Tag Archives: Philosophy

BOOK REVIEW: Yoga Sutras by Patanjali [Trans. Charles Johnston]

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Yoga Sutras of PatanjaliYoga Sutras of Patanjali by Charles Johnston

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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There are about a billion editions of Patanjali’s The Yoga Sutras. The one I got was a free or very cheap on Kindle, and is, therefore, probably not the best edition. I don’t know that the Kindle version I got still exists because it included a supplemental essay by Swami Vivekananda that the version I linked to on Amazon doesn’t. However, the translation is the same, and is by Charles Johnston.

For many old works, the edition might not matter too much, but for Patanjali’s Sutras it matters a great deal. First, there’s the issue of the quality of the translation. Beyond that, however, is the question of the analysis. The Yoga Sutras are extremely brief, consisting of only 196 aphorisms. Owing to the terse brevity of the Sanskrit language, many of these aphorisms are only a few words long. That means that there isn’t a high degree of precision in the language of the Sutras, and, consequently, there’s a great deal of room for misunderstanding and misinterpretation. It’s for good reason, therefore, that most editions are 90% or greater commentary on Patanjali’s words.

The Sutras are typically divided into 4 chapters (this convention apparently came well after Patanjali wrote them.) The first section lays out the objective of yoga. The central notion is the need for Chitta Vrtta Nirodha, which basically means to transcend the fluctuations of the mind. Patanjali’s point is that the problem faced by mankind is that people’s minds are run amok. There is a need for some system to facilitate correction of all this monkey-mindedness. That’s where Chapter 2 comes in.

The second chapter lays down an outline of Ashtanga Yoga, which is the eight-fold path of Raja Yoga (i.e. Royal Yoga). While modern-day people tend to think of yoga only as pretzel-like physical postures, that’s just one of the eight limbs of yoga. The eight limbs are: commandments (yama), rules (niyama), postures (asana), control of breath (pranayama), withdrawal of the senses (pratyahara), concentration (dhanara), meditation (dhyana), and liberation (samadhi.)

It’s interesting to note that the limb that many think of as yoga, i.e. the postures, is one of the most briefly covered. Most famously, Patanjali says in Ch.2, Sutra #46, “Sukham Sthiram Asanam” (i.e. postures should be stable and effortless.) The massive body of asana that developed in Hatha Yoga were initially just a means to give one the ability to sit still for a long periods of time comfortably enough to get one’s mind in order.

The third chapter talks a little bit about the last three of the eight limbs (i.e. concentration, meditation, and liberation.) However, the bulk of this chapter is devoted to the supposed magic powers that yogis claimed to have had as a result of their work on improving their minds. For skeptics and scientifically-minded individuals (e.g. yours truly), this is where the Sutras take a silly turn. The translation in question came out in 1912, and it’s clear that rationalism was already gaining hold and magic was getting to be a harder sell. I suspect that was the reason for the inclusion of Swami Vivekananda’s essay entitled “The Powers of the Mind”—to capitalize on the gravitas of the renowned yogi to convince people that chapter 3 isn’t bunk.

The fourth chapter wraps up the book neatly–discussing karma and the liberation of the karmic cycle achieved through the state of higher consciousness called samadhi.

If one has more than a superficial interest in yoga, it’s pretty much obligatory to read some edition of Patanjali’s The Yoga Sutras. I didn’t find this edition to be devastatingly poor, but there seems to be a consensus among reviewers that it’s not among the best translations / commentaries.

I would recommend that one read some version of these sutras, be it BKS Iyengar’s Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Swami Vivekananda’s edition, or Swami Satchidananda’s version. I don’t have any experience with these other editions, though I have read works by BKS Iyengar and Swami Vivekananda, and found works by both to be well-written and clear. Notwithstanding the parts about magical superpowers, the book does provide a lot of food for thought, and in nice bite-sized pieces.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Tao of Jeet Kune Do by Bruce Lee

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Tao of Jeet Kune DoTao of Jeet Kune Do by Bruce Lee

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Jeet Kune Dō (henceforth, JKD) is Bruce Lee’s “styleless style” of martial arts. Its literal meaning is “the way of the intercepting fist.” However, Lee cautions one against attaching too much significance to that name (or any name) in the book’s final chapter. Long before “Mixed Martial Arts” became a household word, Lee was constructing this fighting system that borrowed heavily from the Western traditions of boxing, fencing (conceptually speaking), and wrestling as well as from Kung-fu, Savate, and Judō/Jujutsu. While JKD employs techniques and concepts from these systems, Lee remained adamant that no good came of organized styles built on fixed forms. In fact, that might be said to be the central theme of the book. That is, each fighter should begin with sound fundamentals and build an approach that is ultimately his or her own.

