Overcoming natural delusions

I’ve written about this issue before, but our divided response to the current political race for a new POTUS deserves review. This is a textbook case to illustrate three fundamental Buddhist teachings—The correspondence between attachment, suffering, and karma. 

Some time ago I listened to a radio interview with Wall Street trader and psychologist, Dr. Richard Peterson. During the interview Dr. Peterson was speaking about the two primary, motivating factors for investing. The two were greed and fear and he said that fear was twice as potent as greed in determining investor behavior. While investors desired increases, they were more concerned with losing.

Dr. Peterson didn’t say these emotions had anything to do with Buddhist teachings or politics, but as I listened I could see the three-headed hydra of attachment flailing about, as well as the wish to escape from the consequences of past choices. On the one hand—greed—the excess of possessiveness, and on the other—fear—lies the illusion of permanence. 

The Dharma teaches us about the impermanence of all things. What goes up eventually comes down and it doesn’t matter whether it is water, money, or nations—thus the saying, “Easy come; easy go.” The other Buddhist fundamental (karma) teaches us that we reap the product of whatever seeds we plant, whether individually or collectively.

Many years ago I cut my spiritual teeth on a book I thought radical at the time. The book was The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts. I remember his central point as if it were yesterday. His point was that we have an upside-down understanding of what leads to fulfillment. We yearn for security, which we equate with permanence, yet the only aspect of life which may produce this is something no longer living. 

The most basic definition of “phenomenal life” is fluidity—continuous change, whether we notice it or not. That was his Wisdom—That life is insecure, so don’t become attached. Love when you love. Cry when you cry. And know that such conditions will change. Be genuine (no pretense...joy and sadness are real human emotions) and know that change is inevitable. This is great wisdom, full of hope and patience.

And how very different this wisdom is from what we see today. The illusion of permanence leads investors, lovers, and citizens to cling to fortunes made and to resist their loss, and neither behavior produces fulfillment. Nor does it work for us to plant seeds of evil and expect to reap fruits of joy. What we all need is a wake-up call and a strong dose of Watts Wisdom. Resist our natural tendencies to act out of fear, and take responsibility for whatever choices we make. We can learn from this crisis and be better for it. 

Post Mueller; Continuing manipulation, or not.

Global Interconnectivity.

As I write this post, 91 days remain until the next US presidential election. We are now living in the post-Mueller era, and some key issues need to be addressed between now and November. It is most likely few even read the Mueller Report, fewer still are those who understood, and the tiniest of all are those who adequately grasped the essentials of what was learned. Nevertheless, global policies have been shaped without the slightest understanding of the implications going forward.

I am in a somewhat unique position to lay out the underpinnings of what has been learned (but not applied). Why? Because I had a career in the advertising business, I have a long history with Zen and am a bit of a tech junkie. While those seemingly disparate pieces appear to be unrelated, they are intimately joined at the hip.

First, let’s consider the essentials of “how” our democratic system was, and continues to be, subverted. And to understand this critical “how” we need to wind the clock backward (further back for the other part) to pre-9/11, during that time, the world was waking up to the fact of global terrorism. At that juncture, we were scrambling to develop means to anticipate probable next strikes, by identifying the who, what, where, and when of terrorist activities.

In those days, the NSA was leading the charge under the “management” of Retired Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA, CIA, and later national security analyst for CNN. Under his steerage was a low-level NSA operative by the name of Bill Binney, who happened to be a brilliant cryptologist and long-time National Security Agency analyst. Binney developed a sophisticated program named ThinThread for gathering data capable of providing clues, in real-time, of potential terrorist threats. See the documentary about this by going here. His method was based on the same technology later employed by Cambridge Analytica to manipulate voters during the 2016 campaign that led to electing Donald Trump POTUS. 

In simplistic terms, Binney began with an observation that terrorists used Social Media and other electronic devices (e.g., Cell phones…anything connected to the Internet) to garner sympathy for their cause, recruit such people, frighten many, and communicate with associates in planning, organizing and perpetrating terrorist attacks. Then he went the next step and developed precise “psychographic” personality profiles of those so inclined to malevolence. 

