I have always felt sympathy for Israel. I guess part of it is due to my, as a child, not following instrustions. I was told to read the bible. My teachers wanted me to start with the New Testament, but I started with Genesis instead. It was such a frustrating project that I ended up studying history, archeology, philosophy, and then mythology and cultural anthropology and comparative religion just to make sense out of my project. I got frustrated with trying to figure it out, especially after relatives told me the bible held all the answers to all my questions. I went and looked and couldn't find them. For one thing I wasn't even sure what the right questions were. I asked for guidance on the subject and I was told to pray to God. I did. I never did find that burning bush.
In frustration I eventually wrote a poem about the experience:
The Burning Bush
There ain't no burning bush,
no beckoning pillar of fire,
There ain't no miraculous wind,
that's going to save us from this mire.
If there is a God on high,
he's whistling in the wind.
He's not booming in my ears,
not answering questions I can't ask.
....It gets longer and has a lot of stanzas....But that's for another post another day. The point is, eventually I went around in circles, gave up on God, got involved with Buddhism, Got told that the Ultimate Law would do all those things that God hadn't already done. Got nearly, as confused, but learned to ask the right questions. To get the right answers, you have to ask the right questions.
In this case, the questions are pretty difficult ones. I've found that asking difficult questions with the right attitude is worthwhile. Asking impossible questions expecting impossible answers is absurd, but some hard questions need to be asked. One of those questions is; "What do we do with impossible people who want to do us in?"
I ask that question because of a number of incidents, two of which are fresh on my mind. One is in Iraq, when two folks were kidnapped at gunpoint only so that the "insurgents" could make a bloody point by desecrating their bodies and then putting them out and booby trapped for the "Coalition forces" to discover. This is the stuff of a mothers nightmare. Yet the US is hardly conducting a perfectly just war, and war is brutal by its very nature. I can hardly fault folks who my country is trying to force to do things my way for trying to kill me. It's the nature of the beast. Yet this is hardly "just war." It certainly doesn't give genuine faith and credit to the notion of Islam as a religion of "peace" or a worthwhile equal to the Judeo-Christian Religions. I might be tempted to pray to God, but my main question is; "how do we stop these people without making more of them?"
Then the incident in Israel comes to mind. Israel is trying to wage just war. It's rather difficult. There is no reciprocity. After 50 years of doing their level best to subjugate, kill, murder and drive off every Jew in the Middle East, the Palestinians have failed miserably -- so what do they do? They paint themselves as victims and claim it's Israel's fault they are poor and miserable, because Israel has remained a Country, been obnoxiously aggressive, and not acknowledged the supreme righteousness of Islam. Israel has not always waged just war. The Irgun and the Stern Gang, and some hard nosed actions by the Hagganah as well, guaranteed that some Palestinian grieviences would be fairly legitimate. But there is no reciprocity. For a long time Israel has been doing penance (the word is tikkun Olam) for blowing up a hotel, kicking people out of strategic properties, and their relatively few lapses. Okay they looked the other way while the Phallangists went wild in Lebanon. Okay, their bombs miss, and they have tortured some prisoners and treated the occupied territories brutally. To get a perspective imagine the shoe on the other foot. Literally the alternative has been genocide. That is no excuse for lapses, but being human is a reason -- and on the whole they have been trying to get some foothold into getting negotiations going, building bridges, and settling this nasty war. For some reason the Jihadists have no problem with fellow Jihadists being brutal, mean, violent, ruthless, deceptive and dishonest -- but this is a fault punishable by death for everyone else. Oh Give me a break. I don't follow religions propagated by hypocrites -- and the only people who walk the walk and talk the talk -- are not islamicist extremists. I don't see much of a model in Hadith calls for deception or for violent reprisals for criticizing Islam. It's not my call to criticize Islam, criticizing people who betray their faith and show its uggliest face is not criticizing Islam. It's criticizing people who act like jerks and monsters.
