Hideo Noda, victim of Communism

Reading Whittaker Chambers’ Witness for the first time, I was intrigued by his mention of an innocent Japanese college student swept up by the Communist underground in America. Hideo Noda (野田英夫, 1908-1939), nephew of the peace-loving socialist politician Prince Fumimaro Konoye and student of Diego Rivera, was a warm-hearted and talented man apparently drawn to Communism by a genuine sympathy with the poor. You can see in his 1933 work Scottsboro Boys (pictured) a portrayal of working-class urban life that should be familiar to any visitor to an American city. After a discussion with Chambers, Noda eagerly agreed “to go to Japan to work as a Soviet underground agent”, although Chambers does not make it clear if Noda realized that this work would involve espionage.

At this point I decided to Google Noda’s name, and found both an unrelated Japanese-American nisei painter with the same name (crazy coincidence!), and an English biography on the website of a museum which carries his work. This biography is curiously whitewashed of his Communist adventures, although according to Chambers, they occupied a great part of his life after 1934.

Here is how the museum describes his later life:

Noda didn’t adhere to authority or strive after a false reputation. He was a humantistic [sic] painter who turned his eyes to the world of the mind and continued painting the working class, immigrants, circus performers, the unemployed and children from the bottom strata of society. In 1938 he was diagnosed with a brain tumor but continued to paint, holding his eyelids open with adhesive tape. Noda died prematurely at the age of 30.

Seeing such an incomplete biography inspired me to write this quick post to correct the Internet on this matter.

The attempt to establish a Soviet network in Japan failed, and his Tokyo contact John Sherman was commanded to go on to Moscow and barely escaped death there. Noda was also stuck in the underground and it appears he was eventually destroyed by it. Here is Chambers, meeting Noda for the last time:

I saw [Noda] only for a moment [in 1938], to give him the address [of his next meeting place]. I did not ask, of course, where he had been since I had sent him on to a hotel in Southern France. Before Noda had been alert, somewhat as birds are, as if in him mental and physical brightness were one. Now he seemed a little faded and tired. Our brief meeting was stiff… I suspect that Noda was so silent because, had he begun to speak, the words that came out would have been: “Oh, horror, horror, horror!” … In 1939, the New York Times published his rather impressive obituary. In Tokyo, the promising Japanese-American painter Hideo Noda had died suddenly, of a “cerebral tumor.”

John Sherman refused to testify on the subject of Noda, pleading the fifth. This means that there is no information on Noda in English that does not either derive from Whittaker Chambers’ account or whitewash his Communist background. There is no Japanese-language equivalent to Google Books that would allow me to research this quickly, but none of the Japanese accounts of Noda online mention his underground work, except for one blog post which hints vaguely at “information collection”, but fails to mention any of his multiple trips overseas during the treatment of his “brain tumor”, if indeed he was diagnosed with a tumor at all. It is striking that the museums that hold his work do not realize what he was doing when he died, but it seems that Witness really is our only standing witness to the Communist underground at least on this detail.

Posted: January 3rd, 2012 | World Peace | No Comments »

The Paranoid Style in American Politics

Excerpts from The Paranoid Style in American Politics:

As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated–if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.

The higher paranoid scholarship is nothing if not coherent–in fact the paranoid mind is far more coherent than the real world. It is nothing if not scholarly in technique.

Posted: October 16th, 2011 | Excerpts | 1 Comment »

How Sangha and Paccekabuddha Refute Peace for Buddhists

When Siddhartha Gautama became Shakyamuni Buddha he decided against peace. What does this mean?

Perfect peace, inner and outer peace, means accepting whatever happens to you. Please consider this for a moment.

If someone attacks you with intent to kill, you have the choice of resisting or accepting. Resisting your attacker means fighting them; the political concept of “non-violent” resistance means very little in such a physical situation. Accepting your attacker is the only peaceful solution. It also means that you will die. If you can accept your own death you are a truly peaceful person.

If someone invades your community and asks you to surrender to their will, you have the same choice. If you “non-violently” resist the invaders, you may not be taking up arms but you are demonstrating that your beliefs conflict with theirs, which is a disruptive response, not a peaceful one. Complete surrender is the peaceful option. A perfectly peaceful community is therefore one that will be extinguished at the slightest touch.

