Reverend Greg

On asking permission

If you haven’t already read in past blogs, I dive. I started diving when I was in junior high, teaching myself to freedive, how to breathe, how to equalize my ears. I’ve read about diving, studied diving, dove when I had the chance and then – finally having reached the twilight years of my 40’s and having also relocated to the coastal city of Salinas California (just inland from the Monterey Coast) I began diving in earnest.

Like everything in my life I do not consider myself much of a tourist, rather I am in constant love with process, the doing of the thing rather than using the activity as a modality to go places, see things. Diving has always been the one path I have chosen to do by myself.

Living in a society necessitates asking permission for many things; I ask permission to drive when I renew my license, I ask permission every couple of years when I renew my EMT certification. Other things I do not ask permission to do, religion for instance.

My Shidoshi licensing in the Bujinkan is the permission I most highly value. I have worked the hardest and suffered the most for this particular certification and hold it among the highest of my “validations” in my life. Martial Arts would be pointless without a tribe in which to train, especially in this society where I am not called upon to fight on a regular basis.

Diving is a twitchy thing though – the “sport” of diving is the classic science meets religion. Through out the last 3 decades, practically the total time that modern scuba diving certification and training has been available to the those other than ex-UDT members and competitive swimmers, each period has presented new technological advances in dive marketing making this sport more widely accessible to a wider variety of human beings including the elderly, the very young, the physically out-of-shape and even the handicapped.

Do not misunderstand, it is wonderful that so many people can explore a “world within a world” that is, the world of the undersea, but in truth diving is still not a safe activity. There are many very serious medical risks associated with breathing compressed gas under the pressure of the ocean waters. Not many people died decades ago mostly because not many people dove. Now with so many people diving people still die, though the sport has been made safer. Even freedivers, or breath-hold divers (which is what I primarily do) run the risk of blacking out and dying.

The point I wish to make is that diving is fraught with religion, the religion of the illusion of safety. Any particular generation of divers all dive with the same training and virtually the same equipment set-up due to the belief that “this is the only safe way to dive” when in fact advances in diving technology have as much to do with marketing as anything else. Safety in diving is closely related to market expansion and profit margins as it is the safety and survival of divers.

There is one area of diving that remains as controversial as say, downloading your own Gohonzon off of the internet - Solo Diving. Solo diving is the heretical sect of Diving Shu. From the beginning of modern sport diving the community has taken faith in the orthodox doctrine of the “buddy system”. However recently there have been a couple of good books written on solo diving which have re-examined the historical origins of the law of diving with a buddy. Examining the origins of any religion – by the way – always reveals interesting aspects and often shines new light on previously accepted dogma, at least to the open mind.

Here are some good articles for anyone with a further interest on the subject;

But of course seeing the vast marketing possibilities in this once forbidden variation those companies who sell diving training and certification were quick to respond. One company offers an actual course through which one can become a certified Solo Diver. Here is a marketing blurb from their website;

“We realize that many divers dive by themselves, but this in no way makes them "solo divers". They are neither trained nor knowledgeable in the hazards to which they may be exposing themselves. The SDI Solo Diving course examines the benefits, hazards, and proper procedures for planning and conducting solo dives. Completing this course empowers you with specific knowledge, enabling you to make a sound risk analysis when engaging in this type of diving. “

The marketing implications are endless. First, why does one need to be certified to be a diver? Most people, divers or not, know that scuba divers must be certified but why? Are there scuba cops stationed at all corners of the global oceans who will check your “c-card” to ensure proper licensure? No, of course there are not. In fact the only reason anyone must become certified is that nearly all dive shops throughout the world require a c-card of some level before they will rent you equipment or refill your scuba tanks. This is merely in order to protect themselves from later litigation follow accidental injury or death.

This new Solo Diver c-card does nothing. It may allow one to dive solo in a diving resort which employs a dive master to monitor dive activities, but there is no guarantee of this at all. No one is required to accept any dive c-card whatsoever as proof of any tangible thing. In the end, no one really cares whether you are a trained and experienced diver; they just don’t want to get sued when you kill yourself.

The inventiveness of the marketing of this course is what fascinates me. “We realize that many divers dive by themselves, but this in no way makes them ‘solo divers’”. They have pirated ownership of the title “solo diver” and turned it into a rank of sorts, a permission implying that one can only achieve said rank if ones pays for and completes their course. In fact this only works if you are first convinced that “Solo Diver” is anything more than a functional description of an activity one does by themselves. I in fact am a solo diver. I dive alone. When I dive with others I cease to be a solo diver, and when I dive alone once again I become yet again a solo diver.

Let’s look at other applications of this selling technique;

“We realize that many people practice the Buddhism of Nichiren Daishonin, however this does not make them ‘Nichiren Buddhists’". They are neither trained nor knowledgeable in the hazards to which they may be exposing themselves. The “Rev. Greg Dilley course in Nichiren Buddhism” examines the benefits, hazards, and proper procedures for planning and conducting one’s practice of this Buddhism. Completing this course empowers you with specific knowledge, enabling you to make a sound risk analysis when engaging in this type of religious practice.”

But wait! There's more! If you call right now... And of course upon completion of my course you would get a bitchin' card.

Speaking for myself, asking permission is not a bad thing, it is either appropriate or inappropriate depending on what it is I ask permission to do. I believe we Buddhists need to understand this. I try and live by the motto “if you have to ask permission, the answer is no”. Playing by the rules of others is neither bad nor good, like everything in the universe, its just important that we understand when we should make our own rules, and when others should be expected to follow them.

Rev. Greg, Shidoshi

Posted by revgreg at May 11, 2004 10:48 AM