Talk to 8 Jews and 100 Arabs. 10 of the Arabs will be Palestinians, 90 from other countries, All of them will claim that their failures are Israel's fault. Oil, investment money, education in the West, all of it is a nevermind. The failure of their elites to raise up their poor is Israel's fault. Jews may have keys to properties in Egypt, Syria or Iraq, but only the Palestinians seriously expect to ever return to homes -- in Israel. And the Hamas folks are showing that they are as bloodthirsty and ignorant as any of the folks fighting us in Iraq or Afghanistan. If even an innocent Jew falls into their hands he can expect no mercy. The only silver lining is that now that the US has shown how a less just society would react to Islamicist behavior, these folks are increasingly blaming the US instead. They might have a case if they blamed the oil companies, their own elites and the British and French -- but we'd all be better off if these folks would just decide to "get over it."
Instead they've declared a long term Jihad. Okay, we've dealt with Jihads before. Khruschev promised to bury us. Lenin was sure we'd sell him the guns he needed to do it. We out-waited those people. Can't we do that with the Moslem Jihadists?
Oh no, not so easy. In comes the Christian Crusaders. These guys were conjured up by Bin Laden out of his imagination. He wanted to fight Crusaders. It's the Islamicists answer to "we fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here." For Bin Laden it was "we provoke them over there, so we can train Jihadists and impose a Moslem theocracy here." This is win win for the Jihadists. Our Christian Fanatics get to fight their Islamicist Fanatics. In the process they keep expecting the Anti-Christ to arise and the 2000 year tribulation to arise. They can execute each other and fight one another for that whole time. Heck they've already been at it since about 700 AD.
Moreover, since the Annointed one (Christ) was supposed to be a Jewish King who would restore Israel, peacefully (I think his donkey was supposed to be led by an Arab). And since the heart of Judaic theory, as embodied in the "old testament" is that there is one ineffable God, that it is a crime to image God.
And it is a crime, according to the ten commandments, to raise up a single person into a world-conquering hero. That is God's job. Any Christian King who seeks to impose peace by waging a war is basically acting the part of an anti-christ. Throw in anti-semitism and the formula is certain. The prophesies in John are based on the prophesies in Daniel, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel; all of these had to do with Jewish Subjects, and the problem of dealing with hero-worshipping masses led by world conquering fearless heroes. By that reckoning, Bush is yet another manifestation of the "anti-Christ" that has been plaquing Christians since Constantine made a syncretic Jewish origined Sect the national religion. Popes, Kings, Emperors, CEOs, they all have a habit of magnifying the ego and mythologizing "fearless leaders" into Golden images that people confuse with Gods. Hence the word "stars" for human Gods, and the "host from heaven" for both the Stars and for the myriads of "Gods" that people worshipped before Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastorianism, etceteras...came along.
Before that it was Roman, Greek, Persian and Babylonian "fearless heroes." before that Israel was haplessly caught between the ambitions of Chaldea, Assyria and Egypt. The Israeli Kings would side with one and get conquered by the other. Now I think I understand the Bible. It's talking about these idiotic warriors. The first word for what they are doing is "self fulfilling prophesy." The second is completely misinterpreting the Bible. In biblical times, the failure to walk a tight "just war" and "just peace" diplomatic tight-rope of good government, ethical civic behavior, and equanamity turned Israel first into Israel and Judah and then into Jews, Christians, Samaritans, and other offshoots. Now they get to do it all over again. Must be tiresome. The modern Arabs are worse than the Babylonians, about the same as the Assyrians. They claim that the "God of Israel" won't protect Israel and like RabShakah they taunt Israel. But there have been miracles of a sort. Israel is still around and there are still Jews around. Maybe there is a God. There have been countless battles at Armaggedo. That prophesy may happen again, but it doesn't have to. We are living in an end time -- ends are beginnings.