Psychographics (vs. demographics) emerged gradually 30+ years previously. It was used by advertising folk (one of whom was me) to identify probable targets (e.g., target marketing) to receive messages to induce potential customers to buy X, Y, or Z, based on the ingrained preconceived idea that unless they did, they were nobody. 

Demographics concerns such matters as age, gender, income, education, etc., whereas psychographics concerns what such people actually do (lifestyle choices: what they buy, where they go and when, what their interests are, etc.). The latter is much better in targeting potential customers and was just beginning to emerge when I was in the advertising industry. Back then, it was very crude and rudimentary compared to today. 

Now nearly every person on earth participates in Social Media of some sort, such as Facebook, Instagram, Google, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, or others. And when combined with the capability to do what Binney designed (but was never used by Hayden/NSA): To develop “psychographic” personality profiles, a potent tool for manipulation emerges that can be employed to find weak spots and exploit them to one advantage or another, from sending out instant, tailor-made messages to manipulate the uninformed via email, news feeds, etc. 

The Mueller Report pulled back the curtain to reveal how foreign governments can, and do, manipulate voter attitudes by taking advantage of preconceived biases and stoking them into tribal camps of opposition that destroy our freedoms. Few in Congress seemed to understand how this threat (and theft of private, personal data) is used to undermine democracy. Consequently, the manipulation continues, and as Mueller stated, it is being used to this very day, not only in the U.S. but around the world. Freedom is not freedom when our inherent preconceived attitudes and biases are manipulated in ways of which we are not aware of.

Cambridge Analytica, as a company, has been washed away by the tides of rage, time and change, but the methods continue to flourish and will most likely never end. All of the tech giants continue to use the same techniques. It should surprise nobody to observe that every time you do anything on the Internet (just as I am doing this very moment) “big brother” is listening, forming psychographic profiles and developing messages to steer you to physical and virtual spaces (Dharma Space; that also) to fulfill your interests.

Indra's Net of cosmic consciousness.

So much for today. Now let’s turn the clock back really, really far to the time of The Avataṃsaka Sūtra, which was written in stages, beginning from at least 500 years following the death of The Buddha. He died approximately 483/400 BCE, or in other words, a very long time ago. The Avataṃsaka Sūtra goes by an alternate handle of Indra’s Net (which simplistically explains the teaching). Imagine a net that encompasses and links together, every sentient being (e.g., humans, dogs, cats, elephants—any conscious being, perhaps even plants). All aspects of consciousness are knit together into a cosmic net. 

And why does this make sense? Simply because consciousness is primal, eternal, indiscriminate, unconditional, and is the basis of all life. At that deep and profound level of existence, all is interdependently linked, in a way similar to the technology used today to manipulate us all. The difference here is that, unlike the technology of today, when a person awakens to this level of existence, the tide shifts away from egotistical manipulation for malevolent means to unity, serenity, and the experience of eternal life, right here, right now.

Ah, if only: Politicians and all others would awaken to two truths—one of conditional, intertwined connections of opposition and the other of unconditional unity. What a transformed world it would be to such awakenings!

Laws and Order?

Law and Order?

In 1970 Alvin Toffler wrote and published Future Shock, a book many considered to have caused a paradigm shift in how we think about and react to an unfolding future, particularly a future that speeds up and disrupts fixed societal standards. He followed with The Third Wave and Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century in which he further delineated the plight of those who resist inevitable change. 

His solution? People who learned to ride the waves of change would be most likely to survive and do well. And those who didn’t adapt would be drowned by those waves of change.

Toffler was unusually prescient and precisely defined the turbulence of the present day. The short takeaway of Toffler’s thesis is this: We humans resist effervescent conditions that disrupt the status quo and thus cling to fixed standards, even when such measures may have never existed. Or if they did exist, we tend to imbue them with inflated and idealized values. In short, we don’t embrace change and end up trying to bulwark thin air. Furthermore, when such changes wash away set standards, we yearn for the “good old days” when law and order prevailed and seemed to ensure stability.