The principal legacy of Buddha is the sangha, or community of monks. The sangha follows a very strict set of rules. They do not surrender to people who ask them to secularize their community. The establishment of a rule-abiding community in human society is not a peaceful action. It implies a small but recognizable level of resistance to the emotions and entanglements of lay society. Its membership is strictly voluntary, but it actively fights inner disorder, through its dispute system, and self-extinction, through its mission to propagate the dhamma. We must acknowledge that the sangha probably has the effect of promoting peace and absolving suffering in the society it depends on. The sangha is a skillful means to dhamma. But it is not a perfectly peaceful community and was not meant to be.

(Aside: Under the leadership of a Buddha I can accept that the sangha would be perfectly peaceful because any opposition to the sangha could be eliminated without conflict through a peaceful and compassionate reaction instructed by perfect understanding. But ordinary people are not Buddha.)

For people to follow rules they must believe in them. Belief is not a rational concept. No amount of rationality can force someone to drop everything and take up the monk’s robes. To make that decision you must have, as Buddha did, a belief (1) that the dhamma can be taught through sangha (2) that it will change the state of the world and (3) that this is a good thing. Unless if you are already Buddha these things are not obvious. They require a deep mystery to activate themselves in your mind, a recognition of Buddhism as a power and a force beyond a voluntary practice of meditation.

These three beliefs are cultural institutions. In Buddhist countries their power is strong; you believe, your family believes, and your friends believe. It is relatively easy to be a monk. In the West, none of those things are likely to be true. Many people may have a strong grasp of the dhamma in the West. But the dhamma is not acting on the world through a strong sangha. At best it is taking baby steps, during face-to-face personal encounters, in carefully considered acts that everyone must agree to be promoting peace in order to be considered Buddhist. Teaching mindfulness can be done over the Internet, but this is not the same as acting mindful. Only when people believe in the ability of dhamma to change the world for the better can the sangha be grown. They must not only believe tentatively that it sounds like it makes sense; they must devote themselves, they must give money, they must build, they must tell their friends and make their beliefs more acceptable. The sangha thereby is forced to institute itself on the world.

Dhamma is not peaceful, because Buddhism teaches that it requires propagation, and the propagation of dhamma is not peaceful. It is a force that acts on the world, eliminating wrong view and establishing deeper understanding. It does not drift through the air, seeping into the ears of meditators and giving them ethereal power. Sangha does not exist without its human believers, its pious monks and pious laity. It is very much a worldly force that builds order and disturbs the natural chaos. Trees must be chopped down to create its gathering spaces. It represents itself in monks, temples, pagodas and books, in local histories, in familiar illustrations and jataka tales. These things are not excess junk surrounding the dhamma but a reflection of the cultural power of the sangha, the same power that is necessary to maintain the community of monks and the vinaya they keep.

Who is a perfectly peaceful being? The Tripitaka gives us the answer. Some Buddhas are what we call paccekabuddha (縁覚 engaku). “Buddhas are enlightened by themselves and enlighten others: Paccekabuddhas are enlightened by themselves (but) do not enlighten others: they comprehend only the essence of meaning (attha-rasa), not the essence of the idea (dhamma-rasa). Because they are not able to put the supramundane dhamma into concepts and teach it; their realisation of the Dhamma is like a dream seen by a dumb man and like the taste of a curry from the city to one who lives in the forest”. (Suttanipata Commentary)

“Thus having entered upon religious life, he retires to the forest and goes on alone.” (Niddesa) He does not chop down any trees, for he needs no meeting spaces. He forces no bhikkus to wear robes or abstain from alcohol. In fact, he forces no one to hear the dhamma, but lives alone, “like the horn of a rhinoceros”.

If you were to summon superhuman self-control and achieve inner peace today, you would not become a Buddha. You would become paccekabuddha, understanding transience and dependent arising, but not how to control the force of compassion. Perfectly aware compassion makes you more than peaceful; it makes you a net positive force. If compassion were peaceful then an enlightened world, a world where all men become Buddhas, would be a peaceful one. But compassion is not peaceful, so a world where all men become Buddhas is simply an opening into further enlightened work.

In establishing the sangha the Buddha went beyond the concept of peace, because he not only saw the dhamma but knew the dhamma inside and out, and could not live anything other than dhamma, and was led by the dhamma to compassion, and was led by perfectly aware compassion to create an institution. Buddhists must therefore believe that this institution, when it follows the rules laid out by Buddha, is a positive force in the world.