The Tao of Jeet Kune Do is an outline of the martial art. In many ways, it looks like and reads like Lee’s personal notebook. It’s illustrated with crude (but effective) hand drawings of the type one would see in a personal journal, and they are annotated with hand-written notes. (My biggest criticism is that on the Kindle version the graphics are largely unreadable. I’d recommend you get the print edition if you can, which is large-format paperback as I recall.) The book combines a philosophy of martial arts with nitty-gritty discussion of the technical aspects of combat. The philosophical chapters bookend the technical ones.

As others have pointed out, there’s not much that is new in either the philosophical discussions or the technical ones. Lee’s value-added is in how he states these concepts, how he selects the concepts of value (informed largely by a love of simplicity and a hatred of dogma), and the weight lent to the lessons by Lee’s great success story—albeit in a life far too short. Lee was a man of charisma, and one who approached endeavors with gravitas.

Now, I can imagine some readers saying, “Why are you recommending a book on real fighting by a movie martial artist? Would you recommend a book on how to conduct gall bladder surgery from someone because they were on the first two seasons of ER? Would you take martial arts lessons from Keanu Reeves because his moves looked pretty nifty in The Matrix?”

I’ll admit that there is nothing about making kung-fu movies that makes one particularly competent to give advice on close-quarters combat. However, as I said, Lee seemed to devote himself entirely to everything he did. Consider the Bruce Lee physique, which seems so common place among actors today (no doubt in part chemical and in part owing to live-in Pilates coaches) was virtually unseen in the 70’s. Yeah, he probably had good genes, but he must have trained like a maniac as well. Lee’s constant mantra of “simplicity” lends him a great deal of credibility. (It should be noted that pragmatism is not a virtue in the movie-making industry.) Lee demonstrates that he’s given a lot of thought to the subject and done the training when he discusses technical concepts. For example, while he gives high praise to Western boxing and emulates boxing moves in some regards, he also notes that boxers are insufficiently cautious owing to the rules/equipment of their sport (a comment—it should be noted–that can be leveled against any sport martial art.)

The technical material is organized in four chapters. The chapter on “tools” deals with the techniques of striking, kicking, and grappling. A chapter on preparations explains Lee’s thoughts on faints, parries and manipulations. There is a chapter on mobility that discusses footwork and various types of evasions. The last technical chapter discusses the approaches to attack, focusing heavily on JKD’s five types of attack.

The Tao of Jeet Kune Do is undeniably repetitive, but that repetition has value in hammering home key concepts. It’s also consistent with the JKD philosophy of not getting into a great deal of complexity, but rather drilling home the basics. There’s an old martial arts adage that says, “One should not fear the man who knows 10,000 techniques as much as the one that has done one technique 10,000 times.” This seems apropos here. Besides, the concepts that are repeated are often worth memorizing. e.g. Simplify. Eliminate ego. Avoid fixed forms. Be natural. Don’t think about building up as much paring away.

I’d recommend this book for martial artists of any style. Non-martial artists may find the philosophical chapters interesting, but may not get much out of the list-intensive technical chapters.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Way of Chuang Tzu by Thomas Merton

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The Way of Chuang TzuThe Way of Chuang Tzu by Thomas Merton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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The Way of Chuang Tzu is Thomas Merton’s take on Chuang Tzu’s lessons of Taoism. One might ask why a person should learn about Taoism from a Trappist monk any more than one would learn the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi from a Zen monk. Maybe you should and maybe you shouldn’t, but I think Merton did a remarkable job in putting this book together and that there’s a lot to be learned from it. Some may find a fresh fusion in Merton’s approach to Chuang Tzu.

What I like most about this version of Chuang Tzu’s teachings is that Merton doesn’t foul it up with a bunch of analysis. Because the lessons are short and—admittedly, in some cases—arcane, there’s a temptation to write in a bunch of explanation and analysis—both to hit a page quota and to prove how smart the translator is. Ironically, some don’t seem to see the irony of rambling on in explication of Taoism—a philosophy that advocates simplicity and rebukes the wordy for their arrogance. Merton doesn’t fall into this trap. He offers a few pages of introduction as context for the reader, and then moves straight into 62 lessons of Chuang Tzu.

I’d say the introduction is useful, particularly for individuals without a great deal of background in Taoism. In it, Merton gives insight into potentially confusing topics like wu-wei (actionlessness), the yin/yang dichotomy, and the divergence of Taoists from Confucian scholars on the four-fold Ju philosophy of virtue. However, the intro can also be skipped if you do know a about Chinese philosophy, and don’t care to read a commentary on Taoism inflected with Trappist worldview. (Taoists may want to skip the intro if they’re prone to becoming infuriated by an outsider proposing that their life philosophy took a wrong turn along the way. Merton suggests that one shouldn’t confuse Chuang Tzu’s Taoism with what the system has become, the implication being that it was a sound philosophy and became voodoo hokum in modern times.) Merton does inevitably project some of his own worldview as a Christian monk into Chuang Tzu’s teachings. Some might find this to make for a refreshing commentary on it, and others may find it a bit off the mark on occasion.

