Folk wisdom versus Buddhism; a bit on what Buddhism is

I recently saw a nice Youtube video by Ajarn Brahm on Buddhism and Tea, of course partly about that topic.  He started explaining some traditional story references, about ancient monks drinking tea, and the Japanese tea ceremony, and moved on to a story about a British army group taking a tea break during a battle.  The point of the last story was that sometimes in the midst of struggle it's best to stop struggling and take a break, to just pause and get your broader perspective back.

Good advice.  But is it Buddhism?  In a sense it doesn't matter if it was something the Buddha said or not, or a close equivalent.  It's the role of modern teachers--monks, and whoever else teaches--to interpret the ideas to the modern context, to make it available to people, even if expressed quite differently.  But again, is this equivalent to Buddhist ideas?  To me, not really.  It's folk wisdom, related to ideas found in Buddhism, but not Buddhism, not really a direct part of the same set of teachings.

The closest tie-in amongst traditional concepts might be found in mindfulness, which really is a core concept in Buddhism.  It's one that ends up expressed in lots of different ways in lots of contexts.  The main idea is that as part of the process of increasing self-awareness one becomes more aware of the nature of immediate experience.  I guess that states the causal flow backwards, because usually it is described as a tool for supporting development, not an outcome.  It's not so much just related to the experience of external surroundings, although that's part of it, but really how experience itself is experienced, mental states and all that, self-nature, a lack of self, etc.

I'm not blaming Ajarn Brahm in saying this.  It's a great idea, and really we need approachable methods to really do much with the relatively abstract ideas like mindfulness.  He has surely interpreted core teachings more directly in other talks focused on that, and this type of weekly chat is about something else, insights into how to put them into practice, essentially folk wisdom.  Separate from the rest of the context of Buddhist ideas there isn't such a close tie between taking a break or letting a struggle go temporarily and Buddhism, but it could relate directly enough, in one limited sense.

More folk wisdom:  like water off a duck's back

It's really a completely different thing, but I'm reminded of something my grandmother used to say about dealing with conflict, about how to her the best approach is to not get caught up in it mentally.  She would say "it's like water off a duck's back to me."  By this she meant there was a lot of conflict and unhappiness going on around her, usually in the form of my grandfather shouting about something, and she was best off to not make too much of that.  It really seemed to work.  I've struggled with staying actively involved in helping my wife resolve her perceived issues on one level and more or less just ignoring her on another.  Oddly this does tie directly to a suggestion by a monk to just at least pretend to listen.  My grandfather was pretty vocal, easy

Of course my grandmother was not Buddhist, but this practical folk wisdom also overlapped with the core concepts of Buddhism.  I guess one could say she was talking about non-attachment, not mindfulness.  To me there is a closer link in this advice than Ajarn Brahm's because it deals with a change in immediate awareness, not just a habit or strategy for how to deal with one set of circumstances.  Keeping mental distance from conflict that doesn't need to be taken personally is not really an insignificant thing.

You might wonder if that really does translate to a more functional perspective, since I seem to just be talking about tuning people out.  What she did was much more than that, how she applied what I would consider "non-attachment," in a very positive sense. 

This year I visited home and my grandmother for the purpose of seeing her one last time before she died.  During my visit, over two weeks, I saw her go through the loss of one core function after the other.  A stroke had taken her ability to walk and use of one arm, but she lost vision and the ability to digest as well, and then the energy to maintain normal functions.  She took it in stride.  It's unimaginable that someone could suffer like that with such patience and positive outlook, still enjoying the last days with family, still talking about old times or current changes as if dying were just a normal thing.  In a sense it is, but how many of us could experience it as such?

in memory of a very pure spirit

I keep considering this general point of non-attachment lately related to internet comments.  I don't need to become offended every time someone makes a political statement that makes no sense, or posts something objectionable, "flaming" someone else for no reason, or shows something graphic and offensive.  I seemingly could interpret that as not related to me, not about me so nothing to get upset about.  A humorous reference  to this idea is found in a "fake" guided meditation video I saw recently:  F*ck that, a Guided Meditation, by Jason Headely (funny to me, anyway).