Posted: July 19th, 2011 | Dharma, World Peace | 1 Comment »

On Japanese Asamkhyeyas

Quadrillion, quintillion… decillion…? Anyway, in English, we can use our high school Latin to construct names for ever increasing powers of 10. In Japanese, though, this system was never used, because enough kanji were available for any human need. As described by Matt a few years ago, in 1627 a Japanese guy named Mitsuyoshi Yoshida decided to venture forth and invent numbers with names that went from an acceptable extension of kanji (載 sai, one hundred tredecillion) to more than a little unusual: take 恒河沙 gougasha, one hundred septendecillion, but literally “the number of grains of sand on the Ganges”, the Ganges being more of a figurative concept in Japan at the time. (Yoshida himself technically changed the definitions of these numbers in the various editions of his book; these were revised later by the scientific community at large. The numbers I give here are the standard form. Japanese Wikipedia has more details.)

Yoshida grabs various terms from the Renge-kyo, or Lotus Sutra, but these terms were actually more precisely defined in the Gandavyuha appendix to the Kegon-kyou, or Flower Garland Sutra, or Avataṃsaka Sūtra. When the author of the latter tries to explain how long it took for Buddha to reach enlightenment, he employs the term asaṃkhyeya or “innumerable”, which Wikipedia defines quite succinctly as follows:

An asaṃkhyeya (Sanskrit: असंख्येय) is a Buddhist name for the number 10¹⁴⁰, or alternatively for the number as it is listed in the Avataṃsaka Sūtra where the values are a=5, b=103 in the translation of Buddhabhadra, a=7, b=103 in that of Shikshananda and a=10, b=104 in that of Thomas Cleary who makes errors in the calculation.

An article linked by Wikipedia provides another source, giving us the following table of authoritative values:

A strange person in Amsterdam also has things to say about these numbers, including the claim that all the translators have some sort of error. I think she wrote the Wikipedia article.

In Japanese, the term for asaṃkhyeya is 阿僧祇 asougi, which Yoshida defined as 10³¹ and 10⁶⁴ in the various editions of his book, and his disciples redefined as 10¹⁰⁴, simply because they wanted words for large numbers. We can already see some trouble here. It is not clear to me why Yoshida strayed from the calculations of Buddhabhadra and Shikshananda who predated him by a very long time. It is also not clear where Wikipedia’s figure 10¹⁴⁰ came from, but let us leave that aside.

Yoshida felt fit to finish his mind-boggling catalog with the limit of ten septillion vigintillion. To this number he assigned the name 無量大数 muryoutaisuu, which means “an immeasurably large number”. Certainly it is beyond the needs of any ordinary human. But it is obviously not beyond measurement. Also, if you will scroll up a little, you will find that the mysterious word asougi also translates back to “immeasurable” in the original Sanskrit. I am suspicious that Yoshida was not only unaware of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, but also the meaning of the Sanskrit words he was pulling out of the Lotus Sutra for convenience.

When later Japanese researchers did reread the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, they discovered a bountiful supply of Buddhist words to express numbers far beyond the septillion vigintillion level. Both Japanese Wikipedia and a website linked from there employ Shikshananda’s reckoning to supply values to terms such as these:

and so forth. Being based on the same source, both Cleary’s translation and the Japanese table end up with the same number, which Cleary calls a “square untold”, but in Japanese is given the fantastic name 不可説不可説転 fukasetsufukasetsuten, that is “untheorizable-untheorizable–fold”. This must truly be the largest number nameable in Japanese without scientific notation, although due to the multiple translations, its value is a little shaky: between 10^10^36 and 10^10^37. Unfortunately it is dwarfed by the googolplex, 10^10^100. But it is a sufficiently large number that to write it in regular notation as 10 followed by 0s, you would have to have an intergalactic amount of empty space to write all the 0s.

n.b. While making this last table I ran across the Lalitavistara Sutra, which gives an ayuta as 10⁹, niyuta as 10¹¹, etc. The age of the Lalitavistara Sutra is unknown. However, comparing it to the enormous numbers of the Avatamsaka Sutra and the smaller numbers of the earlier Abhidharmakosha, we can see that the Lalitavistara Sutra seems to use the same numbers as the Abhidharmakosha and therefore predate the Avatamsaka Sutra, or else the author had an unusually small imagination.