Another ancient sage by the name of Lao Tzu said this in chapter 57 of the Tao Te Ching:
Therefore the holy man says: I practice non-assertion and the people reform themselves. I love quietude, and the people of themselves become righteous. I use no diplomacy, and the people of themselves become rich. I have no desire, and the people of themselves remain simple.”

Some years earlier, Alan Watts came to mainstream attention with his book The Wisdom of Insecurity. He therein observed that our lust for stability was grossly out of kilter since nothing in the phenomenal, mortal world is stable⎯all is changing each and every moment, and to cling to the idea of stability was a sure-fire prescription for suffering and failure. I offer these two summations for a reason that is particularly germane today, and what it should tell us about the value of fixed standards, otherwise known as “laws.”

We, humans, are creatures of habit, and once we have made decisions, we are reluctant to admit the error of our ways. That peculiar habit has a name and a well-founded pedigreed in psychological terms. It is known as a “confirmation bias,” which means we are much more inclined to seek confirmation of our preconceived ideas than to seek the truth. While it may be understandable and even desirable to live with laws, it is likewise a problem when we try to box in change. It can’t be done, since no measures, or set of laws, can ever counter continuous change. So what to do?

The Buddha offered the perfect solution, which he called “upaya,” a Sanskrit word that translates as “expedient means,” where justice is built into the premise of change. Instead of inflexible laws, upaya is flexible guidelines that allow for the nature of change. Upaya is rooted in the inherent wisdom of all of mankind, whereas the desire for inflexible standards is rooted in the opposite incorrect thought⎯Because we are by nature immoral, the lack of laws will result in anarchy, thus we must have a crutch to compensate for our lack. Ultimately this issue boils down to what we think of one another: An extremely critical issue when wrestling with matters such as racism or xenophobia. Are we naturally moral? Or naturally immoral?

“The more restrictions and prohibitions are in the empire, the poorer grow the people. The more weapons the people have, the more troubled is the state. The more mandates and laws are enacted, the more there will be thieves and robbers.

Given the vector in the world today it is high time we reconsider how we understand one another, and rethink how we relate. This may seem like a risky venture but how much greater is the risk of the direction in which we are now heading?

Uncertainty and instability.

The winds of change.

At the current time, conditional uncertainty and instability are running rampant throughout the world, and this is causing big problems for business maintenance and expansion. Few companies know which end is up—where to locate their facilities; to close a factory (or not) to quarantine workers due to rampantly spreading viruses (never seen before); how many employees to hire (at what price) or fire; when, if ever, trade wars will end and bring stability back to a manageable level; to invest (or not) in productivity measures—which reduces their short-term P/E ratio if they do invest, and thus reduces demand by investors to purchase their public offerings. 

All of that has no geographic restrictions since the entire world is going through the same turbulent conditions at the same time, increasing the odds of a global recession (or worse yet, a sustained depression). Not only is “no man an island,” but “no company is an island.”  While we may wish to Make America Great Again, we might as well wish for Santa Claus, so long as we believe such a thing is possible, at the expense of other nations. The notion of making a nation great (at the expense of other nations) has about as much chance of success as making yourself great at the expense of your partner. Being self-centered, whether with a partner or other nations, is doomed from the outset.

There has never been a time like this in history where trade is more interconnected than now. And this interconnection has become common-coin with people around the world, due to the Internet. Conditional interdependence is now perfectly obvious (to those who care to see the handwriting on the wall—some don’t—which is amazingly puzzling). We are creatures of habit, holding onto “the way things used to be” and paying mightily for our ignorance. Now we are fighting for survival against a coronavirus, never encountered before, and discovering the conditional differences between those who have chosen to throw caution to the wind and those who are willing to do the necessary (but undoubtedly not the convenient) to minimize the damage. For reasons not universally obvious, there are those who choose to attempt to bulwark the ever-changing tides of life and prefer to see life through the lens of “never change” instead of “ever change.”

