I was just trying to catch up on some reading on my email. Suddenly I saw messages that I didn't know I was getting, involving a kind of argument about the morality of Buddhists "supporting" soldiers. I thought this issue had been settled, but here it was being hotly debated. One camp insisting that it was immoral to provide any sort of moral support to soldiers -- because war is immoral. The other camp defending the efforts to support soldiers morally. The thread finished nicely. Nobody stomped out of the "room" in flames, but it set me thinking. There is a link between causality and principle, virtue and samsara, and even people in "evil professions" can do good, cannot always avoid doing evil, but need to behave in such a way that they do good. Nichiren talked about this. That gives us some moral hints.
With Nichirenism one can go to Nichiren on this subject. Nichiren wrote in a letter to Shijo Kingo (Sword of Good and Evil) about how he was an evil man because he was a retainer to a warrior and thus a warrior himself. And Nichiren explained that warriors are like a sword. The sword can be used for good or evil. Nichiren said as much about his friend Shijo Kingo, who might have died for his secular master had his life called him to that fate.
To cut off moral support to the persons involved in evil simply because one thinks that the country is doing something evil is not going to address the evil being done because the soldiers don't individually set the strategy. They can moderate evil strategies (for example refusing to torture prisoners), but they cannot by themselves stop wars.
Therefore they are like a sword. Used for ceremonial purposes it accomplishes good. Retooled into a plowshare it can produce food and save lives. But it is simply a tool, and soldiers are simply people working for the military and thus in a profession that does evil things. But they are still people. We should not despise anyone.
Moreover, whatever effects the US attempt at occupying Iraq and "democratizing it" may have been, this is not the failure or the fault of the soldiers who serve the country. They tried to accomplish good things and for the most part were not strategically culpable in these failures. To criticize groups like the Gakkai for providing outreach to US soldiers is a bit unfair. One can criticize any political decisions of any group, but providing outreach to people in uniform is something different. They deserve respect for serving their country.
In a sense this failure in Iraq may be our collective failure as a society. How can any nation force another to conform to its vision?
On the other hand, those involved in the military, the police, and similar efforts need to be cognisant of Buddhist theory and practice, and of the power of their acts to cause unintended side-effects and so make strong efforts to link their efforts to moral purpose, to minimize their use of violence, and to avoid harming innocents. Samurai didn't chuse their professions. Modern soldiers and people don't have that excuse.
(started 6/17/2007 finished 6/30/2007)
Chris
To George (referring to "The Case for Conservativism" and "Democrats Prosperity Problem")
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/08/AR2007060802397.html
http://tinyurl.com/39hqah
We democrats and "Democrats" have no problem with acknowledging that Bush's policies have been very good at getting the overall economy roaring and enriching a few people mightily. Democrats won't acknowledge a thing that is a lie for many people and that is tenuous and probably not sustainable for the rest. Workers are watching their jobs head south and it worries them. We have a system where we have to import workers while a permanent underclass lives beneath our streets. The semblance of freedom without the franchise of participation in the marketplace is a bitter thing to experience. I admit this is conservatism. Not everyone has a job, but those of us who do are enjoying our guilty prosperity. I am rather conservative about that myself. I want to help people by throwing down a rope not by jumping into the pit with them. But I can't rag about it. I don't say the "economy is not growing." It's just not growing everywhere for everyone. Like you said "conservatives feel rather "sanguine" about this. It doesn't bother you. It does bother me.
All democrats are for maximum freedom for individuals, but we aren't for the freedom to lie, cheat, defraud and convert common property to private property at public expense. If it is bad to despise the rent seeking welfare of "welfare mothers" it is worse to watch the rent seeking kleptocracy of large companies, and insider business-politicos. What is conservative about rent seeking kleptocracy?
How much money just "disappeared" into the hands of contractors and the occupation authority in Baghdad? How are we going to pay for the abuses we've seen in contracting, procurement and boondoggles over the next period? All financed with borrowings. Since when is it a conservative value to turn defense contractors into a smaller and smaller cabal of monopolies. What is conservative about Halliburton or Brown and Root?