Posted: March 25th, 2011 | Excerpts | 2 Comments »

Family, part 1

The dreariness of the family’s spiritual landscape passes belief. It is as monochrome and unrelated to those who pass through it as are the barren steppes, frequented by nomads who take their mere subsistence and move on. The delicate fabric of the civilization into which the successive generations are woven has unraveled, and children are raised, not educated.

I am speaking here not of the unhappy, broken homes that are such a prominent part of American life, but the relatively happy ones, where husband and wife like each other and care about their children, very often unselfishly devoting the best parts of their lives to them. But they have nothing to give their children in the way of a vision of the world, of high models of action or profoundsense of connection with others. The family requires the most delicate mixture of nature and convention, of human and divine, to subsist and perform its function. Its base is merely bodily reproduction, but its purpose is the formation of civilized human beings. In teaching a language and providing names for all things, it transmits an interpretation of the order of the whole of things. It feeds on books, in which the little polity—the family—believes, which tell about right and wrong, good and bad and explain why they are so. The family requires a certain authority and wisdom about the ways of the heavens and of men. The parents must have knowledge of what has happened in the past, and prescriptions for what ought to be, in order to resist the philistinism or the wickedness of the present. Ritual and ceremony are now often said to be necessary for the family, and they are now lacking. The family, however, has to be a sacred unity believing in the permanence of what it teaches, if its ritual and ceremony are to express and transmit the wonder of the moral law, which it alone is capable of transmitting and which makes it special in a world devoted to the humanly, all too humanly, useful. When that belief disappears, as it has, the family has, at best, a transitory togetherness. People sup together, play together, travel to- gether, but they do not think together. Hardly any homes have any intellectual life whatsoever, let alone one that informs the vital interests of life. Educational TV marks the high tide for family intellectual life.

The Closing of the American Mind, pp. 57-8

The source of this problem is described in the paragraphs that follow, for those interested.

Posted: December 19th, 2010 | Excerpts | No Comments »

What if they held a nuclear test and nobody came?

On September 15, the American National Nuclear Security Administration in Nevada executed Bacchus, a sub-critical nuclear test, which they refer to as a safety test of the American nuclear stockpile. It was dutifully reported in a press release and on their Facebook page (!). And… nobody noticed.

At the end of September, they again reported this in their monthly newsletter. And… nobody noticed. Fully two sources reported on this in September: a man named Andrew Kishner and a man named RKM Ming Lai. Neither is associated with any news source; they are private, little-read bloggers.

The NNSA could have been forgiven for thinking that their sub-critical test was really not a big deal at all. Then, quite suddenly, in the morning of October 13, Asahi TV noticed!

アメリカが臨界前核実験　オバマ政権下で初

10/13 05:50
　米政府が臨界前核実験を行っていたことが分かりました。オバマ政権になって初めてです。

　米エネルギー省のホームページによると、実験は先月15日にネバダ州で行われたもので、地下での核爆発ではなく、臨界前実験によって核兵器開発のデータを得ることが目的としています。同じ実験はこれで24回目ですが、前回の2006年8月以来、オバマ政権下では初めてです。アメリカは爆発を伴う核実験を禁止する包括的核実験禁止条約を批准していませんが、「核なき世界」を目指すオバマ大統領は批准への強い意欲を示していて、臨界前実験でも国際社会から批判される可能性があります。

After hearing of Asahi’s belated scoop, the Mayor of Hiroshima issued a letter of protest. Only then was the Peace Watch Tower reset to “zero” (or, rather, 28), English-language news reports issued, NGOs notified, etc. All of this happened roughly a month late.

It seems like nobody at the Hiroshima mayor’s office, or indeed anyone else in the world with an interest in nuclear issues, was actually watching the NNSA website. The NHK falsely reported that a statement was released October 12. One group opens their article with the roundabout statement, “It was learned on October 12“, and an explanation that the NNSA failed to make an announcement beforehand like they should have. But the fact of the matter is that no announcement was made on October 12. In fact, someone at Asahi must have remembered to check the NNSA website on this date, and found the month-old announcement.

