12/7
Renunciation has another significant aspect other than the prevention and elimination of negative karmic actions. Daily, as deluded beings, we go around attaching ourselves indiscriminately to people, places, and things that will literally come back to haunt us during the process of dying and entering the after death state. Example, while scrolling we may come across an image like Trump’s poop-stained white pants seen from behind, and finding it extremely objectionable, click again for an alternate one. But if not objectionable then we lingered. But on what are we lingering? Later, parts or aspects, perhaps even the whole of that content, are remembered and at that point we don’t feel so favorable about it. This is analogous to our ‘karmic scrolling,’ the way we go about doing this or that without much discriminating wisdom, imprinting people, places, and things that will reside at gross levels of our consciousness.
Here, they swim around like fish waiting to surface when food falls upon the top of their world. In other words, triggers. So renunciation limits triggers by mindfulness of all things activating body, feelings, our environment, and our mind in general. Noting here that ‘mind’ has gross and subtle levels. Mindfulness is the first of thirty-seven attributes of Buddhahood. So what to leave in and what to leave out of our daily interactions, or karma making, relies on the ten actions, positive or negative, three of body, four of speech, and three of mind. These are positively curbed by taking Pratimoksha, liberating vows that restrict actions of killing, stealing, use of intoxicants, sexual misconduct, and the egregious abuse of speech. Notably, lying and slander.
On a less theoretical level, illustrative of my point, a man at the cafe yesterday wanted to speak with me. Soon we were launched in deep discussions that covered religion, politics, and the music business, in which we’d both been involved. At seventy-six, he still seemed to be, but to what extent it was hard to tell. The more we spoke the more negative the topics began, to the extent both of us were then wading in a pool of negative actions. Of body, he spoke and made judgements about women, and made a crude reverence to what made his ex-wife, divorced from her over thirty years, happy. Of speech, no doubt we both were lying to some extent as it’s inherent in strictly ordinary conversation, i.e., exaggeration, misrepresentation, omission, commission, etc. Of mind, wrong views, inaccurate portrayal of the right view, and even wishing harm came up in his support of harmful mass round ups, concentrations, and punitive deportations to quasi ‘dark sights.’
The most destructive conversation we had concerned Frank Sinatra, a figure with whom my new friend was most enamored. Of course, he’d never met him. But I had. So this conversation was another one, besides Buddha dharma, in which I was very animated and held forth. We both agreed, as an artist, Frank was pretty evolved. But what I didn’t dare discuss, because of my friend’s attachment to Frank was his ‘character,’ or lack thereof. This brings us back to what to leave out: hero worship of unsuitable figures.
I confess I use to hero worship the premiere 20th century American poet, Ezra Pound. My best friend at that influenced me to take him up and, in some regard, I was just following his lead. Interestingly, Ezra pound hero worshipped a number of historical figures in his celebrated Cantos, an epic poem. One of them was Mussolini whom he promoted as a propagandist in his Rome Radio broadcasts: “…he continued to refer to Il Duce as an artist in later years, perhaps as a way of rationalising his newfound hero's status as a dictator. Seen as an artist, Mussolini gained the artistic license to do as he liked." ‘Jefferson and/or Mussolini’ is very unconvincing, but the point is clear enough: both are great men, one following in the tradition of greatness of the other. As Chace remarks, "politics for Pound was... a kind of hero-worship.” (Empty Air: Ezra Pound's World War Two Radio Broadcasts Gibran van Ert, p53) Another word for this is cult of personality, vis-à-vis Trump’s base. So hero worship is quite dangerous.
Abandonment and realization, of people, places, and things who and what are not good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end, are unsuitable objects of refuge. And refuge, by way of identifying one’s own purpose and accomplishments—or lack thereof—with someone else’s, is exactly what my friend, eager to hear stories about Frank, was doing.
The only suitable refuge, that to which we become totally attached, is the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Notably, it’s for the duration until we reach the state of a fully enlightened Buddha. So Buddha’s the people, a man who ceased to be ordinary by awakening to an ultimate truth. The Dharma is the place where the embodiment of the intangible (dharmata) is given, and Sangha is the thing—the people—with whom we should create and hang out. Because after talking to my erstwhile friend for an hour too long, I came away with nothing, until I wrote this piece.
14/7
The accurate intuiting of a meaningful expression in another language is learned by the mastery of verbal expression first in a single language. That mastery, in all its particular skills and earned tolerances, enables this intuitive understanding of a univocality—the Buddha’s speech—or the language that speaks all meaningful expressions. Knowing this language the particular attributes of all languages is then automatically known and subsumed into the target language.
16/7
Comment in response to a post by one of Harvards lawyers about Trump’s persecution of the oldest university in America: “When the editor of TS Eliot’s The Wasteland, Ezra Pound, was asked if he’d teach at Harvard, he replied, ‘Teach at Harvard? Impossible.’ What did he mean? He was one of the most intellectual people to ever walk the planet. Steve Bannon is a mental midget by comparison, what to say of who or what’s currently in the White House. But they’re related, as later Pound was convicted of treason for making fascist broadcasts on propagandizing Rome Radio in Mussolini’s Italy. At the war’s end he was sent to St. Elizabeth’s Mental Hospital in lieu of prison.
