January 07, 2010
Foxes Guarding the Hen House
So far the biggest strategic error the Obama administration has made is related to a tactical success. Obama got into power because he enlisted wall street to his side by involving people like Larry Summers, Chicago bankers, and others such as Geithner and Bernanke in his cause. If he doesn't start distancing himself from these people he's going to destroy himself.
The truth about Geithner and Bernanke's involvement in creating the crisis they are charged with fixing is coming out in congressional hearings. And it is a sordid thing (See Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/07/geithners-new-york-fed-to_n_414449.html for more). Apparently they were involved heavily in using AIG to leverage risky real estate ventures by the big investment banks (Goldman Sachs, etc...). The report referenced in the Huffington Post notes:
"It appears that the New York Fed deliberately pressured AIG to restrict and delay the disclosure of important information to the SEC," Issa said in a statement. "The American taxpayers, who own approximately 80% of AIG, deserve full and complete disclosure under our nation's securities laws, not the withholding of politically inconvenient information.
If you ask me Geithner should be fired, and Bernanke too. What they have done with these bailouts is to finance the huge salaries and bonuses of predatory banks, without extracting any punishment or even significant changes in the underlying making money from money system which caused the crisis in the first place. These banks are either too big to exist, need to be run as utilities, or we need to admit we don't live in a Democratic Republic anymore, but in a corporatist financial plutocracy.
"This news ought to serve as a cautionary tale to those who advocate giving the Federal Reserve even more power over the U.S. economy. The lack of transparency and accountability is disturbing enough, but the outstanding question that remains is why the [New York Fed] didn't fight for a better deal for the American taxpayer. Clearly, the New York Fed wanted to suppress details and limit disclosure of the counterparty deal from the American people -- the only question is why?"
Simple answer; do you expect people in bed with each other for more than 10 years not to be corrupt? Geithner did this to transfer risk from the banks to AIG and thus keep his buddies in the black. He rationalized it as necessary to prevent further collapse of the economy. Really simple, they have the economy by the throat. Historically, the first one to make the mistake of not realizing that was Andrew Jackson when he destroyed the National Bank. Too big to fail is no joke -- however the right solution is to break the investment banks up, make the remainder of the giant ones utilities, and prosecute or fire the lot of their officers and insiders. But that "ain't gonna happen."
This is bi-partisan corruption, and it threatens the middle class (what's left of it) threatens the stability of the country, and it threatens all the noble promises made by folks like Obama. All because in our country we have the best system money can buy. Emphasis on the buy.
Posted by cholte at January 7, 2010 09:28 PM
It is Mappo, every bit as bad [for many] as it was in medieval Japan. Could we be headed for a new Dark Ages [in our lifetime?]. Not even their trunk loads of cash and armies will save the bankers and the corrupt rulers from the wrath of their evil karma. They are dead men walking along with the religious leaders, especially those of the Soka Gakkai.
"It is Mappo, every bit as bad [for many] as it was in medieval Japan."
Medieval Japan was far worse. Nichiren was born in a time of plagues, earthquakes, and wars (mostly internecine, the Mongols were a coda) that took something like 1/3 of the people in an untimely manner, sometimes in one year.
Human nature hasn't changed. And observing Nichiren's disciples (including me for 30 years) I don't think that Nichiren's teachings are any more a panacea for human nature than any other religions. They are worth studying because his criticisms get to root causes, but as an all explaining ideology they fall down. There is no Giant Turtle under Japan. Mahayana has similar roots to Zen. Buddhism has borrowed from other religions. Buddhism in many countries (such as Afghanistan) vanished because of Buddhists, not because it was the evil age of Mappo.
Mark: "Could we be headed for a new Dark Ages [in our lifetime?]."
If so the Barbarians at the gates are inside them.
This was the theme of my poem "Kali Marching" which I should publish if I can find all its verses.
"Not even their trunk loads of cash and armies will save the bankers and the corrupt rulers from the wrath of their evil karma."
Well you are putting a really Biblical spin on Nichiren's writings. Fact is, as Nichiren says, the sun continues to rise in the sky, and many of these people not only go unpunished, their followers rewrite history in order to make it look like they never did anything wrong in the first place.
However, your idea of what they are doing wrong is, how does one put this nicely? No way, so let me just say, your idea of what they are doing wrong is at least as wrong headed as theirs.
Fighting hatred, villification, kleptocracy, conversion, legal-theft, corrupt law, and other kinds of corruption with prophesy hasn't been very effective at ending things as demonstrated by every prophet from Ezequiel to Nichiren. What it needs is investigative reporting and probably a prosecutors office. Bad ideology is a corrupt practice that usually goes along with other ones.
There is no panacea, and there are no blanket enemies. The Gakkai is no worse than the leaders of the various other Sangha's, and no better either, except in embracing movement over clear thinking, dogma over doctrine, and ideology over good ideas. The difference is that "I am a good person because I do my best to do good" versus "I am a good person because I belong to the Knights of bad ideology." It is a common delusion.