Many years ago, when I first began my Zen practice and inquiry, my entree primer was a book written by Alan Watts—The Wisdom of Insecurity (catchy title) that did indeed captured my attention, and I thought, how is insecurity “wise?”. After having read that book I began to see how wise insecurity actually is since Watts spelled out what was, and is, perfectly obvious (every conditional thing is changing all of the time, whether we notice it or not). The wisdom is to not hold onto stuff that changes because it creates suffering, in two different ways: Either because we hold onto what we like and love (assuming it will remain static, but it doesn’t) or we resist what we don’t like and love, but it comes upon our shores anyway. Now we have invented a slogan that captures the essential idea: “What goes around, comes around.” And some people refer to this pattern as karma—an essential aspect of understanding the dharma of the Buddha.

However, as said previously: We are creatures of habit and learn slowly, most vividly through suffering. Nobody enjoys suffering yet nobody can avoid it. The very first truth of the Four Noble Truths is “life is dukkha”—translated into English as suffering, pain, unsatisfactoriness, etc.. When first I read this truth, I had not yet understood (or even been exposed to) the difference between conditional life and unconditional life. Consequently, I digested this first truth as an inescapable death sentence, which of course it is so long as we see life as purely conditional—everything is changing and dukkha is unavoidable. What a bitter pill to swallow! As the saying whimsically goes, “Nobody gets out of here alive.” 

But then an amazing and unexpected thing occurred: I experienced the unconditional realm, didn’t grasp the profound significance and subsequently spent the next 30+ years attempting to understand the ineffable mystery. I could not pretend the experience never happened, try as I may, but instead was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery (Note: There is no bottom; no top; no East nor West; no anything in the realm of unconditionality). Yet how does anyone pretend an experience, that never ends, did not happen? I suppose Galileo found himself in the same dilemma when he observed that the earth was not the center of the universe, at a time when The Church maintained it was. It is impossible, and when it happens, you have a simple yet profoundly tricky decision to make: To either find the truth and share it (thus ensuring slings and arrows) or keep quiet and stay in comfort.

The truth I discovered to explain the experience is the other truth, beyond the first, that Nagarjuna expressed roughly 400-500 years following the death of The Buddha. What Nagarjuna said filled in the blank of my understanding. He said:

“The teaching by the Buddhas of the dharma has recourse to two truths: The world-ensconced truth and the truth which is the highest sense. Those who do not know the distribution of the two kinds of truth, do not know the profound ‘point’ in the teaching of the Buddha. The highest sense of the truth is not taught apart from practical behavior, and without having understood the highest sense one cannot understand nirvana.”

This came to be known as The Two Truth Doctrine and can be simply stated like this: The pathway to the highest (unconditional) truth must go forward along the path of conditional truth, the latter of which is provisional (e.g., temporary and changes). And these two are interdependent, neither of which can exist without the other. This relationship is known in Buddhist vernacular as “dependent origination,” and when properly understood informs three important matters that help us all to understand every dimension of the world in which we live. The three matters are (1) absolutely nothing has independent existence (e.g, self-contained, separate or existing as an island), (2) everything is inexorably linked together, and (3) The poles of these two truths are utterly opposite in nature—One side is conditional, always changing, and full to overflowing with suffering, leads to saṃsāra and the other pole is unconditional, never changes and is Nirvana itself (śūnyatā—emptiness/utter bliss).

Uncertainty and instability are the never-ending dimensions of the contingent world in which we live, perhaps best illustrated by the consequences of the world’s largest bridge collapsing (e.g., The Three Gorges Dam), leaving in the deluge the devastation of 400 million lives. Such unplanned, collateral damage will continue to disrupt planning for the future, be that from an industrial perspective or any other conditional perspective. 

We have codified this dilemma with sayings such as, “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” On one level, we all know this is true. But on a higher level, the opposite is true, and that latter truth remains unknown. Too bad, because this other truth is where solace from the winds of change resides. There is no solace within a conditional and crumbling world. It is there that suffering prevails. And the only way out of misery is to awaken to both truths.

The certainty of failure.