Comment in response to a post about Trump, surprise, becoming a dictator: “Not too long after Donald rolled out his candidacy the first go around, my sister asked me what I thought. I immediately replied, he’s a dictator. Seems obvious now but it wasn’t so much then. Fascism is a disease producing a political platform of xenophobia, racism, and profiteering. As a long time residence of New York City, you took certain things for granted. One of them was that Trump has this disease. It was always the key to understanding his public pronouncements and stabs in politics. Now, this is all understatement as he compulsively removes the country’s work force, causing America, in all likelihood, to suffer the same fate as the Taj Mahal, in Atlantic City. Y’all ready for receivership?”
Comment in response to a post using the claw of a hammer to hold the nail on the first swing: “Funny, brilliant, but when I hung sheet rock many years ago it was all one motion. Nail to board, as if a dart, then swing in rapid succession. Screws were driven in similarly with screw guns. Now, if want to talk about the art, before it’s lost, of picking lemons off thorny branches, also in lightening speed, without shredding your arms? Visit your local ICE detention center.”
17/7
Comment in response to a post about a family who just expatriated to Mexico: “It was an online writing friend who expatriated to Mexico that first planted the seeds of my own such move to Cambodia. Back then, it seemed a path more particular to individuals and as such there were somewhat predictive laws that went from a just blowing off steam behavior, to ‘withdrawals’ from one’s own culture, to other cultural over-saturation, to an emergent new self for a greater, less self-centered, ‘purpose.’ Doing this as a family, I imagine the benefits, if they stay positive, can be also tremendous in helping many others. For the sake then of those others and your family, may you be blessed with the universe’s infinite synergy for the new dream that comes from love of both self and others in an undying Equality.”
18/7
Trump believes in tariffs cruel roundups, incarcerations, and deportations of so-called illegal immigrants, Green Card holders entering and exiting the US, and, randomly, any US citizens of color who seems ‘suspicious’ of falling into the former two catalogues. This, as voiced by his ICE agents defending their actions, which are de jure, or illegal according to law. But are becoming legal de facto, or in practice, as Trump passes executive orders edging the nation into marshal law. This amongst rumors he also wants to remove twenty-five million naturalized citizens.
Pound, who was convicted of treason at the ending of WWII, believed in this: “You have for years had cheap goods DUMPED in from Russia. Your alliance with Moscow will bring no relief to that wound. Your Jews have ruined your home manufactures. Loans from the city of London, loans to the Orient, interest paid in cheap cotton goods, loans to the South American countries, interest paid in beef from the Argentine, and ruin of English grazing. The laws of durable government have been known from the days of King Wen. When empires go to ROT, they go to rot for known reasons.” (gradesaver.com)
Pound went to a mental institution as mentioned above. “The film snapped but the projector stayed on,” a classic psychotic breakdown, being his defense for staying out of jail. But what shall be done with Trump who’s already scuttled America’s reputation in countless ways? According to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s observations (written while waiting for his execution in a failed conspiracy to assassinate Hitler) a dictator like Trump may, unfortunately, not be evil, a condition which eventually subverts itself. But rather, just very stupid about compassion, meaning he has zero amount of moral imagination, and this never ceases.
What secularist figure was very smart about moral imagination and compassion? The tirthika philosopher Emmanuel Kant, who believed that if everyone consistently treated each other as ends in themselves, it would lead to a "kingdom of ends," a society where everyone's dignity and autonomy are respected.
Again, as Buddhists, we must do all we constructively can and just stay calm. In reality, nothing is happening any more or less than it was before. This is the view and expressed message of the objectless, Great Compassion. His Holiness the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa, not long before passing into parinirvana, when asked what would happen to him after he died, famously said: “Fundamentally nothing will change.” Similarly, amidst all this apparent chaos, tyranny, and injustice out of the White House, like stormy dark clouds, they too will pass. But before they do, many of the unprepared will be swept back into a terrifying bardo, or intermediate state, from whence they came. In the wake of America’s first takeover by a bona fide dictator and his authoritarian government, many lives will be inexorably changed. There will be much misery and anguish, ‘crying and gnashing of teeth’ to quote the Christians, as states secede, new laws and constitutions are drawn up, and ICE trolls the streets unstoppable, something like a scene out of the Walking Dead or Nazi Storm Trooper dramatizations. Just remember what the Karmapa said, fundamentally nothing will have changed. This isn’t the first time we’ve been stormed on, or even wound up in hell, and it won’t be the last. Remember to be the Buddha of that place wherever it may be. The current wars all over the world can similarly be seen as the cemeteries in a tantric mandala, and the White House as a celestial mansion, seating all five skandas in their defiled, most deluded dimension of extreme hatred, desire, delusion, greed, and tyrannical ambition. These monstrous giants, as Blake depicted them, then can also be seen, from their energetic side, as mirror-like wisdom, discriminating wisdom, spacious omniscience, revelation of form, wisdom of accomplishment, and so forth, as long as we remain in the blessings of our Guru’s lineal transmission. One that, if authentic, has continuously been heard and realized since the time of the Mahasiddhas and Buddha Shakyamuni. And in the timeless time of the Sambhogakaya Buddhas and Bodhisattvas nonabiding in the Akaniṣṭha heaven of Buddha Vairocana’s limitless space.
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