Merton’s poetic background serves him well here as many of the lessons are in poetic form—partially or totally. Translating poetry is one of the most difficult linguistic tasks imaginable. Merton has the added challenge of never having read the original. He doesn’t read any Chinese languages. He did, however, consult four different translations in three different languages (English, French, and German.) This, of course, means that besides Merton being in the text, there’s a further seepage of Western framing into these Eastern teachings. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether this is a good or bad thing, and arguments could be made either way.

One of the strengths of Chuang Tzu’s lessons is his use of the narrative form. That is, the Taoist sage liked to use stories to impart his wisdom, like the wheelwright who insults the Emperor but then ends up teaching him a valued lesson. One of my favorites is the story about the Prince of Chu sending out high-ranking emissaries to appoint Chuang Tzu to a ministerial post. Chuang Tzu explains why he is turning down the offer by way of an allegory about a turtle.

Chuang Tzu also uses dialogue to get his point across in a way that is easy to follow and clear. A prime example of this is the discussion between Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu about the happiness of fishes, which has an almost Socratic ring to it. The combination of story and dialogue makes Chuang Tzu’s lessons sometimes easier to follow than the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu tends to be more arcane by way of his use of short, declarative statements that are more vague and abstract (that could be a good thing, but given vast loss of cultural context it might be confusing as well.)

I’d recommend this book for anyone interested in Taoism. I enjoyed the Merton’s sparse approach, and think that he does a good job conveying Chuang Tzu’s lessons.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura

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The Book of TeaThe Book of Tea by Kakuzō Okakura

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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This book is neither about tea the drink nor tea the plant; it’s about tea the experience. It’s about what the author refers to as “Teaism,” which is akin to Taoism and Zen and which extols the virtues of simplicity, purity, and humility. Teaism is a philosophy that exists around–and in conjunction with–so many familiar philosophies, but is not subsumed by any of them.

The book is divided into seven parts: I.) The Cup of Humanity; II.) Schools of Tea; III.) Taoism and Zennism; IV.) The Tea Room; V.) The Art of Appreciation; VI.) Flowers; and VII.) Tea Masters.

Part I gives us an overview of what Teaism is. One may get a better feel for the author’s view of Teaism through a few choice quotes than from my rambling description. (I’ll take advantage of the book’s 1906 birth date–and, hence, public domain status–to quote heavily from it.)

“Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others.”

“It’s [The Tea cult’s] very spirit of politeness exacts that you say what you are expected to say, and no more.”

“For Teaism is the art of concealing beauty that you may discover it, of suggesting what you dare not reveal.”

“Let us dream evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things.”

The first part also devotes considerable space to contrasting East and West. The author defends the Eastern ways, which include an exacting and meticulous approach to tea, as not being backwards–as suggested by some in the West.

It should be noted that her commentary, while sometimes sharp in tone, isn’t an attack on the West so much as a defense of the East. It’s interesting to me that there was such conflict as Teaism sprang from Taoism, which is the individualistic strain of Southern China. There is much in common between the values of Taoism and Western liberal thinking. Both share irreverence for tyranny and authoritarianism, and a dislike of that which is forced on one by dictate.

The second part gives a mini-history of the development of tea, but soon sows more of the philosophy of tea in what becomes a lead-in to the following chapter. A couple more choice quotes:

“Perhaps we reveal ourselves too much in small things because we have so little of the great to conceal.”

“Teaism was Taoism in disguise.”

The third part is the core chapter. It discusses the like mind of Taoism and Zen, and how these systems made fertile soil for the growth of Teaism. It is the heart of the book, as it reveals most vividly what Teaism is by explaining the concepts of nothingness and duality.

“One who could make himself a vacuum into which others might freely enter would become a master of all situations.”

“In jujutsu one seeks to draw out and exhaust the enemy’s strength by non-resistance, while conserving one’s own strength for victory in the final struggle.”

“Truth can be revealed only through the comprehension of opposites.”

“The followers of Zen aimed at direct communion with the inner nature of things, regarding their outward accessories only as impediments to a clear perception of truth.”

Part IV describes the place in which the tea ceremony takes place. The key points are: The tea room should be small and simple, and emulate a Zen monastery. The entryway should be less than three feet high, so that all–Shogun or shepherd alike–can be reminded of the need for humility. The first requisite of being a tea master is the ability to sweep and clean. Earlier, Okakura mentions how the most senior monks in a Zen monastery do the most arduous tasks, rather than the novices. This point translates to Teaism. By becoming a master, one doesn’t escape the requisites of modest tasks, but must carry them out all the more skillfully.

