Burma and China

Dhamma reflections so accurately represents my feelings on the devastation in Burma and China. I have not been able to look at the images of the suffering, starving, homeless, orphans and parents whose children have been killed due to the cyclones and earthquake.

The recent natural disaster in Burma has led to many reflections as well as opportunities to practice metta meditation. It's hard for me to even fathom the horrors the people in that region must be facing. The live in constant fear from their own inept government and now what little they had has literally been swept away by a natural disaster. We really do live in a very uncertain world in which nothing can be taken for granted. It's my sincere hope that in this time of severe suffering the people of Burma turn to the Dhamma for guidance. I don't just mean the poor citizens of the ravished villages, but the generals as well.

This is a prime opportunity for Than Shwe and his generals to redeem themselves in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of their own people. There isn't a lot we can do where we live other then donate money and practice Metta meditation, but as Ajahn Thanissaro has pointed out there is a lot of good in doing just that. Remember, misfortune can and does happen to everyone, and there is nothing that is certain in the world. It's times like these that highlight the whole "inconstancy" aspect of things from the three characteristics.

This whole event reminds me of the Four Dhamma Summaries chant that Ajahn Geoff's monastery chants.

Upanīyati loko,
The world is swept away.
Addhuvo.
It does not endure.
2. Atāṇo loko,
The world offers no shelter.
Anabhissaro.
There is no one in charge.
3. Assako loko,
The world has nothing of its own.
Sabbaṃ pahāya gamanīyaṃ.
One has to pass onleaving everything behind.
4. Ūno loko,
The world is insufficient,
Atitto,
insatiable,
Taṇhā dāso.
a slave to craving.


There really isn't any security in the world, and we are all brothers and sisters in aging, illness, separation and death as well as the owners of our actions. Let us all aspire to the good and do what we can as we are reminded of just how precarious our lives are. May you all be well.

Chinese government wants to manage reincarnation!

NYT has an op-ed by Zizek on how China got religion.

THE Western liberal media had a laugh in August when China’s State Administration of Religious Affairs announced Order No. 5, a law covering “the management measures for the reincarnation of living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism.” This “important move to institutionalize management on reincarnation” basically prohibits Buddhist monks from returning from the dead without government permission: no one outside China can influence the reincarnation process; only monasteries in China can apply for permission.

Before we explode in rage that Chinese Communist totalitarianism now wants to control even the lives of its subjects after their deaths, we should remember that such measures are not unknown to European history. The Peace of Augsburg in 1555, the first step toward the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 that ended the Thirty Years’ War, declared the local prince’s religion to be the official faith of a region or country (“cuius regio, eius religio”). The goal was to end violence between German Catholics and Lutherans, but it also meant that when a new ruler of a different religion took power, large groups had to convert. Thus the first big institutional move toward religious tolerance in modern Europe involved a paradox of the same type as that of Order No. 5: your religious belief, a matter of your innermost spiritual experience, is regulated by the whims of your secular leader.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the Chinese government is not antireligious. Its stated worry is social “harmony” — the political dimension of religion. In order to curb the excess of social disintegration caused by the capitalist explosion, officials now celebrate religions that sustain social stability, from Buddhism to Confucianism — the very ideologies that were the target of the Cultural Revolution. Last year, Ye Xiaowen, China’s top religious official, told Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, that “religion is one of the important forces from which China draws strength,” and he singled out Buddhism for its “unique role in promoting a harmonious society.”

What bothers Chinese authorities are sects like Falun Gong that insist on independence from state control. In the same vein, the problem with Tibetan Buddhism resides in an obvious fact that many Western enthusiasts conveniently forget: the traditional political structure of Tibet is theocracy, with the Dalai Lama at the center. He unites religious and secular power — so when we are talking about the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, we are taking about choosing a head of state. It is strange to hear self-described democracy advocates who denounce Chinese persecution of followers of the Dalai Lama — a non-democratically elected leader if there ever was one.

In recent years, the Chinese have changed their strategy in Tibet: in addition to military coercion, they increasingly rely on ethnic and economic colonization. Lhasa is transforming into a Chinese version of the capitalist Wild West, with karaoke bars and Disney-like Buddhist theme parks.

In short, the media image of brutal Chinese soldiers terrorizing Buddhist monks conceals a much more effective American-style socioeconomic transformation: in a decade or two, Tibetans will be reduced to the status of the Native Americans in the United States. Beijing finally learned the lesson: what is the oppressive power of secret police forces, camps and Red Guards destroying ancient monuments compared to the power of unbridled capitalism to undermine all traditional social relations?

It is all too easy to laugh at the idea of an atheist power regulating something that, in its eyes, doesn’t exist. However, do we believe in it? When in 2001 the Taliban in Afghanistan destroyed the ancient Buddhist statues at Bamiyan, many Westerners were outraged — but how many of them actually believed in the divinity of the Buddha? Rather, we were angered because the Taliban did not show appropriate respect for the “cultural heritage” of their country. Unlike us sophisticates, they really believed in their own religion, and thus had no great respect for the cultural value of the monuments of other religions.

The significant issue for the West here is not Buddhas and lamas, but what we mean when we refer to “culture.” All human sciences are turning into a branch of cultural studies. While there are of course many religious believers in the West, especially in the United States, vast numbers of our societal elite follow (some of the) religious rituals and mores of our tradition only out of respect for the “lifestyle” of the community to which we belong: Christmas trees in shopping centers every December; neighborhood Easter egg hunts; Passover dinners celebrated by nonbelieving Jews.

“Culture” has commonly become the name for all those things we practice without really taking seriously. And this is why we dismiss fundamentalist believers as “barbarians” with a “medieval mindset”: they dare to take their beliefs seriously. Today, we seem to see the ultimate threat to culture as coming from those who live immediately in their culture, who lack the proper distance.

Perhaps we find China’s reincarnation laws so outrageous not because they are alien to our sensibility, but because they spill the secret of what we have done for so long: respectfully tolerating what we don’t take quite seriously, and trying to contain its political consequences through the law.