Posted: October 29th, 2010 | World Peace | No Comments »

Politically Incorrect Glossary of Japanese Buddhism

高野聖 Kōya hijiri

A brand of merchant from Mount Kōya, usually from the criminal class. Often improperly translated as “Buddhist missionaries”, sometimes with the claim that they spread some Buddhist beliefs, which is at best a vast exaggeration of the facts. In reality, although they were approved by Kōya authorities, the approval chiefly permitted them to make a living as traveling salesmen, perhaps playing some music or dancing on the side.

English Wikipedia amusingly links their Kōya hijiri article to another term, yadōkai, which they describe as follows: “Yadōkai (夜道怪) is a derogatory term for Kōya hijiri. They were considered to be a kind of supernatural creature, wandering at night, damaging property, injuring people or kidnapping children. As shown in Gegege no Kitaro. Kōya hijiri served as itinerant traders, were well informed about life, and deceived local people.”

解毒圓 Gedokuen

A brand of medicinal herb sold by a pharmacy named Dōshōan 道正庵 under exclusive contract from the Sōtō Zen sect of Japanese Buddhism; it was sold to Zen temples as well as the general public. Mixing Gedokuen with various other herbs or rubbing it on yourself was guaranteed to cure almost any ailment, and it was advertised as a panacea. The story went that the recipe for Gedokuen was received by Dōgen from the white fox kami Imari, and Dōgen went on to order Dōshōan to sell the drug throughout Japan. This story was fabricated in the 1700s and tacked on to the first printed biography of Dōgen, which created a fairly confusing narrative where Dōgen’s whole life built up to endorsing a magical drug. However, the Sōtō Zen sect apparently approved of this activity. It continued until 1945.

Another famous panacea of the Tokugawa period was called Kintaien 錦袋圓, and was also invented by a Buddhist sect, allegedly communicated to a young monk in a dream by the sect’s founder Gyōtei.

般若湯 Hannya tō

“Water of Perfect Wisdom”. A term for alcohol used by Japanese Buddhist monks, implying that drinking this very special water will open you up to the wisdom of Buddha. Drinking alcohol is a violation of one of the five precepts of all Buddhist monks and is grounds for expulsion from the sangha, except in Japan. In the Meiji period, many temples had signs posted at the door warning monks not to bring alcohol inside, but hannyatō would be carried in regardless. Contrary to the American scholarship on Japanese Buddhist jargon, this euphemism is not meant to cover up the fact that monks are drinking alcohol. Rather, it is a sardonic term, and many Americans seem to misunderstand the deadpan tone in which the joke is told (e.g. “if you call it hannyatō it’s okay”). It is still used today.

There are various other Japanese Buddhist terms which had secret slang meanings in the Edo period, most of which are not fit for publication on a family blog: 念仏講 nenbutsukō, 阿弥陀経 Amida Kyō, etc.

三種の浄肉 sanshu no jōniku

“The three kinds of pure meat”. It is often claimed that the precept prohibiting killing renders all Buddhist monks vegetarians. However, in Japan (as well as China and Korea, in this case) circumventing this rule has proven all too simple. There was a sutra somewhere, nobody knows quite where, that says that there are three ways to make meat pure:

1. You didn’t see the animal being killed.
2. You don’t know whether it was killed for your sake.
3. You didn’t hear whether it was killed for your sake.

These exemptions are so ludicrously huge that meat is pretty much fine. Thus everyone in Japan has an in-joke to laugh about, and gaijin vegetarians who come to a temple seeking Japanese vegetarian food are oftentimes naively disappointed (or charged exorbitant prices for shōjin ryōri).

僧兵 sōhei

“Warrior monks”, or more accurately the military forces of temple-states. There are entire books written about this subject, but suffice to say, the majority of “monks” from A.D. 950-1600 were not above setting fire to rival temples or pillaging local villages. Usually they lived in temple towns, 門前町 monzenmachi, and not within the temple itself. Most notably found in Hieizan Enryakuji (controlled western Biwako), Kyōto Hongwanji (distributed throughout the provinces), Kōyasan Kongōbuji (controlled Kii), and and Kōyasan Negoroji (controled Kii; notable for manufacturing muskets).

Posted: October 1st, 2010 | Dharma | 1 Comment »

Why Esperanto is Fun

In the Land of Invented Languages
by Akira Okrent. Spiegel & Grau, 2009. Buy it on Amazon

This book is relentlessly fun to read and written from the perfect point of view. Okrent is a practical linguist, who harbors no fantasies of a universal language, but is yet open-minded and deeply interested in the people who do invent languages, and why they make them. I think the most important lesson I learned from it is why Esperanto is fun, and people should make an attempt to learn it.