Part V, on the art of appreciation, was summed up for me by the quote, “We classify too much and enjoy too little.”

Part VI is where the author goes a little astray in my opinion. She seeks to address the co-development of flower arranging with tea ceremony. She begins by bemoaning the waste of so many flowers–even more-so in the West than the East. “Why were the flowers born so beautiful and yet so hapless.”

Interestingly, she never bemoans the plucking of tea. She anthropomorphizes flowers–not, apparently, because they are living–but because they are beautiful. She imagines that they must feel the excruciating pain of being wrenched from a stem in a way that a rather lackluster looking tea-bud cannot. It’s her deference to the consensus of beauty as represented by the flower as opposed to the simple tea-bud in which she performs the greatest sin against her own philosophy.

Furthermore, she says, “The man of the pot is far more humane than the man of the scissors.” Failing to recognize that the flower planter and the flower harvester are, in most cases, one in the same person.

She eventually explains how those whose philosophy so despised the destruction of life and beauty came to engage in flower arranging. “We shall atone for the deed by consecrating ourselves to purity and simplicity.”

The final part tells us about the nature of the tea master–a monk of leaf and beverage, if you will.

“The tea-masters held that real appreciation of art is only possible to those who make of it a living influence.”

“He only who has lived with the beautiful can die beautifully.”

I recommend giving this thin book a read. I packs a lot of food for thought into a small package. The language is excellent. (The book was originally written in English, and directed toward a Western audience. Hence the extensive defense of Eastern thinking up front.Therefore, there is no worry about getting a particular translation.)

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BOOK REVIEW: Living Your Yoga by Judith Hanson Lasater

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Living Your Yoga: Finding the Spiritual in Everyday LifeLiving Your Yoga: Finding the Spiritual in Everyday Life by Judith Hanson Lasater

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

If you’re the average joe, you probably think of yoga as a series of stretchy postures–many or most of which seem physically impossible for a run-of-the-mill human. If you’re a little more sophisticated on the subject–perhaps you’ve even done a few yoga classes–you realize that breathing exercises (pranayama) and meditation (dhyana) are also an essential part of the practice. However, if you’re hardcore, you realize that there is an entire moral, ethical, spiritual, and philosophical approach to life embodied in yoga.

Lasater’s book is aimed at the latter group or people who plan to one day be in that group. You will not find out how to do a single posture (asana), and you won’t learn how to do breathing exercises or meditation. So, the book might sound like one of those navel-gazing, pie-in-the-sky, philosophical tomes. But it’s not. On the contrary, the chapters are short and readable, and each one ends with exercises to put that chapter’s lesson into practice. Now, it probably sounds more like a how-to workbook. It is, but the exercises can only be carried out in everyday life.

Admittedly, I don’t know that much about yoga, but I suspect such a book is much-needed. I do know that in the martial arts there is also a rich and well-defined moral, philosophical, and–for lack of a better term–spiritual component, and that it gets lost much of the time by a large percentage of students as soon as they step out the door of the dōjō. I suspect this is true of yoga practitioners as well. I imagine that as yoga has spread globally many of the less visible and tangible aspects of the system get left behind. I know this happens in the realm of martial arts–sometimes these elements even get lost in the homeland. It’s a natural side-effect of busy lives; people take on what they can grasp and don’t go looking for the rest.

Living Your Yoga is divided into three parts of seven chapters each (21 chapters in total.) The social circle widens as one goes through the parts. Part I deals with the yoga practitioner as an individual. Part II considers the practitioner’s relationships with others in their immediate domain–family, friends, co-workers, etc. The final part looks at the practitioner in the global context.

Each chapter focuses on a particular virtue or vice and how to cultivate it or mitigate against it, respectively. All of the chapters begin with a quote, most from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali or the Bhagavad Gita, then there is the body of the chapter, followed by a practice on that particular theme, supplementary practices, and a few mantras.

The chapters in the first part are: spiritual seeking, discipline, letting go, self-judgment, faith, perspective, and courage. The second part deals with compassion, control, fear, patience, attachment / aversion, suffering, and impermanence. And the final part considers greed, service, connection, truth, success, nonviolence, and love.

While I suggested this book is for the hardcore yogi/yogini, it has value for a more general readership than that. It’s really for anybody interested in working on self-improvement on a daily basis, as opposed to those who restrict their development pursuits to inside the yoga studio (or dōjō or ashram.) The advice is sound, regardless of whether one ever practices an asana or not.

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Training the Mind

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IMG_0520Left to its own devices, the mind is like Indian traffic: chaotic, noisy, slow-moving, relentless, and brimming with latent rage. Meditation is a tool to help unsnarl the traffic jams so that one can observe the mind as something other than indecipherable chaos.

