Discussion questions for this week

2/8/2021

Who needs your offering most right now? Are they in a position to receive it?
How is your offering related to your issues or activities also a gift of care for yourself?
What concerns or worries you about your activity of offering?

And an activity: Look over the resources suggested by participants and choose one (or more) to investigate. Or, find a new resource yourself and post it for others to investigate. Comment here about your explorations.

7 Comments

Sawyer Jisho Hitchcock

2/10/2021 09:10:38 am

Hi all -- Sitting here at the computer fresh from a viewing of Doju's Dharma talk from a few weeks back on Buddhism and politics. To bring forward one aspect of the talk: I've found that I've been grappling pointedly over the past several years with a sense of how the teaching of Right View might interact with our social/political engagement. Doju mentioned the view that a somewhat fundamental assumption of Western ideas about politics is the importance of one's own personal opinions being "correct." We could see this play out as hyper-loyalty to political party, or in a sense of the dukkha involved in broadcasting certainty about current issues on social media, or even in the prevalence of conspiracy theories (we are the ones who are Right in this false world, and that's important enough to commit violence to prove).

In myself, I've noticed a strong attachment to some idea of Right View, in a way that can induce anxiety. For example, as the pandemic was just beginning, I found myself immediately grasping for some wider perspective about what this "pause" could mean for societal transformation (rather a large weight!). Here we are near a year later and things are still quite obscure, and many harms of course still so entrenched in so many of our ways of being. Though there have been new lights. "The mind of a sentient being is difficult to change," says Dogen, with a gentle grin, I hope.

More recently, this inner grappling for rightness has come up in pursuing a job as a vegetation field survey tech this coming summer with a study led by Purdue University called the Hardwood Ecosystem Experiment. It is a 100-year long study that began in 2005 to study the effects on wildlife and forest composition of different styles of timber harvesting (logging) as "natural resource management." It all takes place on tracts of Yellowwood and Morgan-Monroe State Forests here in south central Indiana. The ecological particularities of the arguments about how best to manage public forests in Indiana are complex. Having just recently moved back to our family cabin on an edge of Yellowwood State Forest land, after several years focusing in large part on conservation issues in the Western U.S., "re-learning the woods" out here and how to best be in relation with them has felt particularly urgent.

The process of applying for the position could have been freer from anxiety. Had I been less personally invested in holding a "correct" understanding of all the implications of this particular "management-minded" scientific study for the overall good of these woods and their creatures, I'd probably have been more comfortable. And yet, this habitual anxiety for the Truth, along with something deeper underneath I think, propelled me into reading some really helpful publications, and into a great phone conversation with an IU professor talking through some of my perplexities, ecological and ethical. Haven't heard back on the job yet, and yet I feel closer to the trees and their situation.

I recently came across a very straightforward explanation of Right View: understanding the Four Noble Truths. This feels like it can relieve some of the (potentially paralyzing) hangups about "knowing the truth" before acting on it beneficially. We come to right view when we see the dynamics of suffering that play out in situations, in ourselves as well as in micro/macro political contexts. We also unravel suffering when we avoid tying ourselves up in rigid attachments to any particular "right" view.

I think this all relates also to the conversation Brian and Mark were stepping into on the previous week's discussion page: "How do we know what or when?" How do we offer something knowing that we can't know all of its causes and effects? How do we act with the Don't-Know Mind that sees suffering as it is and aspires to relieve it?

Dennis McCarty

2/11/2021 11:03:07 am

I appreciate the gift of your rumination, Sawyer. I spend a lot of time in Yellowwood State Forest, and your concerns touch a chord with me. (Don't have a better solution than the one you provided yourself. But the question was sure worth living in for awhile.)

I also, belatedly, wanted to than Mark for listing contact information for our local representatives, etc. That seems particularly relevant this week, even though it's been up for awhile.

Brian Flaherty

2/11/2021 04:44:43 pm

Thank you for these thoughts, Sawyer, and continuing the exploration of knowing when to act. It reminds me of a contra dance: it *is* possible to observe the moves from the side until you are confident you will know what to do . . . but alas, by then the dance would be over! At some point, you just have to step in.

Brian Flaherty

2/11/2021 04:57:46 pm

Looking through the list of resources offered so far and dipping into a few of them, the first thing that arises in me is gratefulness for this sharing. As my free time comes in a thin stream these days, they will provide food for thought for years to come. THANK YOU.

Second, I will mention here three books, but with the caveat that I have read only a dozen or so pages of two of them and none of the other. However, what brings them together in my mind is a theme they share: the importance of imagination in the transformations they seek.

In order of publication dates:

(1) *Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in Without Going Crazy* by Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone (2012)
(2) *From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want* by Rob Hopkins (2019)
(3) *Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future* by Pope Francis (2020)

One of my permaculture teachers once told me that we already know what we have to do and how to do it -- what we haven't figured out is how to get people to do so. Personally, I have ample confidence in what humanity could achieve if inspired to do so, but I think what is sorely lacking is just that inspiration.