Of course there are Pali expressions for these concepts I've brought up (mindfulness, non-attachment), and there was a time when I could cite one after another from memory, but I've been away from the formal study for a good number of years now, so I can't.  I'm onto worldly concerns and learning Information Technology related concepts, and studying tea, and learning a foreign language (Thai).  Wikipedia articles are easy to click around to get a start, and from there one could read dozens or hundreds of other books as references, as I did.

One should keep in mind that the core concepts, modern interpretations of related concepts, and the general purpose and approach to Buddhism are all different things.  For some Buddhism is a religion, all about ritual, the main effect of which is to adjust karma and apply positively to events in this life and also to re-birth related concerns.  For someone else that's not the point at all, maybe about meditation and mental / spiritual states of attainment and awareness, or for someone else quite like psychology, an explanation, or even conventional self-help.  It's hard to say any of them are clearly right or wrong.

It might be easy to go too far related to relaxing interpretation concerns, and say it doesn't really matter at all if the ideas are presented similarly to how they are in Buddhism, that if the general principle is the same the meaning is the same.  It's partly true, but to me there was a point to the Buddha explaining what he did in a number of different ways, based on somewhat complicated structures of related ideas.  Of course I can't say for sure what that intention was (likely more than one goal), but to me the ideas change to a different sort of potential function when they are taken together.  As I see it that only works if the ideas and practices are informed by introspection, application within one's own particular experience.

But then what do I know, right?  It might seem I'm starting to claim to know Buddhism as well as Ajarn Brahm, or perhaps even the Buddha, and I'm implying no such comparison.  I just talk around the ideas a bit, share my impression--that's it.  I'm no authority on what Buddhism is, and that's not a well-defined or limited thing, it's different for different people.

It might seem I'm also implying one needs to commit to some minimum level of application of the other core ideas, to embrace some version of a moral code, to practice meditation, etc.  I'm not.  To me the ideas make more sense taken as a set, and possibly even the practices make more sense taken as a set as well.  It may even be possible to embrace one set or aspect without really doing much with the others, the idea that there are different paths for people of different temperaments or with differing perspectives. 

It seems to me as if some basic awareness of concepts--the teachings--could support any form of the practice of Buddhism; issues of self, mindfulness, and non-attachment, and potential self-improvement.  Of course given the subject "self-improvement" isn't the most natural way to express that general goal of progress and change, of course, but "spiritual progress" sounds too New Age, and self-actualization too modern, and it still dips back into the concept of self.

I've found a lot of value in these ideas, in these teachings.  They are hard to clearly summarize so what one ends up getting is translations of very old core teachings (eg. the Dhammapada), or teachings by a monk, or someone rambling on in a blog or something such.  If someone is very lucky they might see an example of someone living out these principles, but they wouldn't necessarily need to know the core teachings to do that, a lot of it relates to normal personal development.

George Carlin, national pride, and climate change

Something George Carlin (the comedian) said on a youtube video I saw reminded recently me of the subject of climate change:

George Carlin on "pride"


His main point was about how we shouldn't be proud of our nationality or race, because those are accidents of birth, not something we had anything to do with.  He said we should be proud of what we had actually accomplished instead, completing a degree, doing some kind of work, raising kids, maybe even something tied to a social cause and change, etc.  All that sort of relates to Buddhism, or at least it's closer than what I'm actually going to talk about.

At one point he also said that it doesn't make sense for people to always want to save things, to save the whales, save the earth, etc.  His point was that they really want their own world to stay the same, remain unaffected, and it is about ego, being seen as doing something interesting and positive.  He claimed the earth is doing fine either way, and that it would eventually just shrug us off like a bad case of fleas.  This reminded me of climate change.