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”⎯Alan Watts

As Voltaire indicated, while doubt is an unpleasant state of mind, the presumption of certainty is absurd. One of the essential differences between Buddhism (which is based on the certainty of change) and other religious institutions concerns this matter of uncertainty, and what to do about it. Since change is inevitable, The Buddha promoted upaya, which translates as “expedient means.” There are no fixed solutions that always work, and to continue down the road of life, based on the expectation of certainty is a fool's errand.

On an individual or a tribal basis, such behavior is known as clinging to dogma⎯The pinnacle of “inappropriate ideological conduct,” and always opposed to other such conduct, not like them. The specific nature of constantly unfolding life is not predictable. Yet, it does not stop us from manufacturing hardened walls—their purpose being to take the capacity to wiggle out of life itself. It can’t be done for a simple reason: Life=wiggle.

Our vision is limited. We tend to see what is on-the-surface, perceptible, and lies within our immediate sphere. Those who traveled on the Titanic, unfortunately, discovered this error too late. Hardly an ounce of consideration goes into how we got here, or where our footsteps are leading. Our presumption is that there is a straight, safe path from the past through our present and on to a predictable future. To make matters worse, we then enshrine our words and actions into habitual ideologies and rules, forgetting that how we got here was 100% unpredictable. The continuing gap between prediction and reality never ceases!

Some years hence Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote a New York Times bestseller called The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. According to Taleb, few if any of the significant human tides were, or could have been, predicted. He was, and is, of course, correct. And one of the key reasons for his accuracy is uncertainty. Just as very few swans are black (most are white), very few tides happen as we predict, simply because of the constancy variable (e.g., the uncertainty factor). Who could have predicted a coronavirus pandemic? Or the economic melt-down that resulted? Change is the only sure thing, and nobody can predict the precise nature of change.

This is a vast human problem to our collective wellbeing since many of the most significant tides, blind-side us with catastrophes, and we are then forced to rush to unfounded judgments, grasping for straws, while juggling fate. And then, not learning from our errors, going on to craft, yet again, other fixed ideologies that will likewise fail. Life is not constructed within an unchanging straight-jacket. Instead, it wiggles and always expands beyond the limitations we construct—in error—as we try-try-yet-again to make it steady and forthright, thus rendering it predictable.

This admonition is global in nature. And the under-the-radar truth is that our collective consciousness is the result of trillions of individual contributions, invisibly happening all of the time and merging with other equally unpredictable bubbles constituting the Great Life Sea—which is nothing more than those collective bubbles, forming a frothy tide washing upon, and grinding away, the boundaries we set.

One of the most significant of all compendiums of Mahayana Buddhist wisdom, conveying this principle of uncertainty, comes from The Diamond Sutra. And the essence of wisdom therein was stated by The Buddha as:

“So what should be on one’s mind, as one begins the Bodhisattva journey?

‘Like a falling star, like a bubble in a stream, Like a flame in the wind, like frost in the sun, Like a flash of lightning or a passing dream—So should you understand the world of the ego.’” (e.g., A world of continuous change, dominated by greed, anger, and ignorance).

Surrendering from Expectations

Everything except essence is fleeting and will come to an end. That was the message Alan Watts made in his book, “The Wisdom of Insecurity.” 

The passing of some things is quicker than others. A Galapagos Land Tortoise lives close to 200 years. Some life forms come and go in a matter of days. The parasitic wasp, for example, lives as an adult for 3 days or less. As far as we know, the universe since the Big Bang has lasted 13.7 billion years, but it too will end at some point.

Life looks long, but by nature, an end there must be.

Whatever flourishes always wanes; met, one must part.

The prime of manhood is not long;

Luxuriance meets with illness.

Life is swallowed by death; nothing exists eternally.”

Holding on to fleeting form invites suffering. The book of Ecclesiastes begins and ends with:

“Meaningless! Meaningless! Says the teacher. Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless”.

Chapter 2 of the Mahaparinirvana Sutra says,

“In all the world, whatever is born must die.