Back around 1998 I stumbled across the website Learn Not to Speak Esperanto and had myself a good laugh at the people who would try to promote this clumsy language. Why, it’s like Italian written in Eastern Polish! Any other constructed language is better than this one! What a joke! Already I was thinking about it the wrong way, but even though I examined constructed languages many times over the intervening years, I never was able to approach it in the way Okrent presents it for our edification.

Everything about Esperanto makes it more interesting to learn than its competitors. First, despite its weirdness as a language, it’s easy to learn; and once you learn it, you can make new and funny uses of the weirdness to delight your fellow learners. Second, it’s fun to speak in, as opposed to its predecessor Volapük. Third, and finally, the Esperantist culture is one of promoting universal brotherhood and is so lively that it makes you want to speak the language more and more.

Consider the fundamental differences between the way language is thought about in Esperanto as opposed to its competitors, as pointed out by Okrent. One of the example texts that Zamenhof used the original Esperanto books is a letter to a friend, which starts, Kara amiko! Mi presentas al mi kian vizaĝon vi faros post la ricevo de mi a letero, or “Dear friend! I can only imagine what kind of face you will make after receiving from me this letter.” Clearly the intent of this passage is not to make a perfect language, but to puzzle and delight the reader. Reading this example, perhaps more than a few Esperantists sent off some puzzles to their friends as well. In the context of thinking about language as puzzle, we do not need to strive for perfection. But if we do strive for perfection, then we start to forget about how much fun learning a language can be.

The way Esperantists congregate and talk to each other also makes the language more enjoyable. The chief argument against Esperanto, of course, is that English is already a world language. But contained in English, for non-native speakers, is an undeniably bad implication. They are forced to learn English, whether they like it or not, to conduct business with native speakers; and they will be mocked if they speak it poorly, since it has a large native speaking population who more often than not simply assume other people have learned it for their sake. Now consider how people learn Esperanto. It is learned by choice, outside of school, as a “useless” but fun hobby. (Isn’t it interesting how the most enjoyable endeavors in modern society are “useless”?) It has no business application, but is only used for sharing humanity. When the learner comes together with other Esperantists, there are very few or no native speakers, and everyone treats each other as equal. At a conference, the Esperantists genuinely encourage each other to keep it up, and enjoy themselves by singing songs, dancing, and so forth. Conferences receive letters from other parts of the world, for no purpose other than to let them know that they can communicate in Esperanto in any country.

Finally, as an English speaker I can stay at any classy hotel in the world when I travel, but it will be a lonely stay, and English will be part of the room service rather than an enjoyable endeavor for the staff. As an Esperantist, not only could I have lodgings in the homes of fellow Esperantists, but we would have a hobby to talk about and a good reason to become long lasting friends.

In short, this sounds like something I would very much like to do; but business interests are forcing me to learn Japanese first.

Posted: July 1st, 2010 | Book Reviews, World Peace | 6 Comments »

My Global Consciousness Before JET

No human being is really a free agent. We taken in the universe through the filter of our five senses, and we are limited by the ability of our minds to process these experiences and make something coherent out of them. Our actions are thus determined by what we have been permitted to see. It is truly awe-inspiring that we live in a world where information comes constantly steaming in to us, second by second, from millions of fellow humans. It was once thought that the Internet would usher in a sort of utopia, since everyone would have access to the sum of all contributed information. This has not proven to be the case, because so many things disrupt total perception, not least of which is our own limited understanding. But this global consciousness, however problematic, is the main benefit that this age has over previous ones.

Before the 20th century, even the most powerful people in the richest lands could only have a dim sense of what was going on on the other side of the planet and why it was happening. Today, that information is available not only to the ruling class but to roughly half the world. This allows us to root out wrong views and instill peace like never before. It’s not clear how long this age will last, but surely it is not permanent, so the vast information flow of the present day has given us a great responsibility to find ways to put our new consciousness to good use. Most people today are using this information flow for their own entertainment, but I believe that’s because they are unsure of what to do with their power; it’s as if everyone has been made a king in their own house, and they can’t think of much use for their tiny kingdom except to hire an army of jesters. I personally struggle to get beyond that point. Going on JET instead of taking a job at home will be the first of hopefully many excursions to help me increase my understanding.

