulations, or psychiatric harm.

A commodity is produced in a factory not for its own sake, but in order to be sold to someone else. However, it seems an awful lot like many of the people running these corporations would be satisfied if the product is produced for its own sake. In other words, the attitude is that it's about the product itself, and promoting the product itself, rather than about listening to what the consumer wants.

This doesn't happen everywhere, but it does happen in the case of food, for instance. Food today is produced for the purpose of food being produced and sold, not for the purpose of feeding people. There is an important difference between the two, and we need to start rethinking the way we do things to promote feeding people instead of producing and selling food. Similarly, transportation seems to be about producing and selling gasoline, not about transporting people. Energy production seems to be about producing and selling raw materials, not making energy. Our corporations are sick.

Now that I've talked a bit about what I agree with about Anonymous, I'd like to share what I disagree with.

Consider the idea of a revolution. What is a revolution? The idea is that you're getting rid of a society, and replacing it with a new one. But if you examine it closely, the idea becomes less and less clear. What do you want to revolutionize? Just the executive government? We do that every eight or so years. What about the law? Are we trying to change the law? Well, perhaps we are, but we can change the law in a couple of ways: by changing the letter of the law, or changing how it's enforced. If we change the letter of the law, then we get into the problem of semantics, which means we may have changed nothing unless we change how it's enforced. If we change how it's enforced, though, we have a problem there, too. Who enforces? Who enforces law against the enforcers? In a sense, the people enforcing the law are embodiments of the law. But are we changing just the people themselves? How do we control against merely switching out one corrupt judge or peace officer for another? Either we have to use the law to control this, in which case we're going in circles again, or we have to change the underlying society which educates and produces the judges.

But how do we change society? Are we changing the actual minds of the people themselves? Are we giving them more education? Education of what? What do they already know? What don't they know? Is it really about what they think they know, or how they behave? How do we change the way people behave? And are we changing a group of people, or changing people one-on-one? And where do we stop? Should we just switch out everyone we don't like and throw the old people in jail? If so, what makes us any better than the oppressors? Or should we let everyone be as they are and work out their own problems? If it is this, how is our movement a revolution?

I don't think we need a revolution. I think we need loyal opposition parties, and we need perhaps a simplification of our culture. But you can't have a loyal opposition party and a revolution at the same time. And a simplification of something doesn't involve the introduction of new elements. That's what you do when you want to make things more complex. What we need is to go back to our roots, and instead of wildly thrashing about and making more new ideas and stuff, we need to be satisfied with a simple understanding of how things work. Instead of choosing more stuff, choose the right stuff. This sounds like an economic idea, but really it applies to government as well. We should be more conservative about how we run our government. We should be conservative about how we run our churches as well. The only thing we shouldn't be conservative about is helping other people. But remember: help doesn't come in the form of money. I am not a socialist. As soon as you start thinking that help comes in the form of money, you begin producing money for the sake of producing money, which is exactly the kind of problem which I see today that needs to change. We need to help people live. In every sector of our society. That's what we need to do. And a lot of what the resistance people in our society are doing is just that. But I don't think they see it that way, and they really should.

Clarifications of Buddhism: Nonviolence, not Anti-Violence!

One of the problems faced by American Buddhists today, I think, is that we are too peaceful. Many of the teachings of Buddha indicate a strong central value of peace. But to many, this kind of peace simply means inaction.

Instead of trying to be grossly peaceful, we should try to be subtilely peaceful. We should have a deep and meaningful sense of peace.

Consider the Dorje Shugden controversy in Tibetan Buddhism. Dorje Shugden is an enlightened, wrathful protector whose worship The Dalai Lama has outlawed. He outlawed this practice, according to Wikipedia, because he read a story about Dorje Shugden saw, wherein the deity saw a bunch of Gelugpa Buddhists studying Nyingmapa Buddhism, and so he slaughtered them, because Dorje Shugden is a Gelugpa Buddhist and wanted to maintain the purity of Gelugpa Buddhism.