But of course, an ineffable, un-imaginable God, sounds more like an eternal principle or "root" to existence than an imaginable being. But then my understanding of the Buddha has evolved in that way too. I suspect that this vision is a bit better than all the ones that somehow manage to image "God" or the "object of worship" as some human being. That might be harmless, except that the Human being imaged, always manages to get the idea that he should follow the footsteps of the Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans. And the world always defeats them, a pile of earth rolled into a ball that in each case destroys these false images of what a supreme being should be.
So my own internal answer. The one I hear after all the thunder and lighting, booming and raining, dust and smoke, have passed. Is that there is hope for peace. Not sure how to do it. I'm not sure that war, no matter how just people try to carry it out, can do it. On the other hand, none of us are captive to other peoples images of G'd. If they forbid the imaging of G'd, insist that Mohammed was His perfect messenger, and criticize other messengers and their transmissions for distorting the message, what makes them presume that their transmission has been so pure? Is not making someone infallible, who was human, kind of inconsistent? They criticize Christians for doing this with their founder -- why should they get away with doing the same thing with their founder.
If you ask me Shakyamuni, Gandhi, Jesus, Mohammed, as historical figures are nearly unavailable. Moreover, some of the versions of their lives don't impress modern folks all that much. The historical personages were probably fallible human beings. And all of them said so while they were alive. So what is with this using their theorizing and story telling as an excuse to war and hate? What gives here? What counts is the message over the messenger, and in that case, a little humility about the quality of the transmitters of this message is in order. Even if the message itself is perfect -- we aren't. A Golden man sitting in the sand, only shines by reflection of the Sun above. And he is only Gold due to the craftsmanship of thousands of hands. So why not admire the craftsmanship, take it seriously, and work to flawlessly uphold principle without conveniently interpreting principles to justify evil behavior?
I end up with more questions but there is a reason there are no Burning Bushes. We get to puzzle, argue, figure things out for ourselves. Whether that is accident or design is no matter. We get to be the architects of our own existence.
Chris
In the universe of religion, of which Buddhism is an important view, one principle that stands out is the principle of responsibility. For the individual human being taking responsibility does not always seem like an ideal course, yet in the long run, in the human universe, it is paramount that people do so. Because responsibility can be gamed, Buddhism has always framed the analysis of why taking responsibility was necessary in terms of karma. This was always an expedient means, because Buddhism has also always pretty much taught that the idea of fixed ego's or a fixed soul is equally an expedient means teaching for those who haven't figured out the truth yet. Yet when we recognize that we are temporarily harmonized entities as individuals, and yet instances of a self-motivated project called humanity, we can see why it might be beneficial to take responsibility for our lives.
To me this truth has always seemed self-evident, but looking around me I see that it is not always so to others. Even Buddhists have become famous for ducking responsibility and acting irresponsibly. Indeed this was a common criticism of Buddhism from outside -- they monks went to live on Mountain Tops and dropped out of day to day life. This has never really applied to Nichirenism -- which is what I love about Nichiren's Buddhism.
What brings up this subject?
Two things. One is a report on Donald Rumsfeld's lack of memory about scandals he was very deeply involved with -- and which everyone has taken the fall for being involved with except the ones who apparantly gave the orders. Rumsfeld, in an accountable administration would have been held responsible for the Tanker Scandal, even if his argument that he "doesn't recall" the facts and wasn't involved in the day to day operations -- on the principle of responsibility:
When asked about what he knew, he either said he couldn't remember, or if it had to do with a discussion with the President, that it was privelaged information. Here is the quote:
"The investigators tried a different tack. Tell us, one said, about the extent and nature of conversations with the White House about the tanker lease. The question related to the fact that in 2002 President Bush asked then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. to help reach a deal between the Pentagon and Boeing, which had substantial clout on Capitol Hill and was a major contributor to Bush's inaugural celebration."
"I have been told," Rumsfeld said, "that discussions with the president are privileged, and with his immediate staff." Large portions of text on the next five pages of the 38-page interview transcript were blacked out in the copy provided to The Post.