On the one hand he seemed wrong, because he said some plastic bags and soda cans won't affect the earth at all, but on the other hand we seem to be changing the climate and causing mass extinctions now.  Of course someone could argue there were mass extinctions in the past before we existed, a point he raised, but that's really a separate issue as to whether we are causing this one or not. 

After thinking it through a little it matches what he was saying perfectly, even though he made the video before the climate change subject came up in the present form, so he wasn't referencing it.  We can cause a major change that can kill us all (probably), and the earth will remain relatively unaffected, just not the other species living on it now, many of which will cease to exist along with us.

Better to speed this up, to get to the point.  I did a report on climate change for an ethics class a decade ago, roughly, when the data was essentially the same but the evidence wasn't as well thought through.  Weather patterns are a little more inconsistent now, so it becomes more personal, during events like a major flood or polar vortex.  That report was initially about saving the rain forest, evaluating if that made sense, but transitioned when I researched and realized that was just part of the much more important larger issue (which was essentially common knowledge then, just the details aren't really clear to most even now, meaning the limited best-understanding of the issue). 

Really I should have concluded that the Bush administration was unethical for cleaning any climate change data out of government site sources, which they clearly did.  But I had too much ground to cover and just fleshed out what was happening, not really completing the link back the subject of ethics.

I want to share what seemed like the most obvious discovery.  Based on just a little research then it seemed really obvious we were experiencing an very unusual 10,000 years of climate stability now.  Of course I don't know what will happen with the climate over the next century or 1000 years; scientists reviewing this are sort of just guessing, projecting.  It's easy for that one simple point to get lost in the data, in the graphs,  that the anomaly is the climate period we've just experienced, but if you look at different time-frames it's clear as could be. 

It seemed really, really obvious that's why people have thrived over the last 10,000 years, the period of recorded history (not written history, necessarily, but what we can go back and get great evidence for).  That frozen cave-man guy in the Alps (Utzi?) I think was from longer back, 12k maybe, and he has some impressive gear and clothes, but that's kind of a separate subject, or at least I'll need to simplify it out by not taking into account how things were then.  On to the data.

Climate history:  into the charts

http://climatechange.umaine.edu/Research/MaineClimate/SysPerspective.html

A bit cyclic, isn't it?  This also shows where they are getting the link between CO2 and climate from, although really being convinced of that link or sorting out what it is might take a good bit more research, so I'll leave that aside.  I'm not claiming to have figured out climate change, I just want to point out something obvious in the graphs.

The problem with reading this sort of graph and saying what's going to happen in the next 100 or 1000 thousand years is that the time frame is too long.  Even if it really will get warmer or colder again (the latter more likely, based on history) over the next 10 or 20,000 years we're a bit more concerned about the next 200 or 300 (or as individuals, just this century).  None of the past trends are going to be specific enough to say that, what's going to happen in the next 85 years, but we'll get to what they can say for sure (nothing really, they just point towards some likelihoods).

Note this last graph was about ice-mass versus CO2 levels, not about temperatures, although these are obviously related, maybe just not so obvious how closely linked.  But we need different data to get a feel for how temperatures and the warming idea works out.

http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/IceAgeBook/history_of_climate.html

Seems clear:  it's relatively warm now, and will get colder.  The problem is that those are kind of long cycles (400k years, and roughly 100k cycles repeating), so we're still more concerned in human life-span time-frame, or at least human history time-frame, but this seems to show where things stand now.  It might seem a good thing that things are warming up just now, if the long term prognosis is for another ice-age, but it turns out to be not so simple.  We are paused at the top of one of those temperature spikes now, and it may be that the pause was more significant than where we actually stopped related to ongoing changes.  Lets check another graph.

http://climatechange.umaine.edu/Research/MaineClimate/SysPerspective.html

 

This doesn't seem right, does it?  On the last graph it was warm now (relatively), on here it looks like it's relatively cold now.  This is how long-term trends and changes get to be a bit confusing; someone can show you what should come next or where we are relatively speaking by moving around the chart time-frame.  Here they've shifted it to include a different scale length at the bottom (five different time scales, looks like, showing much longer time intervals further back, so the pattern isn't really clear).  What is clear is that the last 10,000 years was stable, almost the only straight line we're seeing on the chart. 