I can definitely understand the pressing need for Tibetan Buddhism to be adopted by Westerners, and I can definitely see how Buddhism may not have been so easily introduced if His Holiness didn't adopt such a firm perspective. Far be it from me to criticize the Dalai Lama.

But honestly, what's so bad about slaughtering people? Slaughtering people is something human beings do, and we need to recognize this. We can't just take our human nature lightly. There's an important lesson in our violence.

In my opinion, if we're going to slaughter people, we should do so in a mutual hatred stemmed from mutual respect. As Sonny said in the classic Dog Day Afternoon: "The guy who kills me... I hope he does it because he hates my guts, not because it's his job." We shouldn't kill people dispassionately, leaving them confused about why they are victimized for no apparent reason, and leaving us with a spiritual crisis because we don't understand our actions or the meaning of our lives. If we kill people, it should be because we fucking hate them. And because they fucking hate us. Period. End of story.

The Maoris, whom I have studied a bit, built a well-developed warrior ethic based on this idea. They are warriors. They hate people, and they kill them. They also send them medics to lovingly heal them up and make them strong and ready to fight, not because they love them, but because they hate them and want to fucking kill them. In this deep hatred is a profound feeling of love. If a Maori wants to kill your fucking guts, you should take it as a compliment.

But if an American wants to kill you, unfortunately, it's probably because his boss wants a little higher of a profit margin. Understandably, as Americans, this leaves us a little disoriented. Should I identify as an American, despite this desperate cynicism, or should I adopt a wholly new culture? Being American is thus difficult for us. However, unfortunately, this difficulty in being American, due to people's natural tendency to overgeneralize and miss the point of things, results in an unwarranted extension of the idea of restraining violence into the territory of anti-violence, which disregards not only the cynical American approach to violence, but the wholesome Maori approach as well. In this way, the baby is thrown out with the bath water.

So if Dorje Shugden wants to slaughter people, so what? He's enlightened; he can do what he wants. We should be less concerned with whether or not slaughtering people is justified, and more concerned with opening up to the other, and being receptive when the other opens up to us. There are teachings we must learn from others. And we Buddhists have wholesome things to contribute. Being anti-violent is actually a kind of closed-mindedness.

If we decide to be nonviolent, that's great. But how does this apply to others? This is our moral choice. Not theirs. It is far more important to be open to the ideas of others. And here's a crucial point. When we are open to others, and their wishes, belief systems, and so forth, we will begin to see the actual basis for nonviolence, rather than our mere projected basis for it. We will begin to see the most appropriate way to express our inner wishes, and we will see that regardless of violent intent, on either side of a dispute, if we are truly open to each other, the most equitable and intelligent way to resolve the dispute will come to light. And this way will probably (though not certainly) have no violence. In other words, the resolution will certainly be non-violent, but not anti-violent.

Moral codes are not dogma. Moral codes are a system of restraint that we apply to develop a sense of higher importance. Dogma, on the other hand, is the belief that a certain moral value has an essential quality by the virtue of which it is completely infallible and must be followed in every circumstance without fail. I tend to think instead of nonviolence as a guiding moral principle, we Western Buddhists tend to adopt anti-violence as dogma.

A Reptilian Buddha

This goes out to all reptilians out there...

From the Lotus Sutra:

Manjushri said, "There is the daughter of the dragon king Sagara, whose years are barely eight. Her wisdom is sharp-rooted, and well she knows the faculties and deeds of the beings. She has gained dharani. The profound treasure house of secrets preached by the Buddhas she is able to accept and to keep in its entirety. She has profoundly entered into dhyana-concentration, and has arrived at an understanding of the dharmas. In the space of a ksana [moment] she produced bodhi-thought, and has attained the point on nonbacksliding. Her eloquence has no obstructions, and she is compassionately mindful of the beings as if they were her babies. Her merits are perfect. What she recollects in her mind and recites with her mouth is subtle and broad. She is of good will and compassionate, humane and yielding. Her will and thought are harmonious and refined, and she is able to attain to bodhi."