We have to note that this "prosperity" is at the expense of borrowings that were possible because of low interest rates and we'll have to pay those bills at higher interest rates at a later date, while someone else clips coupons from money he was given and then bought treasury bonds with. And we note that the one who will get the blame for this will be some hapless Democrat is in office. Thanks for nothing. What is conservative about deficit spending?
Why has "Energy Independence" been a rhetorical lie since the beginning of the Reagan Administration when he quietly demolished efforts to gain solar capabilities for this country? What gives with an energy policy designed to eventually break our electrical grid, the pockets of the middle class and our ability to afford cars. Enron may be gone, but the policies that created Enron live on. I know this first hand -- I live in Maryland. Nothing like being conned and then left with the bill to make people a bit sore. I'm not innocent, I bought the premise of de-regulation because I thought that the de-regulators were going to introduce genuine competition. But I've still been conned -- because that was a lie. What is conservative about the big lie? What was conservative about Enron or letting Big Oil set energy policy without debate from other views?
How long will it be before the judicial branch powers and capabilities granted to the executive to torture, ignore due process, and secretly detain people, begin to be applied to more US citizens? American's have been asleep in front of the TV. I wonder what they'll do when the lights go out and the power outages start. I suspect that is when people will wake up to what has been going on all around them and wonder when they gave the Executive the power to build the apparatus of "Big Brother." What is conservative about "Big Brother?" Do you like the prospect that the Next President will be able to have a complete dossier on you and your every private conversation and you won't even be able to see a copy or challenge any mistakes because it is "secret"?
You say conservatives favor freedom, but what movement is behind Guantanamo? You say that liberals efforts to level the playing field and promote greater access to the economy for more people promotes big government. But don't conservative led efforts to box people in, control and impose morality on people directly lead to a police state mentality? Listen to Giuliani, is this the kind of society where Freedom is the highest value? Freedom for who? For everyone? It doesn't look like it from a country with among the highest incarceration rates in the World. Sure "freedom is on the March -- on the march into the Gates of Guantanamo Bay and the new buildings being built all over the country to be used once the precedents being set there are established and tested.
And finally George, what is "conservative" about all this. Since when has the constitution been optional? Since when were Keynesian policies and boondoggle defense spending Conservative values? Since when were conservatives for the legalized cycle of corruption that is our current Campaign Contribution System (with or without McCain/Feingold)? Since when did bribery and advertising/ spinning/ propaganda become a Republican Value? And what happened to the notions of individualism and the independent thinking and broad view that I used to see in your columns?
Chris Holte
Wow what a thought,
That the garden in my mind is man made!
All those illusions, all those delusions,
All those wonderous things and sublime visions,
And I created them all?
Did I wire my imagination?
Wow I must be some kind of God!
Did I invent all those imaginations?
I'm more powerful than I knew.
I've humbly thought that all that creativity,
all those common dreams and schemes,
Came from some shared substance, in that parallel realm,
Where all things are possible
and we all dwell in fear or joy
Inside the treasure tower of the mind.
In that realm, where Mohamed and Jesus are sitting on knees.
And where Moses stands side by side with Maimonides and Handel,
Where Buddha and Gandhi, all walk along a pure blue ganges;
Where Bodhisattvas as countless as the stars in heaven sing to me in
unison, "Come join us in this song!"
Here my tale, it won't take long!
Where all the lies melt away in a mystical moment
When one realizes the truth behind the stone-cutters tale.
Here even Martin Luther sees the truth.
Here even Satan finds salvation.
I thought that realm, imaginary as it may be,
was very real and shared to me.
Dangerous it is, dangerous as "I".
Dangerous as illusion, dangerous as my inner eye.
Yet with our imaginations we see
Things beyond the mountains,
and across the sea.
Dreams that might not happen,
Or perhaps may yet come to be.
And when I heard a thin divine voice,
Say "Go speak truth to Ninevah"
And I fled to Carthage,
Did I think the fish that ate me,
For running from my destiny,
Did I only think it was wrong?
And when I was reborn, spat out!
and sat under my tree singing a sad song.
I had the power to do that?
I had the power to acquire that sword,
had I but remained silent,
Oh why did I awake from my dream at the sight of others suffering?!
If I deny the figurative because it is not literal.
Am I any better than those who chase windmills?
Be my Sancho Panza and come on my journey!
If I deny the "dream-stuff" within me?