In his *Being Peace*, Thich Nhat Hanh writes about the value of remaining calm in chaotic times:

"I like to use the example of a small boat crossing the Gulf of Siam. In Vietnam, there are many people, called boat people, who leave the country in small boats. Often the boats are caught in rough seas or storms, the people may panic, and boats may sink. But if even one person aboard can remain calm, lucid, knowing what to do and what not to do, he or she can help the boat survive. His or her expression – face, voice – communicates clarity and calmness, and people have trust in that person. They will listen to what he or she says. One such person can save the lives of many." (quoted from https://upliftconnect.com/finding-peace/)

Surrounded -- and understandably so -- by so much frustration and pessimism, I think it is no small offering, at least as a first step, to simply remind people that there are other options . . . and that we all have the innate power to realize them.

Mark Howell

2/12/2021 09:24:40 am

Timefullness

This week I had the pleasure of reading “Timefullness: how thinking like a geologist can help save the world” [1] and then participating in a Zoom call with the author. Because I am a geologist, I was naturally drawn to the notion of helping to save the world. And because saving the world is clearly a beneficial action, I thought it could be appropriate to share with this group.

It is an essay on time from the viewpoint of a geologist. Bjornerud notes that the geologist’s perspective of vast time is not common, especially within our corporate leaders and law makers (here I will also add consumers like us). However, many decisions have vast time consequences such as climate, natural resource management, etc. In this thread she also points to the “7 Generations” planning an Iroquois concept that decisions should be based on their impact to seven generations or 100 years and suggests we as informed Earthlings must insist that our elected lawmakers employ that wisdom.

She argues that we need to build self confidence in our own powers of observation and analysis. Confidence can be difficult to establish and therefore needs to be taught. Good stuff.

My intention is to explore this theme as my YOBA project, with a side experiment of comparing concepts of geological time with the use of time in Zen literature and looking for intersections that may arise.

[1] M. Bjornerud, Timefulness: how thinking like a geologist can help save the world. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018.

Mark Hotoku Howell

2/13/2021 04:18:52 am

On Doubt

Thank you Jisho and Brian for your comments- I have read them several times to let them settle in. (By the way, I have walked many miles through Morgan Monroe. It is a favorite place for me to spend a day.)

Our zendo is presently reading “What the Buddha Taught” [1]. The author discusses “doubt” early in the book. I am full of doubts. In the context of beneficial action, I have many doubts about knowing what actions are truly beneficial and what actions seem right in a moment but have harmful results over the long term. My hope is the author’s comments on doubt will add positively to the discussion on deciding when and how. He says,

“According to the Buddha’s teachings, doubt (vicikiccha) is one of the five hinderances (nivarana) to the clear understanding of Truth and to spiritual progress (or for that matter to any progress). Doubt, however, is not a ‘sin’, because there are no articles of faith in Buddhism. In fact there is no ‘sin’ in Buddhism, as sin is understood in some religions. The root of all evil is ignorance (avijja) and false views (miccha ditthi). It is an undeniable fact that as long as there is doubt, perplexity, wavering, no progress is possible. It is also equally undeniable that there must be doubt as long as one does not understand or see clearly. But in order to progress further it is absolutely necessary to get rid of doubt. To get rid of doubt one has to see clearly.

“There is no point in saying that one should not doubt or one should believe. Just to say ‘I believe’ does not mean that you understand and see. When a student works on a mathematical problem, he comes to a stage beyond which he does not know how to proceed, and where he is in doubt and perplexity. As long as he has this doubt, he cannot proceed. If he wants to proceed, he must resolve this doubt. And there are ways of resolving that doubt. Just to say ‘I believe’, or “I do not doubt’ will certainly not solve the problem. To force oneself to believe and to accept a thing without understanding is political, and not spiritual or intellectual.”

For me, I have great difficulty in seeing clearly into many of the topics of the day. It’s not that I think the problems being raised are not problems. It’s that the problems are enormously complex and are not likely to be easily solved.
--
[1] W. Rahula, What the Buddha taught, Rev. ed., 1. paperback ed., vol. EN132. London: Gordon Fraser, 1978.

Sawyer

2/16/2021 11:13:07 am

"It is also equally undeniable that there must be doubt as long as one does not understand or see clearly. But in order to progress further it is absolutely necessary to get rid of doubt. To get rid of doubt one has to see clearly."

^This is a help to me, and I think matches how I'm feeling in regards to the forestry study I mentioned above... "Doubt" as simultaneously a hindrance to right view and to taking beneficial action; and a catalyst towards right view and taking beneficial action. "Doubt" as something that inherently invites us to resolve/dissolve it, and thereby proceed clearly... "And there are ways of resolving that doubt."

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