The bodhisattva Wisdom Accumulation said, "I have seen the Thus Come One of the Sakyas [i.e. the Buddha] throughout incalculable kalpas tormenting himself by doing what is hard to do, piling up merit and heaping up excellence, seeking the Path of the bodhisattva and never resting. When I look at the thousand-millionfold world, there is no place, not even the size of a mustardseed, where the bodhisattva did not cast away his body for the beings' sakes, and only then did he achieve the Way of bodhi. I do not believe that this girl in the space of a moment directly and immediately achieved right, enlightened intuition."

Before he had finished speaking, at that very time the daughter of the dragon king suddenly appeared in front [of them], and, doing obeisance with head bowed, stood off to one side and spoke praise with gathas, saying:

Having profoundly mastered the marks of sin and merit,
    Universally illuminating all ten directions,
The subtle and pure Dharma-body
    Has perfected the marks thirty-two,
Using the eighty beautiful features
    As a means of adorning the Dharma-body.
The object of respectful obeisance for gods and men,
    It is reverently honored by all dragons and spirits.
Of all varieties of living beings,
    None fails to bow to it as an object of worship.
I have also heard that, as for the achievement of bodhi,
    Only the Buddha can know it by direct witness.
I, laying open the teaching of the Great Vehicle,
    Convey to release the suffering beings.

At that time, Sariputra spoke to the dragon girl, saying, "You say that in no long time you shall attain the unexcelled Way. This is hard to believe. What is the reason? A woman's body is filthy, it is not a Dharma-receptacle. How can you attain unexcelled bodhi? The Path of the Buddha is remote and cavernous. Throughout incalculable kalpas, by tormenting oneself and accumulating good conduct, also by thoroughly cultivating the perfections, only by these means can one then be successful. Also, a woman's body even then has five obstacles. It cannot become first a Brahma god king, second the god Sakra, third King Mara, fourth a sage-king turning the Wheel, fifth a Buddha-body. How can the body of a woman speedily achieve Buddhahood?"

At that time, the dragon girl had a precious gem, whose value was the [whole] thousand-millionfold world, which she held up and gave to the Buddha. The Buddha straightway accepted it. The dragon girl said to the bodhisattva Wisdom Accumulation and to the venerable Sariputra, "I offered a precious gem, and the World-Honored One accepted it. Was this quick or not?"

He answered, saying, "Very quick!"

The girl said, "With your supernatural power you shall see me achieve Buddhahood even more quickly than that!"

At that time, the assembled multitude all saw the dragon girl in the space of an instant turn into a man, perfect bodhisattva-conduct, straightway go southward to the world-sphere Spotless, sit on a jeweled lotus blossom, and achieve undifferentiating, right, enlightened intuition, with thirty-two marks and eighty beautiful features setting forth the Fine Dharma for all living beings in all ten directions. At that time, in the Saha world-sphere bodhisattvas, voice-hearers, gods, dragons, the eightfold assembly, humans and nonhumans, all from a distance seeing that dragon girl achieve Buddhahood and universally preach Dharma to the men and gods of the assembly of that time, were overjoyed at heart and all did obeisance from afar. Incalculable living beings, hearing the Dharma and understanding it, attained to nonbacksliding. Incalculable living beings were enabled to receive a prophecy of the Path. The Spotless world-sphere trembled in six different ways, and in the Saha world-sphere three thousand living beings opened up the thought of bodhi and were enabled to receive prophecies. The bodhisattva Wisdom Accumulation, as well as Sariputra and all the assembled multitude, silently believed and accepted.