Really some of that could be just a function of the interval time-frame; it seems likely if you look at the relatively stable time between 3 1/2 and 4 1/2 million years ago spread out by tens of thousands of years (as the section on the right) it would be a lot more jagged too, but it does seem to bunch across only 3 degrees of average temperature variation or so, not so much. 

Again that's really the main point.  There aren't periods of stability like that so often, although again to some extent that might be because in the short term there are (10,000 years) but in the long term there aren't (100,000's or millions of years).  Lets take one more look at a very long time-frame to see how that works.




http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/IceAgeBook/history_of_climate.html

There it is then; it's warmer now, right?  In a sense, yes, in the sense of looking at over the last 3 million years it is.  This graph is a little hard to read since they've shown "age" instead of time present back; put another way, it's "backwards."  As a side note, since the earth is 4 billion years old there are different longer counts to check, and different scales that would show different trends, so 3 million years can be seen as either a really long or a really short period of time.  It was hotter at times, for sure (clearer on the last graph than this one), so it's not as if this is the peak temperature the earth has experienced, just on the high side related to most "relatively recent" graphs. 

The graph prior showed some warmer times around 50 million years ago, and then 200 million years ago in a long period prior to that.  65 million years ago when the dinosaurs disappeared (sound familiar?) there was a "tiny" 2 degree shift on that chart, but it wasn't clear that change caused that, or if it was related to a common cause.  In the short term (100,000s of years) it is warm now, and we'll go through another ice age again (if the former pattern holds, which may actually not be the case), but this longer graph is a bit hard to read; there are patterns here that don't intuitively mean much. 

Lets get back to the shorter term to see what that shows:




http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/IceAgeBook/history_of_climate.html

 

Back to that recent period of stability, 10,000 years, and the idea that it should get colder.  Note that 100k (or so) year cycle that was clear on the 400k year graph just seems to drop right out; the time-frame is too short to really show it.  If we just went back another 20,000 years we'd see that upward spike that would put it in perspective, that we're right at a point where we can expect a "sudden" drop-off in temperatures, but that gets cut off here.  The temperature will drop at some point, it seems, we've just paused at the top of the cycle for some reason (a reason I really don't know, to be clear, and I've not really ran across theories about that since I didn't try to find out).

One more graph and I'll give my interpretation of all this.




http://ete.cet.edu/gcc/?/resourcecenter/viewResource/3/

This is the kind of thing that's showing the current trend of changes.  Not impressed?  The trend gets a little clear if you go back to the beginning of the 20th century, and sliding around the scale make the line pitch change dramatically.  You can adjust that to make it look flat or steep, whichever you personally want to emphasize, like in this one:

http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/IceAgeBook/history_of_climate.html

The reality is the same, global surface temperatures are rising, and it might seem slow to us (a one degree change in a century) but to climate change related scientists it's a bit serious.  Of course no one can really say how serious, or where that graph goes over the next 100 years.  The point that stood out to me is that the 10,000 year flat line of climate stability was an anomaly.  It seems likely that's essentially over now, and remains debatable if we (people) caused that, mostly through carbon dioxide emissions, but we probably did.

The obvious point here I'll let another source summarize, although in this case it's a citation of a citation, a bit sloppy work, but this is just a blog post:


Paleoclimatologist J.P. Steffensen in the January 7, 2002 issue of The New Yorker Magazine (Kolbert, 2002) comments on how paleoclimatic research may help provide perspective on the development of civilization: "Now you're able to put human evolution in a climatic framework. You can ask, Why didn't human beings make civilization fifty thousand years ago? You know that they had just as big brains as we have today. When you put it in a climatic framework, you can say, "Well, it was the ice age. And also this ice age was so climatically unstable that each time you had the beginning of a culture they had to move. Then comes the present interglacial-- ten thousand years of very stable climate. The perfect conditions for agriculture. If you look at it, it's amazing. Civilizations in Persia, in China, and in India start at the same time, maybe six thousand years ago. They all developed writing and they all developed religion and they all built cities, all at the same time, because the climate was stable. I think that if the climate would have been stable fifty thousand years ago it would have started then. But they had no chance."           