If I cannot hear the birds when they sing?
Am I really progressing or retrogressing?
Is religion really at fault,
Or are the people who wander into that paradise,
Simply lost and scared?
Driven by madmen,
led by the blind,
and traversing a land of darkness and enlightenment,
none can avoid.
This truly is Mappo,
If we lack the capacity to dream of better things.
Chris
I've been talking about rights and values largely because I'm trying to develop a framework for harmonizing all the cultural issues and conflicts around me and for implementing Buddhism in our modern society. I've been having some fortune in doing this. By analyzing the various assumptions and "things" that people assert as "principles" and seeking to understand them systematically I've come to see a framework for establishing a morality that is both rational and yet linked to tradition.
The next concept that will help link the principles of democracy with other principles is the principle of "virtue." Values have a purpose. And rights have a purpose. The purpose of a right is to enable actions that will bring about a desired end. Some ends like "Happiness" don't make sense unless one breaks them down into components. And then one sees that pursuit of happiness is a never ending end. We achieve happiness, and then we have to pursue it all over again. If we have a right to "pursue happiness" it is with the constraint that we not harm others in that process.
What makes people join together to create systems of interaction is that systems have "merit" for them. One gets more than one puts in, or at least as much as one puts into the system. If a system requires more from some than others, the others are "free riders" and in a sense acting as parasites on the system. The difference between a parasite and a predator is that a predator functions within an ecosystem as an element of that system, but a parasite functions within a system and harms (degrades) that system.
What makes a system function is that each of the components of that system provide "merit" for the other components. We go to the baker for bread, we go to the miller for grain. The baker buys the grain saving us from having to go to the miller. A trucker ships the grain providing the baker without the requirement to physically pick up the grain. A trucking system links the trucker, the miller, the baker, and farmers, so that each know if and when a trucker is available to ship the product. Economic systems exist because the components have merit, the system has merit.
The merits of a person, group, or system, can also be described as "virtues." Virtues are to merit the way principles are to goals like happiness, freedom, or independence. We follow principles because they are linked to goals. We establish principles because they have merits. When principles are upheld in a way that generates merit for those who uphold it, that is merit.
I got this idea while listening to the House Historian talk about the merits of the House. There is a whole lot more to read on this subject, because it isn't really a new line of reasoning. For some reason we don't hear much talk about virtue anymore. People want their own rights and don't seem to see the importance of "merit" and virtue in acquiring and maintaining rights. And also there is an extremist line of argument "out there" that merit and virtue doesn't matter -- just let everyone act on their own maximal greed and instinct and everything will turn out right. But that isn't true. We can see who meritricious and dishonest behavior degrades the system we live in.
The virtue of a democratic system is that it enables each individual to maximize his own virtues and merit. And the virtue of seeking to exhibit virtues is that it allows each person to pursue his rights to the betterment of the whole. The reason this is so is that the virtues of the subcomponents of a system each contribute to the health of the whole. When we uphold virtues we exhibit merit. This is simple causality.
For example the virtue of Good communications allow truckers to maximize the value of their work efforts, bakers to maximize their baking, and a whole lot of other functions to work better. Thus good communication is a "virtue". It is a virtue of communications systems, and it is a "desired" virtue of the elements of those systems. For example the virtue of "transparency" in Government is that it allows the public to ensure that Government upholds its virtues. The "virtue" of oversight comes from the communications it involves and the need of the "legislature" to keep an eye on the merit of the Executive.
This provides the link between the goals of "liberty", "equality" and the varous structures and systems that actually exist. We also can draw a reverse inference from this discussion. When the press doesn't behave as it "should" -- it doesn't uphold the virtues of a free press, the results are all sorts of mischief. When the legal or executive powers seek to degrade the virtues of a free press they also degrade the merits of their own performance. Virtue is actually tied to attaining generalized goals that enable people to achieve happiness, governments to maximize the "general welfare", and systems to function. Thus we also have a link between what constitutes "good" and what doesn't.
So we need to think long and hard about virtue. Not just in generalized abstract terms but also in our own terms. What are the virtues of my profession? What can I do to maximize my virtue in my role as a "citizen", a "worker", a "spouse" , or a "parent." What are the virtues required for those functions to succeed. What are the criteria for success?
Chris