Note as of 7/4/2014: It has come to my attention that this sutra refers not to reptilians, but to nagas. Nagas, furthermore, are not the same as reptilians, although some reptilians are nagas. (Some reptilians are nagas, not all nagas are reptilians.) I am unaware of the origins of the reptilians, my two working theories being that they are descended from dinosaurs, or that they are aliens from another planet. I honestly don't know which is the truth. However, I do know that reptilians are very advanced people with a lot of intelligence and brain-power. Also, I have met what I believe qualifies as a "Reptilian Buddha." That is, a Buddha who became enlightened as a reptilian. So there is such a thing as reptilian Buddhas, as well as naga Buddhas.

Artistic Complexity

If you're an artist trying to strive for complexity, there's a couple of directions you can take. You can have surface complexity, which is simply just a lot of stuff going on. The IDM genre is like this, and I think it's why that genre isn't very popular. It's only complex on the surface. An analogy to rock would be having a drum beat which breaks to do a fill every other measure. After a while it gets old.

Another type of surface complexity is when you do something unique which no one else had thought of before, which requires lots of equipment, or "creativity," or virtuosity. For example, coming up with a new synth hit that has a lot of nuance. Again, I classify this as surface complexity because it's not very interesting. It's just a gimmick. So you've come up with a new thing nobody has done before. Yeah, but is it interesting?

So instead of surface complexity, you could decide to do deep complexity. This is where you inspire complex and interesting thoughts in the art consumer. In music, this requires coming up with an emotional and resonant hook, or chord progression. Unfortunately, however, there are only a few possible chord progressions. And you have to also exclude the chord progressions which are (currently) ineffective at communicating any sort of message.

Deep complexity is more difficult to achieve than surface complexity. And, ironically, deep complexity also goes by another name: "simplicity." Miles Davis required extreme simplicity of his band members. But really, his music is incredibly complex, because it inspires complex emotions and makes a complex musical statement.

Deep complexity is really the last frontier for musicians. It's difficult to achieve, and artists can be satisfied that they will have the opportunity to refine the required skills for the rest of their lives and beyond.

Certainty vs. Doubt

When does doubt arise?

Let's suppose we ask a question. I'm drinking a cup of water. The question is, how do we know it's water? You can come to absolute, unfettered certainty that it is water. Why? Because the definition of water is, "a clear, tasteless liquid that quenches thirst." You look at the cup of water: it is liquid, it is clear, it has no taste, and when I drink it, my thirst is quenched. By definition, this must be water. There is no question: it is certain. If it turns out one of these parts of the definition is false, it must therefore not be water.

Let's suppose we ask a different question. The question is, are my perceptions reality? You cannot help but have doubt. Is this water clear, or do I merely think it's clear? I don't know. There's no way to be certain. We can be deceived. There is doubt.

What's the difference between the two questions? The first question has nothing to do with the self. It is a simple, objective question. Is this water? Of course it is. The fact of it being water proceeds from the simple knowledge of experience. I experience it to be water, and because the thing is defined by the experience (i.e. the experience of it being clear, the experience of it being liquid, the experience of quenched thirst, etc.) it must by definition be water. But do I perceive it to be water, or not? The question doesn't even make sense. It either is water, or it isn't. Perceptions are irrelevant. Do I merely think it's water? "Thinking" is the problem.

If you experience it as water, it is water. If you don't experience it as water, it isn't water. If you perceive that it looks like water and it may or may not be water, you're being pretentious.

An Urgent Call to Action!

We all know the exploits of our leaders in Washington. You can't read half a paragraph in the papers but find something amiss. For heaven's sake, we don't even need to step beyond our private life or community sphere to find problems: everywhere are angry egos and their petty manifestos. No one is without an opinion, or a "solution." Every day brings a new pill—red ones, blue ones, white ones, round or oblong—and everyone plays the doctor. But these answer-pills all seem like placebos. Where do they come from? I say they come from the herbs cultivated by good men and women who make up the backbone of this country. But the herbs go to waste: they are chopped down faster than they can grow. It is because there are too many pills! There is only one thing to do, which is what we do best: nothing.