 

Meditation isn’t the end game. If one goes to the gym daily to lift weights, but one has no interest in–or use for–putting one’s muscles to practical use, one is engaging in an act of vanity more than one of personal development. In the same way, if one builds one’s awareness of the mind, and doesn’t use it for betterment in one’s daily life, what is the point? What do I mean by betterment? I mean defeating the petty elements of one’s nature that cause oneself and others suffering and that keep one living in a world of delusion.

 

Meditation trains one to take note of the daydreams and obsessive thoughts that run through one’s mind, and to do so progressively sooner—before they can coalesce into a full-blown avalanche of negativity and delusion. In meditation, we observe these errant thoughts and then let them float on down the river. As one lives one’s waking life, however, one may take time to consider what these thoughts and daydreams are doing for one. Often one can remain ignorant of the purposes these thoughts serve, realizing only that they make one feel better temporarily.

 

A few of the purposes that these errant thoughts may serve are:

martyrdom (i.e. thinking the world is against one so whatever goes wrong is the result of outside forces)

-ego-boosting (imaging one has the confidence to do something one doesn’t in reality)

-empowerment (fantasizing one has power in the face of feelings of powerlessness)

-wishful thinking (imagining a perfect life just a PowerBall ticket away)

 

So, if these thoughts make one feel better, why shouldn’t one let them fly? For one thing, they keep one from seeing the situation as it is. The fantasy or obsessive thought becomes one’s reality and one remains ignorant of what is real. The problem is that if one wants to fix the problem, one must know what it is (i.e. have a true view of it.) If one imagines that one has no role in the problem, then how can one fix the problem? If the problem is one’s unhappiness, one can always do something—even if one can’t change the external situation.  One’s unhappiness is a function of one’s mind, and is, therefore, under one’s control.

 

Second, by giving into obsessive thoughts and fantasies, one becomes dependent upon them as crutches, and becomes stuck in a cycle of helplessness.

 

Third, when one removes oneself from the problem, one denies one’s power to change the situation—or the emotional result. One makes oneself vulnerable to manipulation. If one doesn’t recognize the ability of another person to “make one mad,” one denies them that power. (But this requires accepting that one has a responsibility for one’s emotional state, a sometimes uncomfortable proposition.)

 

I have a theory that the steadfast pursuit of an enlightened mind will either result in enlightenment or insanity. Why should it result in insanity? Because, the process involves stripping away the coping mechanisms that got one through each day. If one has the internal confidence (i.e. fudōshin, or immovable spirit) to stare in the mirror and see one’s flaws and weaknesses, one may achieve an enlightened state. If one lacks such confidence, seeing those flaws and weaknesses may be depressing. Of course, fudōshin  is just one side of the coin, it also matters whether one has the relative freedom from stress to lead an introspective life or whether one feels the constant pressure that propels most people back into old habits. It’s easier to make positive changes when one’s life radically changes, then the power of routine and habit lose hold.

 

The challenge is that the pursuit of an enlightened state of mind is a constant job. Some branches of Buddhism and other mystic religions suggest that enlightenment is a tipping point, and that once one achieves that state one is forever enlightened. I’m not in a position to refute such beliefs, but it seems that it’s more like being a sober AA member–there is an ever-present potential to revert to old habits of the mind. So, one must be ever vigilant. There’s no rest until one is dead… as far as I know.

BOOK CHAT: Walking by H.D. Thoreau

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WalkingWalking by Henry David Thoreau

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Thoreau paints a portrait of walking in such grandiose terms that one will cease to think of putting one foot in front of the other as one of life’s mundane tasks. He’s not talking about just any walking, however. He’s not talking about the mall walkers who briskly exercise in temples of consumerism. He’s not talking about those who walk through the park with top 40 hits blaring from their iPod ear buds.

Thoreau is talking about those individuals he calls saunterers. To saunter, as to stroll, is to walk in a leisurely and aimless fashion. Thoreau’s walking is that which:
-takes place in nature.
-leaves worldly worries behind.
-is not a trivial time commitment.
-is more an exercise of the mind and spirit than of the body.

To the mall walker, Thoreau would point out the error of a missed opportunity to get away from mankind’s chaos and enjoy nature. As he puts it, “The most alive is the wildest.” and “…all good things are wild and free.” He’s also clear in that walking for exercise misses the point by injecting hurriedness into a time that should be about slowing down.

On those with iPods, cellphones, or other contrivances that distract one from the environs, Thoreau is equally clear, “What business have I in the woods if I am thinking of something outside the woods?”

Thoreau’s essay broadens as it progresses. From a commentary on the virtues of sauntering, the essay turns to the glories of nature, the character of America, and the state of thought in his contemporary society. These may seem like unrelated concepts, but there is a string of logic that connects them.