The difference between ideology and clear thinking is explained on page 159 of her book "The origins of totalitarianism;" Ideologies are "systems based upon a single opinion that proved strong enough to persuade a majority of people [within the group or in a nation] and broad enough to lead them through the various experiences and situations of modern life"..."an ideology differs from a simple opinion in that it caims to possess either the key to history, or the solutions to all the 'riddles of the universe,' or the intimate knowledge of the hidden universal laws which are supposed to rule nature and man."
You may have broken with the Gakkai and be able to criticize its movement. But your ideology sounds to me nearly the same as theirs. You sound like a Trotskyite angry at the Stalinists for "perverting his vision." You can prophesy all you want, but the Talmudic prescription for false prophets is stoning and the reality of even real prophets is that they get stoned. The lucky ones get stoned figuratively.
Chris, you write:
"Medieval Japan was far worse."
For whom? The Rwandans the thirty million killed under Stalin, the forty million killed under Mao, the twenty million killed under Hitler, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the millions of children going hungry, the thirsty in the drought ravaged regions of Africa, the 17% of people in the US without jobs and 20% without healthcare?
Cause and effect is inviolate, the eternity of life of the Tathagata as well as the eternal Nine Realms is inviolate. Were these doctrines not true, there is no justice in the universe and no purpose in life.
If you think our ideology or the ideology of the Lotus Sutra and of Nichiren Daishonin is the same as the Soka Gakkai's you are not nearly as observant as you would like to believe. Honest and upright are we.
Right now, I think Buddhism has answers. I do not think confrontational, belligerent, or triumphal Buddhism cuts it though; not for public discourse. Arousing the political enmity and envy of the masses is not particularly helpful either; those are self perpetuating motives.
One thing I have noticed is that all the turmoil and pain seems to making people more empathetic and helpful to one another. I notice lots of little acts of kindness each and everyday. Perhaps that is my 'esho funi?' Maybe it was there all along; but my attitude prevented from me seeing it?
Just a little more in what I wrote; if that is all right? In translations of Nichiren Shonin's writings; we see the words pity, pitiful, or pitiable quite a bit. The first definition of pathetic is "having a capacity to move one to either compassionate or contemptuous pity." In English, pity genwerally carries the connotations of contempt, condescension, or disgust. It might bring to mind a desire for revenge or, perhaps,
feelings of schadenfreude when others suffer.
It is interesting that the Chinese word used to translate metta / maitri actually means pity. In other words, the original meaning is loving kindness; the nuance shifts in multiple translations. This might change the way one construes Nichiren Shonin's words. I am not suggesting he never caved into afflictive anger; but I do not think punishing miscreants was his aim. I think he wanted to help them reform and redeem themselves.
Robin, you wrote:
"but I do not think punishing miscreants was his aim."
There is no need. That is the point. Cause and effect functions throughout the three existences. retribution [manifest effect] is one of the Ten Factors.
The point is, we should feel pain when others suffer, period. It does not matter if they deserve it or not. It is not really compassion to feel sorry for people who have to deal with un-deserved suffering. Nor is it really Buddhist forbearance to forgive the innocent.
To me Buddhism is important, not because it has answers but because it asks the right questions. Religions that provide all encompassing answers usually are oversimplifying the reality, something sometimes necessary for the sake of Upaya, but something that feeds back into the illusion and delusion that are at the root of suffering unless tamed by healthy doubt coupled with an intense realization of the reality of causality, coupled with genuine compassion.
Robin is right here. One interpretation of the Devadatta story is that he mastered all the lore of Buddhism without cultivating metta and the self disciplines associated with it. That is the guy could meditate, teach, reach higher states, travel in his imagination, and etc... but had no genuine compassion for others or sense of identity with others. Compassion is the source of the Lion's roar.
Chris,
Can we have compassion for Devadatta? Even the Buddha seemed to have trouble with that.
Re: compassion as the source
True that!
It's easy to confuse compassion with idiocy. The real story of Devadatta we may never completely know, but the people who passed on the stories all had agendas and points to make. The Buddha did have compassion for Devadatta. He just couldn't let him get away with deluding his followers and one-upping his leadership.
Ambition has sunk, corrupted, or degraded, more religions than any outside opposition. It is that "Devadatta side" of religious teachers that made such teachers as Bodhidharma or Kobo Daishi such unctuous, yet clever and utterly self-promoting scoundrels. The urge to make money from religion is at the very same time universally present and almost universally irresistable; and as Nichiren believes, I believe, that such people are worse for their societies than robbers, thieves or foreign invaders.
The reason is that the ambitious don't care about the people they are teaching so much as their own pride, power, status, reputation, or fame. Thus they are perfectly willing to make up stories and pass them off as truth, when they are lies. To tell people what they want to hear; when in the long run it will make them miserable. Or at the least (and least unforgivable) to invent pasts for themselves that make them look better than they deserve to look.
The result is counterfeit religion, counterfeit spirituality, and eventually insider politics, religious politics, splits, fissions, and religious conflict.
Worse than Genghis Khan are people who misuse their followers, misuse their gifts and misuse their religion and their duties to others.