The message is the same. These forms of vapor are easier to see than mental fixations, but the rule still applies. Take, for example, the mental obsession of expectations. We start each day with a set of expectations. We expect clear skies, so we don’t take an umbrella. We hope it will take a particular amount of time to travel from our homes to our destinations. We expect certain acceptable conditions in our environment. Any one of these expectations may or may not come about. If they do, we are pleased. If they don’t, we become upset. Our emotions and repose balance on a razor’s edge of outcomes to expectations. Nobody can predict exactly what will happen in the future, so we walk a fine line and hope for the best.

Often, when things don’t turn out the way we want, we try to force a different outcome. If that fails, we may increase the heat and intensity, believing that we can dominate and prevail. What is not noticed is the interdependent connection to this forcing. From one side, there is shoving. From the other side, there is being pushed, which simply invites a responsive shove. What started with our pressing turns into being shoved back, which then invites more back-and-forth shoving. Some nations and people have been pushing back-and-forth for so long nobody can remember who made the first shove.

It is impossible to function without making predictions, having hopes, and expecting certain conditions. The problem is what happens when our predictions go south. Becoming attached to the outcome is the problem. The secret of emotional stability and release from self-righteousness is to surrender from outcomes. In truth, results are not the product of our isolated actions. Both Krishna and the Buddha said: The greatest effort is not concerned with results. We just do our best and release from success or failure. 

There is, however, a most subtle difference between having no expectations (and possibly no action) of attempting to shape outcomes. I have written concerning this delicate balance in a post In the world: enlightened social responsibility. The story of John Chapman (known as Johnny Appleseed) is instructive in this regard. You can read about what this means in another post: Cleaning house.

It is of vital importance to work for the common good and not withdraw. Ultimately the outcome of any action is not exclusively our own. Our ideas may last an instant or as long as the universe, but they will always be approximate—just reflections on the surface of shimmering water.  

Identity Crisis.

For the most part, the issue of identity doesn’t seem like a critical matter. It’s an assumed given until circumstances and conditions begin to shift in unavoidable ways. Such times of crisis bring into sharp and painful focus the basis of our assumptions. A young person, almost overnight, moves from youth into the turbulent seas of puberty, and suddenly the question of identity looms large. An adult having spent years building a career suddenly faces a job crisis and begins to wonder about what lies down the road. In the autumn of our lives, we may look back upon our springs and summers and question the vacuousness of life in bitterness. Such moments of crisis precipitate troubling questions about identity, stability, and security.

Many years ago, I read my very first book on Zen Buddhism by Alan Watts—The Wisdom of Insecurity. The book left me with a haunting and indelible feeling in my gut and forced me to question the basis of my own identity and security. I’ll never forget the primary message: The only secure thing is essentially dead. Everything else is insecure. Why? Because life means change. Life is movement, and anything that moves is not a good basis for security. Before going further, please go back and read my posts on “The Wall” and “The Ladder.”

Twenty-five hundred years ago, Siddhartha came up with a solution for suffering and established the Four Nobel Truths: 1. Life means suffering 2. The origin of suffering is attachment 3. The cessation of suffering is attainable, and 4. There is a path to the cessation of suffering. At the very heart of the problem of suffering lies attachment—Clinging to matters we wish to retain and resisting what we don’t. Both are forms of attachment, and both are directly tied to one-legged ladders leaning against non-existent walls. And the pinnacle of the path is learning how to detach from shifting sands and experience the wall. In the West, crises are to be avoided. Curiously our view is tied to our obsession with independence, which has the unintended consequence of stranding us with no life raft when the storms arrive. It is one of the two aspects of attachment—resistance, the precursor of fear.

In the East, a crisis is understood more realistically, as both danger and opportunity. This way of understanding is even built into the Chinese orthography with two characters pronounced as “Wei Ji” (shown above), reflecting the balanced and realistic view that danger and opportunity are complimentary (two-legged ladder). The truth of danger is that it does bring crisis and, if managed properly, can lead to extraordinary opportunities. But when the tidal waves of adversity strike, it sweeps us away from our independent moorings, and we discover a choice: Either we ride our illusions to the bottom, or we switch to a different and more stable ship. In my next posting, I intend to take the next step and begin to explore the nature of identity and the foundation upon which it stands.