The connection to nature and the virtue of wildness should be clear. It’s nature that is the optimal backdrop of sauntering. It’s in nature that one can be set free from the troubles of the world of man and obtain a glimpse of god. It’s in nature where creativity breeds with chaos turned down and native brilliance turned up.

Thoreau’s discussion of America is tied to the theme of walking in a couple of ways. The first is as a land made for walkers. For example, he points out that a man could pitch a tent almost anywhere in North America without great risk of becoming a meal. The same couldn’t be said of India or Africa or Siberia, where man isn’t the sole predatory creature. The second is America as a place with room to venture out into uncharted territory. Thoreau points out that we may look to the East for the lessons of our predecessors, but a person should look West for opportunities to grow in one’s own right. Of course, Thoreau’s America was different from today’s America.

The end of the essay broadens out even further. Thoreau comments upon mankind and the state of ideas and thought. He echoes Socrates when he talks about that age-old question of whether it’s better to be ignorant (to know one knows little) or deluded (to think one knows a lot, but be drowning in false knowledge.) A reader may suggest that this is a false dichotomy. Why can’t one know most everything and not have a one’s body of knowledge rife with false knowledge? I can’t say, but all of the evidence suggests that if such a state exists, it’s the domain of God or gods (if such entities exist.)

Thoreau also bemoans what he sees as the decline of thinking man. What does this have to do with walking? I think Thoreau answers in the following quote:
“So it would seem few and fewer thoughts visit each growing man from year to year, for the grove in our minds is laid waste—sold to feed unnecessary fires of ambition, or sent to mill—and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on.”

I think that everyone should read this thin book–really an essay and not a full-scale book. The problems Thoreau notes have only gotten worse in our modern age. Far too few take the time to walk, and to acquire the benefits of sauntering.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Mind of the Guru by Rajiv Mehrotra

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The Mind of the Guru: Conversations with Spiritual MastersThe Mind of the Guru: Conversations with Spiritual Masters by Rajiv Mehrotra

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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The Mind of the Guru is a compilation of 20 interviews with various teachers and spiritual leaders. While most of the individuals are from Indian spiritual traditions or offshoots thereof, the author makes concerted efforts to represent a range of religious and spiritual traditions.

The list of interview subjects is impressive and includes: The Dalai Lama (Tibetan Buddhism), Thich Nhat Hanh (Zen), S.N. Goenka (Vipassana), BKS Iyengar (yoga), Deepak Chopra (medical doctor and spiritual pundit), Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (Art of Living founder), Desmond Tutu (Christianity), and The Aga Khan (Islam.)

The book is at its best when these gurus are discussing their thoughts on development of the mind and spirit. Obviously, there is a lot of this type of discussion as that is the expertise of most all of the assembled teachers.

A brief forward by The Dalai Lama sets the theme of the discussion. His Holiness states that in Buddhist tradition one becomes a teacher because one has students. Consider this in contrast to traditions that fallaciously believe the title of teacher is granted from above. A master teacher may grant a teaching licence, but that’s just a piece of paper unless someone shows up to one’s lessons. He then goes on to say that one should abandon teachers who act in an unwholesome manner. This, too, is an important point. Having invested oneself in loyalty, it can feel like betrayal to leave a teacher who no longer suits one.

His Holiness is the lead chapter interviewee. In the early part of the chapter, he presents many thoughts on Tibetan mind science. “Mind science” may seem like a strange term, but there’s an important part of Tibetan Buddhism that deals not with deities and conceptions of morality, but with understanding and improving how the mind operates.

If one comes from a tradition in which science and religion are in tension, this may seem unusual, but there is a definite scientific approach (observing the mind and playing out experiments with it.) One doesn’t see a rift between science and religion in Tibetan Buddhism. In fact, His Holiness says that if certain parts of the religious tradition were proved not to exist, they would have to be abandoned. (For those beginning to raise objections, shown to be unlikely and disproven are two different things.)

A second Tibetan Buddhist, Sogyal Rinpoche, addresses the topic of death, and lends the book one of my favorite quotes: “If you are worried about dying, don’t worry, you will all die successfully.”

The first part of this five part book also includes interviews with Thich Nhat Hanh and S.N. Goenka. The former talks about mindfulness and the “interbeing,” and the latter describes the Vipassana approach to meditation and its development. Interbeing is a term coined by Hanh to address a being who is connected to all things. For those unfamiliar with Vipassana, it’s a meditation practice that emphasizes 10-day intensive meditation retreats. There are many retreat centers where this is practiced around the world, including one in the city in which I currently live, Bangalore.

The second part deals with the unity of mind and body. BKS Igenyar, head of a self-named branch of Hatha yoga, opens the chapter with discussion of his background and approach to yoga. Deepak Chopra talks about the intersection of science and spirituality. David Frawley talks about Ayurvedic medicine as well as some more “out there” subjects, such as astrology.