Our lives are drenched in freedom: our egos are enslaved by freedom. We have the freedom to buy hamburgers and doughnuts—and many of us don't even need to raise the cows or farm the wheat. We have the freedom to spend money—this is actually quite significant, because not only does this freedom require money to spend, but places to spend it at, and there are plenty. We have the freedom to speak our mind to the general public and not fear a harsh response from the government—Chinese people do not have that freedom. We have the freedom to travel, the freedom to petition, and the freedom to start a business. We have the freedom not to be Muslim. We have the freedom not to be communist. We have the freedom not to be Christian. And, for long stretches of time, most of us have the freedom not to be bothered. That is the most important freedom of all, which is why we should use it. These freedoms have been granted to us by George Washington's seed and by everyone's photosynthesis. The medicinal plant has grown, and it's due time to let the medicine do its work. What wrong can come if no wrong is done? What wrong is done if we do nothing at all?

Some people say, "Write your Senator! Write your Representative!" But congress, like any mature institution, is a rock. It is mineral-rich, and healthy to grow plants on, but in what direction can a senator move without running face-first into a lobbyist? Or a union president? Or an activist? Or the wrongly-motivated part of his own constituency? Congress is a particularly interesting outcropping of solid rock—a geological specimen. A work of nature, which we should preserve and protect against harmful influences. Ask an environmentalist how to preserve and protect specimens of nature: I am sure, at the very least, he will not say, "develop it and build a mansion on it." We should not try to make our congressmen do our bidding—we should not make congress the house of our opinions. They are representatives; why not leave it at that? If you think you can change Washington, go be a congressman. And good luck to you. When you burn yourself out trying to dig up a giant rock, there is only one sensible course of action left: sit down and be another rock. This is something we CAN do.

No matter what the bumper-sticker says on the car in front of us, no matter what the man says on television, no matter what the tractors and bulldozers and chainsaws and men and women in red-orange shirts do to our wilderness, no matter who we trade insults with on our way to the next hard-earned paycheck, the tree of liberty—nay, the ecosystem of liberty—remains the triumphant emblem of our times. It's not going anywhere, but we are. We are always going places. When we sit still, or lie down to sleep, in our minds, we are still going places. It is no good. Since we have the ability to sit still at our convenience, why not use it? Then we can grow our own trees. But we do not do this. Even I have the audacity to write for two and a half hours about how we should stop doing stuff. (Though I assure you, these ideas were formed in stillness.)

So I urgently call upon all of you to summon all your courage, look your enemy straight in the eye, take a deep breath and, do nothing. Everything is perfect! Sit still, be still, and be happy!

Tree of Liberty

The above images are protected under Creative Commons licenses. The first and second images, entitled "Wild Animal Park" by Chris Ingrassia, are protected under an Attribution license. The third image, entitled "IMG_4415.JPG" by Tom Woodward, is protected under an Attribution ShareAlike license.

Conventionally Ultimate

Edit: This experience has actually happened to me. Every two weeks, on the dot, I experienced extremely ultimate physical pain while I slept, beginning at my incarceration in the mental hospital, and lasting several months. Eventually it faded, but there is no possible way in human existence to experience more physical pain. It was as though every nerve ending of my body which had the capability of feeling pain was fed overwhelming supplies of the molecule responsible for pain. The dreams only reemerged once, recently. In the recent case, I was on a reality television show, and the pain was accompanied by the words "Medication Alert" on the screen. I felt the pain coming on, and the usual hopeless inevitability, but this time, I was saved by the unexpected presence of a Dharma teaching. Please be human. Please oppose psychiatry.

Question: Is there such a thing as ultimate pain?

Answer: Yes, I think so — in a sense. Pain is a concept like everything else, and thus can exist in pure form in an entropic environment.

Question: What about in another universal formation that allows for more of similar elements?

Answer: Yes, that too would be ultimate. They're both ultimate in relation to their constructs.

Student: It's like for one man something is ultimate, while for another man something else is ultimate.

Answer(er): Yes, sort of. Except, concepts only make sense in regards to their universal formations, so the idea of "ultimate" is really the same in both cases — there is no hierarchy.