It's not completely clear to me that the development of individual people (the human organism) and the development of societies can be closely linked, that it wasn't a good thing for us as individuals--in terms of development, not personally--that things were so chaotic and difficult but a bad thing for the development of civilizations.  Maybe it's as well to not speculate a lot about that, still interesting though.

In conclusion, you can't really conclude anything

What happens next, after the stability?  Hard to say.  It could get warmer for awhile, maybe even given that this change is artificial (probably, almost certainly, caused by us rather than other mechanisms) the future won't be like the past.  It seems quite possible we will trigger the ice age change that was already going to happen "any minute now" over the next couple thousand years or so, but instead it will happen in this century, or the next. 

There are lots of sources that explain these long cycles, the different inputs and factors, but that really is a lot to take in (for example, this is one).  The wild card seems to be that if we really are a separate, unique input (which seems clearly the case, that greenhouse gas emissions by us is the most relevant short-term factor) then it may not be so easy to use the past to predict the future, and it was already hard enough to sort out.  Most likely we won't be able to regain the stability, since that was an anomaly, so more dramatic and frequent change seems more or less a given.  Or that might not "kick in" for another 1000 years, but it seems more likely to happen on the 100 year time-frame, or maybe we really are seeing it during this decade, just the beginning.

Odd you never run across this much detail, though, right, that changes are occurring over different time periods, and we've almost certainly screwed up the one thing that let human societies exist as it had for 10,000 years.  The free ride is over, most likely.  It could be a good thing; people will grow through the challenge, as a group, it just might not be so pleasant if that involves a "die off."

Of course I can't help but tie this to the "global Eve" idea, that in the not-too-distant past there was one female ancestor that gave birth to people that eventually gave birth to all of us.  How could they know that?  Easy; by analyzing the part of our DNA only transmitted by females, mitochondrial DNA (really a separate subject, more on that can be researched by starting from Wikipedia and going on from there).  Or at least genetic research seemed to imply that at one point, but who keeps up, maybe that's been completely disproved.  The point was that not so far back we were down to a small group, according to a relatively well grounded theory, but then those sorts of ideas tend to change over time. 

That could have meant more than one thing, of course.  It could have meant things like climate change nearly ended us, a very natural read.  It could instead mean that the way natural selection and evolution worked out in our own case one successful genetic group shut the door on others (a bit muddied by the modern knowledge that we did interbreed with other hominid groups like the Neanderthals, but that doesn't change the general point).

Either way it's an exciting time, in terms of climate, and we owe it to ourselves to take a bit of a look at the data rather than just listen to interest-group driven media to interpret it for us.

don't worry about climate change; these two will sort it all out

Starving the tiger: Buddhism, addiction, and desire

I gave a talk on Buddhism at a drug and alcohol treatment center on a visit home this year (back to Pennsylvania).  I don't normally do that kind of speaking but my aunt helps manage it, and it was the subject of my past studies, and tied to my personal life now, so I did it.  The talk went well, and at the end I described on Buddhist teaching on eliminating addictive desire, an analogy to "starving the tiger," which I'll pass on here.

It goes like this:  eliminating a strong desire is like starving a tiger.  You can't will yourself not to want something, and can't quickly shift from having that desire to not having it.  I guess this works well for addictions as well, as a part of that.  The idea is that you simply don't "feed" the desire, and over time it ends naturally, like a tiger dying of not being fed.