I hadn’t heard of two of the three interviewees in part three, Swami Ranganathananda and Mata Amritanandamayi. However the third interview was Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, a guru well-known internationally for his soft-spoken teachings that combine yoga with a secular spiritualism rooted in Hinduism but not explicitly advocating it. Swami Ranganathananda is from Ramakrishna’s order, which was a secular spiritualism movement rooted in Vedantic traditions but embracing diversity of belief. Mata Amritanandamayi is one of only two women interviewed for the book, indicating women haven’t achieved equality in guru-hood just yet–for all the talk of enlightened thinking. (This is not a dig at the author, who probably went out of his way to include these two to have diversity in gender as well as diversity of tradition.)

The fourth part adds to the diversity by opening with an interview with Sufi Muslim, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. Sufi is the mystical branch of Islam. (Mysticism meaning a belief structure in which God is considered to be part of one and is accessed by mindfulness and introspection. This in contrast to the largest strands of the world’s major religions in which God is conceptually something distinct from the self and is an entity to be worshiped. Most major religions have mystical elements or a mystical branch, including Christianity and Islam.) This interview eases us away from the traditions that are either of India or have their roots in India. (By that I mean that Buddhism has its roots in India, though, for example, Zen is different from Buddhism as practiced in India today.)I say “eases us away” because the mystical nature of Sufi would not create much cognitive dissonance in yoga practitioners, Hindu spiritualists, or Zen monks, but, instead, shares much common ground.

The second chapter in part 4 is that by the other female guru, Radha Burnier, who is a practitioner of Theosophy, which means “divine wisdom.” This modern development is secular in that it doesn’t advocate a particular religion, but rather engagement to fix societal problems and eliminate biases and divisions. In the interview we get a hint of the divides that plagued this organization.

Part four is rounded out by interviews with Swami Parthasarathy and U.G. Krishnamurti (not to be confused with Jiddu Krishnamurti, who probably would have been included in this book if he hadn’t died in the 1980’s.)The former speaks about the end of knowledge and the latter about his role as an anti-guru, rejecting traditional approaches to thinking about spirituality.

The fifth part of the book is entitled “The Ethics of Engagement” and I’m afraid it’s where the wheels roll off. It has six excellent authorities, Desmond Tutu, Baba Amte, Ajarn Sulak Sivaraksa, Swami Agnivesh, The Aga Khan, and Karan Singh.I don’t criticize the selection of interviewees, but what happens here is that the chapters predominantly become about politics and policy. Some of this discussion is present throughout the earlier chapters, it’s a point that the author/interviewer finds either intriguing or salable. For example, he asks The Dalai Lama about the politics of Tibet and China, but only after much wisdom is shared.

Here is my–sure to be highly controversial–view on the subject. Wise people show the least wisdom when they’re speaking of politics and policy. I understand why readers may want to hear their thoughts, and I know that as leaders they shape movements in these domains. However, their thoughts on such subjects rarely pack the wallop of value they do when they are talking about subjects like improving one’s mind or living a moral life–subjects on which they have great authority.

What happens when the wise talk about policy is the same thing that happens when most people do, they fail to understand the complexity of the issues and they end up making a lot of “have our cake and eat it too” statements. The most common of these is that we need to: a.) raise all the poor to a certain standard of living (a noble cause), b.) eliminate attachment to materialism and consumerism (also a fine cause, no one should be addicted to “stuff.”)

As one trained as an economist, however, when I see these statements issued by the same person in the same interview, I laugh. We have no idea how to achieve these two things simultaneously; anybody who tells you they do is living in a dream world or is deceiving you. If everybody decided tomorrow that they didn’t need a bunch of new gadgets and widgets, this wouldn’t help pull the poor out of poverty. On the contrary, it would lessen their opportunities to raise their quality of life. Conversely, if you want to pull people out of poverty, they have to produce and sell things that other people want. Rising incomes result from rising productivity, and rising productivity comes with rising production–but someone has to buy that increased production. If you have a way to truly get around this dilemma and it’s one that economist haven’t thought of before and which hasn’t either been proved wrong or internally inconsistent, I will personally lobby for you to be nominated for next year’s Nobel Prize in Economics, and would place a bet on you to win.

I will say that some of the authors seem more savvy of the political and societal domain than others. For example, Mata Amritanandamayi says, “Even if we remove all nuclear weapons from our armories and transfer the to a museum [that last bit is, admittedly, a really bad idea], it wouldn’t bring an end to war. The real nuclear weapons, the negative thoughts in our mind, should be eliminated.” In other words, you can’t fix society’s problems through dictates, particularly when those dictates are in contradiction.