Consciousness is shared only to the extent that we are willing to put ourselves into other people’s shoes. This is why the work of the translator is precious and delicate, and why, even in the saturated market of American-Japanese dialogue, I want to throw myself in, to disrupt and reconstruct. Presenting people’s own narratives in a positive way helps the rest of the world learn. Twisting words in unintended ways, on the other hand, leads to misunderstanding and sometimes hatred. Japan is a country that has spent almost 150 years trying wholeheartedly to engage itself with Western modernization, yet it is a country still subject to an unspoken distrust that Western Europe and the Anglosphere have long since eliminated from their own cross-national dialogues. If we can’t communicate openly with this culture that has aimed from the start to please us, how can we positively approach the billions of Asians and Africans who treat the West with an open enmity? According to Importing Diversity, part of the impetus for the JET program was the Western world’s distrustful reactions following the death of Emperor Showa in 1989. Japanese officials were gravely moved by the unequal treatment the Emperor was given in outsider eulogies. There must be some lack of understanding going on here; how can it be resolved?

This, of course, links into the greater problem of the endless possibility for misunderstanding. It seems that no matter how much truth lies behind a person’s words, the act of rendering it into speech links you into a specific time, place, and community. Even the simple message of the Buddha, which I regard as sublime philosophy, is today crammed into the box of one “world religion” among many. I recently read a comment that referred to Buddhism as a literal “hoax”. What is the hoax? Cause-and-effect? Impermanence? This is what happens when Buddhism goes through the lens of Protestantism and their insistence on history rather than story, on the question of whether or not something happened hundreds of years ago rather than the truth that underlies it. It would be impossible to correct this wrong view without completely uprooting the culture on which it lies. And if Buddhism is subject to this, then there is no statement which can survive such a brutal, inevitable misunderstanding.

As a spiritual person, I have a sort of conviction that the ideal of world peace can only be built on the foundation of inner peace, after the philosophy of Thich Nhat Hanh. In Japan, religion in the Western sense is disliked as anti-social dogma. But Japan, of course, is possibly the most peaceful country in the world; most crime is committed by foreigners. If my theory is correct, where does their inner peace come from? And if I am wrong, what is the origin of their national character? I will try to answer these questions for myself, and bring the answers to the rest of the world.

Going on JET will change my global consciousness radically. I don’t expect to give up my commitment to peace, but I may develop a new outlook on the world. So, I’m archiving these questions now to look back on them in a year, or two, or three; perhaps I will have answers, or perhaps these questions will seem less important in the face of new and larger ones.

Posted: June 2nd, 2010 | JET, World Peace | No Comments »

Northern Buddhist Dark Humor

Once, when the Venerable Ananda was staying in the Venuvana, he overheard a monk reciting a verse from the Dhammapada: “It would be better for a man to live a single day and see a marsh fowl than for him to live a hundred years and not see a marsh fowl.”

The Venerable Ananda went up to him and said, “My son, the Buddha did not say that! This is what he said: ‘It would be better for a man to live a single day and see the harsh, foul nature of samsara than for him to live a hundred years and not see the harsh, foul nature of samsara.’”

The monk then went to see his preceptor and said: “The Venerable Ananda tells me that the Buddha did not speak this verse.”

The monk’s preceptor replied: “The Venerable Ananda is a mistaken, senile old man who can no longer remember the Dhamma. Keep on reciting the way you were taught.”

Later, Ananda came by and heard the verse being recited just as before, without change. He said: “My son, did I not tell you the Buddha did not say that?”

The monk replied: “Yes, but my preceptor said, ‘Ananda is getting on in years and cannot remember so well: go on reciting as before.’”

Ananda reflected: “I myself told him the correct verse, but he did not accept it.” Ananda then contemplated the question of whether anyone would be able to convince this monk to correct his recitation, and he realized: “There is no one who can get him to change. The Buddha’s disciples Shariputra, Maudgalyayana, and Mahakashyapa have all entered nibbana; to whom could I now turn as an authority? I shall also enter nibbana.”

Aśokarajavadana (“The Face of King Aśoka”), unknown Chinese translator in Taisho Tripitaka 2042.50:115b-c, trans. John S. Strong in The Experience of Buddhism p. 90

Posted: March 17th, 2010 | Excerpts | 1 Comment »