And this is particularly frustrating to me because I'm familiar enough with the acquisition process to know that an ACAT I program such as the Tanker Program could not have gotten anywhere without his involvement, and that the investigators questions were exactly on target:
Part of the controversy over the tanker deal involved the department's failure to conduct an "Analysis of Alternatives" -- a routine comparison of options mandated by Pentagon rules before any large-scale weapons acquisition. When one investigator started asking about this, Rumsfeld demurred. "You are way out of my league on all of this," he said.
He can't not know this. I know for a fact that he and his leutenants authored major changes to the acquisitions process that represent detailed understanding of Defense Acquisition and the process. Moreover, he can't have been paying too much attention to Iraq or we wouldn't be in the mess we are in there. As Richard Cohen says in his Op Ed, there is a Culpability Deficit Disorder in this administration.
Which is the second reason this topic came up in my mind.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/19/AR2006061901235.html
We are living in ethically challenging times. Modern science has revealed many truths that place man, not at the center of the universe, but seemingly at the fringe. Philosophers have shed great doubt on notions such as "God", the "soul", even the notion that we have a permanent self. These doubts should do much to move people in the direction of the ideas of Buddhism, but they also have had the effect of depressing and distressing many people belonging to traditional religions. The facts from history, philosophy and logic seem to strip away the underpinnings for ethical behavior or for a just society. Instead of feeling encouraged to revise and adjust beliefs, folks feel their beliefs are under attack. For that reason, rather than accepting the realities of science and philosophy, many people retreat into a fantasy world of "creationism," conspiracy theories about the causality of modern history (and ancient history) and efforts to rewrite history, science and religion to accord to what they see as "biblical fact." And of course the most scary thing, is that like other ideologues, these people believe that the end justifies the means.
Unfortunately the result is that we are living in ethically challenged times.
This is very dangerous for obvious reasons. First it's not the first time the world has gone through this. Every indication from looking at the history of the Roman Empire, shows us that the Dark ages were not caused by Barbarian invasions or external forces, but by the systematic editing, destruction, and loss of scientific knowledge and understanding that was associated with the power of the hierarchy of Christianity. Were it not for the competition from Islam, this information would have been lost permanently.
Secondly, as history shows us, to suppress inconvenient scientific and medical knowledge takes physical violence. The people who would make stem cell research illegal, make abortion illegal, and make use of birth control illegal, need to use force to accomplish that end. Their belief that the ends justifies the means virtually guarantees this, and also guarantees that the results will be repressive and unfortunate for all those concerned. At the heart of these things are error, what the word "sin" originally meant. People commit logical errors in evaluating religion, largely because they don't think for themselves and posit a dichotomy between their beliefs and "the truth" when the dichotomy is between their beliefs and "this world" which is a different matter.
Moreover, these same people would ban teaching evolution, on similar grounds.
But as I've tried to point out, there is another way to approach these issues. And that way is as old as the Bible itself. Christianity itself represents a group of people dealing with a massive betrayal of history. The annointed one, the king (Jesus the messiah) was supposed to be the king of the Jews, and was supposed to deliver Jews from bondage to Rome. He offered himself up to the Romans in order to accomplish that end. Instead of freeing Jews from bondage, Jews suffered even more over the next 200 years than they have suffered since until recently. Later Christians would redefine this betrayal to claim that the Jews had turned their back on their Messiah, but the fact is that things did not occur as they had been predicted -- and the figurative messiah embraced by other Europeans and Asians was a far different one from the literal one predicted. It turns out that nearly every teaching of Christianity has a figurative element. When people get caught up in literalisms about birth control, and evolution (abortion involves genuine ethical questions), they are failing to realize that the bible is a work of literature, the product of human beings, and that it's sacredness lies in how people use it, not in what it literally says.