One of my lesser complaints with the book is that the author sometimes asks leading questions (i.e. he subsumes a conclusion in the way he forms the question.) However, almost invariably the speaker sets the record straight, but it makes one wonder about how the message is shaped by the interviewer.

There may be a little too much cultural self-congratulation going on throughout the book for some. There’s a primacy fallacy theme throughout the book that India had everything perfect until it was infected by Western ideas. This isn’t to imply there aren’t fantastic ideas and cultural developments that have come out of India. I wouldn’t have read the book if I didn’t believe there were, but there was also the caste system and some other fairly giant issues of institutionalized injustice like women essentially being sold off into marriage.

An example of this bias can be seen in the talk of Swami Ranganathananda. He says of Socrates, “Had he been in India, he would have been honored and worshipped.” Yeah, if he were of the right caste, maybe, but he also might have been bludgeoned to death in a fashion far more brutal than having to drink hemlock.

Overall, I would recommend the book. It is an impressive collection of teachers and all of them have something intriguing to offer in food for thought. One just needs to go back to The Dalai Lama’s Forward and not be so awe-inspired that you fail to look critically at the message of each.

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MASTER WORKS: Apology by Plato

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ApologyApology by Plato

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon page

Apology is Plato’s account of the trial of Socrates. This brief work presents Socrates’ defense of himself as well as his reaction to the death sentence verdict against him. Of course, it is all through the lens of Plato, as Socrates left us no written works.

Socrates was charged with impiety and corruption of the youth. He acknowledged both that he was eloquent and that he was a gadfly of Athens (the latter being a role for which Socrates believes he should be valued.) However, he denied both of the formal charges.

Socrates refuted the charge of corrupting the youth first by denying that he had taken money in exchange for teaching. Taking money was a component of this charge. Socrates’ claim is supported later when Socrates tells the court that he can only afford a very small fine, even in the face of the alternative–a death sentence.

Socrates says that he sees nothing wrong with taking money for teaching–if one has wisdom to share. Socrates says that he has no such wisdom, and suggests the philosopher/teachers that are taking money aren’t in error for taking money, but rather because they really don’t have wisdom themselves.

This is summed up nicely by this pair of sentences, “Well, although I do not suppose either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is–for he knows nothing and thinks he knows. I neither know nor think I know.”

While Socrates raised the ire of the Athenian leaders with what they no doubt believed to be his arrogance, in fact it wasn’t that he thought himself wiser than they, but that he thought they were deluded in thinking themselves wise.

Socrates’ lesson remains valid today. It is the scourge of all ages to think that have finally attained true understanding of the world. Our posterity may know more, but we know all of the essentials and are rapidly converging on a complete picture of our world. We think our generation to be humanity’s sage elders, when, in fact, we are the impetuous teen whose growth spurt has made him cocky. I would propose to you that in all likelihood, even today, the sets of “that which is true” and “that which humanity ‘knows'” form a classic interlinking Venn Diagram. That is, some of the body of knowledge that we take to be proven true is, in fact, false. This occurs because we cannot accept that there are things we are not yet prepared to know, so we use sloppy methodology to “prove” or “disprove.” This one reason we have all these conflicting reports. E.g. coffee is good for you one week, and carcinogenic the next.

VennDiagram_WhatWeKnow

Socrates uses the method that today bears his name, i.e. the Socratic method, to challenge the arguments of Meletus, the prosecutor. The Socratic method uses questions as a device to lead the opposition to a conclusion based on premises they themselves state in the form of their answers. Socrates proposes that if it is he alone who is intentionally corrupting the youth, they would not come around–for no one prefers to be subjected to evil rather than good.

Socrates denies the suggestion that he does not believe in the gods, and in fact indicates that the very suggestion by virtue of the charges against him is a contradiction. What Socrates is guilty of is encouraging those who come around him to develop their own thoughts on god, and not to subordinate their thought to anyone–an idea the leaders found disconcerting.

Socrates goes on to say why he is unmoved by the death sentence. He wonders why it is thought he should beg and wail, when he doesn’t know for sure that an evil is being done against him.

The moral of the story is that those in power fear and will attempt to destroy advocates of free thinking.

This book should be read in conjunction with a couple other Platonic Dialogues, Crito and Phaedo.

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Who Am I?

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“I” am a collection of cells.
some  expressly invited by “my” genes
others are interlopers,  “my” guts their cross-town bus
but these interlopers defend “me”  daily
fending off worse marauders
thankfully
so “I” let them stay inside “me”
“my” greatest shame? “I” am a slave owner.
the  mitochondria in “my” cells  are trapped and  forced to serve “me”
all this begs one fundamental question,
am “I” really just a “me?”
or  a  whole society?

If “my” parts
needn’t be fully integrated
where do “I” end and “you” begin?
can “I” say that “I” have been everywhere?
well, everywhere on this tiny, spherical-ish speck of galactic dust?