For this reason there is no need to turn one's back on rationality to take an ethical approach to life. If some beliefs are figurative, and not of "this world" that doesn't mean they aren't ultimately true. But they are definately not of this world. Which means that, since we are thoroughly of this world, we can only be certain that our faith drives our own life -- within this world -- and the "world to come" is unknowable -- until we get there. Therefore to reject the things of this world on the grounds that they are of this world is kind of foolish. To posit a divide between this world and some ideal world is to posit a thing that we cannot know. Since we cannot know we cannot either say that it is true or untrue, except that it is untrue if it is fiction if one is talking about this world.
In this world everything changes, even our understanding of what everything is and the "I" that makes that understanding. It is better to live with that than to reject it. When we are distressed it doesn't matter whether a wonderful light at the end of life is a fiction invented by a distressed mind, or an actual portal to a better universe. When dealing with day to day affairs it does matter whether our beliefs are reality or fiction. One is of "this world", the other of the "world to come." Reincarnation may be a fact, but it is unknowable to most of us. Heaven may be a fact, but it is functionally unknowable to most of us. If we live life with the idea that good deeds may lead to "heaven" then that is also a functionally positive life. If we assume that bad deeds will somehow lead to heaven because someone or some text "in this world" tells us so, that may not in fact be so. We should be very careful to distinguish the two.
So the third reason that banning evolution, or attacking ideas not meeting a literal test, is a bad way, is that these beliefs may not be, in fact, of the world to come either.
The Bush Administration is happy that Zarqawi is dead. Truth is I'm not exactly crying over the guy either. As they said as a joke this morning, he probably found his 70 virgins -- and they were all men who he had killed. I can't understand why he wasn't caught, or even arrested sooner. I remember hearing CIA types complaining that they had him in their sites in 2002, and 2003, and never were allowed to catch him or kill him. He's been really useful to this administration. I'd say he's been the classic useful idiot.
You know what I mean by "useful idiots." They are the not so bright people whose ambition and stupidity make them foils for the ambition and duplicity of others. Ozama Bin Laden is not a useful idiot. He's got money, power and smarts. But Zarqawi started out poor, ambitious, and denigrated as not very bright by all who knew him. I'm sure a lot of what he did was to prove himself in someone's eyes; his fathers(?), mothers(?), villagers(?), Osamas(?), certainly not God's(!!!???!). This made him the perfect useful idiot.
And what a perfect idiot he was. He should have known that the people egging him on have their own agendas and would give away his position to a predator drone or f16 eventually. He was hated, and used by the Iraqi insurgents. They never forgot the way his foreign fighters were too undisciplined to fight smart in the early days when the US kicked them out of Fallujah. They'd stir up trouble, kill civilians, and then run and abandon their comrades. The insurgents are a more disicplined lot. They know that they can melt back into the arms of their country-men when a conflict doesn't go their way. All they need to do is to survive until the US is gone and they will have won their way. Insurgents are sometimes terrorists, but they see themselves as freedom fighters.
Zarqawi and his ideologues were only welcome when they were fighting and staying out of the way -- but they kept getting in the way. The insurgents don't need foreign money, they are using stocks of explosives and weapons they looted long ago. The Shiites don't need an insurgency but are helped from Iran. The Sunnis need help, and they are probably getting it covertly. I don't know if that is a fact, and if I did know I'm not sure I'd be allowed to report it. We are being played as useful idiots ourselves. The Saudis, Yemenis and other wealthy Sunnis and Wahabis, are probably playing a double game against us. I wouldn't be surprised if they were the ones who ratted out Zarqawi, but it could have been anyone.
He'd served his usefulness in stirring up insurrection, sectarian violence and hate. Bush Needed brownie points. Zarqawi was stirring things up too much with the Shiites (just a week ago he called on Iraqis to attack Shiites). The Sunni tribal leaders want power, I don't know if they really want all that mythical Calliph crap. It was time for Zarqawi to go. Like Kennedy, Martin Luther King and dozens of others out there, we'll never know the whole story -- unless it serves someone's purpose to reveal it.
Which reminds me of the other "dangerous person" I'm thinking of. On the home front, the administration is pushing its war against the first, second, fourth and fifth amendments, (hell the whole constitution) and Arlen Spector is finally waking up a little. He is outgunned, so he backed off his threat today to subpoena Telephone company executives. Dick Cheney says the only crime in those wiretaps was in the secret of them being revealed. We are supposed to trust authority and that these guys will look out for our civil liberties the way they did the principle of one man one vote or our pocketbooks. As I said Cheney and the Bin Laden's are not useful idiots, they are millionaires. I understand that they know each other too. Osama is the nasty little cousin the Osama's don't want to talk about, but these guys know him too. We once thought that he was our useful idiot. In the 80's we, through and with the Saudis and Pakistanis funded him to fight the Soviets -- but he sure showed us who the idiots were. (I remember those deals, laws were broken, investigations half heartedly conducted, ties to drugs, third world dictators (Sandinistas and Somocistas, and Red or White El Salvadoreanos) a lot of shennaggans). People should have gone to jail but were pardoned. Now one of those people is running the whole secret police; Negroponte was working deep undercover back then.
I keep thinking of the book Cats Cradle. Could our President be a secret Islamic Jihadist? Is he our Mohammeden candidate? It would explain a lot. Or is Osama Bush's Bokonon? Given the insanity of our country that seems even more likely. The ice nine is in his hands. I guess Zarqawi was a Wampeter.
Bokonon Glossary*
Foma: Harmless untruths
Granfalloon: ''a false karass, [...] a seeming team that [is] meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done.''
Karrass: ''team [of people] that do[es] God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing.''
Wampeter: ''the pivot of a karass, around which the souls of the members of the karass revolve.''
Chris
One set of illusions that are common and very dangerous in our society are the illusions that many people have about human behavior and causality. A lot of people believe that there has to be a reason why we are here. That the complexity of this world is too great for it to have developed naturally, and that this constitutes proof of a creator. A lot of these same people have a simplified and either/or conception of human volition. They think people can be forced to act a certain way. For these people the ideas of B.F.Skinner and other behavioralists are very popular. It should come as no surprise that these are people who believe in the efficacy of torture, of force, of prophylactic invasions and bombing campaigns.
They are inevitably shocked when humans don't act the way they expect them to. For them every outcome is the result of a moral decision that can have only two colors; good or bad.
Oddly they often judge the outcome of their own behavior by it's apparant effect. Thus they can build up whole entire systems of false linkages between causes and effects. Justify their own behavior by the goal of its outcome, and then blame their enemies for the hell they create trying to create their idealized and distopic paradise. These are the folks who, like Pat Robertson, see an earthquake or hurricane in a neighbors home as God's Judgement, but who are strangely silent when it happens to their home. Who will do anything and everything to outlaw not just abortion, but birth control and religious choice. And they do all this on the basis of a distorted understanding of human nature and causality.
They can't even understand their own bible, Koran, or get it strait what is an interpretation, an allegory or a parable and what has to be literally true as they interpret to be. Thus these are folks who create entire systems of nonsense and call it "Neo-Millenialism" even though there is absolutely nothing in the bible that details exactly what the Anti-Christ will look like or that there will be anything remotely resembling a rapture. Their misunderstanding of human nature and psychology is only trumphed by their misunderstanding of their own religion.
And these people would be funny, except they have money, are in important positions and are allied with conservatives and others whose religion is money and who are using them and being used by them, to create repressive laws and push for a repressive country. Gay marriage isn't an issue for most of us. Some Christians and Jews may find it mildly distasteful, but it is only an issue for these confused and deluded folks. And evolution is only an issue for these idiots too. Anyone who has the slightest sense of humility would see that the myth of creation, doesn't have to be interpreted in human terms. A God who stands outside of human conceptions of time and space would be able to create the world, time and all, in 7 days no problem. 7 of his days. It is insane to measure the real world by a preconceived yardstick.
But these folks would do it. And if we let them they'd set us back into the dark ages like those which really began in the 4th century when Constantine made Christianity the State religion.
Chris