Of course the central theme of Buddhism is about eliminating suffering, or changing perspective to be more fulfilled, maybe happier, by clearing up some perspective issues.  So not exactly about self-help for clearing addictions but it generally fits. 


Buddhism is a lot of things, an organized religion, semi-mystical scope about strange mental states and other realms, practical self-help advice, psychology--lots of ways to take it.  If there is just one central core of ideas, one scope that fits best, then for sure the Buddha also taught to lots of people in lots of ways to make the ideas more accessible.  I'd interpret that some of the more formal and mystical aspects are really not the point but that's just my take.

roughly the point

Further reading can take you further into the theory.  There are lots of general references out there, like this one.  Of course different sources would say somewhat different things, so best to read around and keep an open mind.  Eventually you might want to move past the relatively light and simple interpretations into the core teachings as presented in original concepts, like this one for attachment (upadana) in Wikipedia. 



Of course even the most uninterpreted, original core teachings still convert concepts from one language and one original context to another, so best to take any mix of ideas with a grain of salt as well, and not rely on any one source too much (especially Wikipedia, better as a starting point, but that goes without saying, right).

Related to quitting smoking

How well does this idea work, or how does it actually work?  I quit smoking once, so I'll use that as an example.

As a smoker I had practiced quitting; I finally did it the third or fourth time.  Those things really are addictive, and lots ends up acting as a trigger for wanting to smoke.  Stress is a main one; smoking seems to help offset stress.  Of course it really doesn't work, since it adds the stress of needing to smoke cigarettes, so after a couple hours without a cigarette any smoker is feeling way more stress than they would as a non-smoker.  But it feels like the nicotine and other chemicals reduce the feeling of stress, even if part is the stress of the addiction itself.  Meals tend to become related to smoking, or driving, waking up, drinking alcohol, kind of everything since a smoker smokes a cigarette at least once an hour, or all the time.

credit bear skin site

I talked to my grandfather about quitting and he essentially said he just did it.  He decided he would quit one day, without much reason for doing so (it was before they were as clear about health issues, but come on, they knew).  He said he and my grandmother both smoked and he went home and told her she could smoke the rest in the house and she was finished too.  And so she did, and he simply stopped right away.

So I tried that.  Not as simple as he said; the cravings were rough.  I used an herbal and tobacco blend for the first few weeks to help separate from the act of smoking, but essentially just never smoked cigarettes any more.  It helped I'd moved to a place where people didn't smoke much, to Hawaii, where it seemed unnatural to be lighting up.  The change also helped shift away from triggers, although it didn't change being addicted, and with triggers like meals that was going to travel with me. 

nothing about cravings though (attribution)

The cravings did diminish over time, as in the analogy, but it was a slow process.  After a month it wasn't quite as severe, but still bad enough, after a few less yet, but still in progress.  At about one year I was still craving them related to times of stress but it wasn't nearly the same experience.  So it was just as if it took the tiger a good long time to die. 


At about two years I never gave it much thought, although once in awhile related to being stressed.  Most people would've broke down and smoked while drinking at least, but I wasn't drinking much alcohol anyway, and my grandfather's advice pointed me in a different direction, to just letting it drop.  Maybe that added a little more pressure in one sense but it also made the approach clear enough.


I'm not so sure how it would work for other kinds of addictions.  I guess it would depend on the person and the circumstances and the drug they were addicted to.  Of course the analogy and staunch conviction alone wouldn't be enough for lots of it; changing habits would come into play, maybe some counseling.  I didn't have time in that talk to really get into their experiences much at all, just to answer questions.  They had some good ones; they were pretty open minded about the idea of a foreign religion, and pretty quick to pick up on how it wasn't necessarily same set of ideas they were familiar with as an organized religion, but with a lot of shared elements.

sort of an overview; see link for source

Related to ordinary desire

Really this is more the point of Buddhism; how can someone resolve a deeper level of dissatisfaction through a change in perspective, not so much about just quitting a vice.  Not so easy to give an example, although there are lots of potential examples.  No one issue would ever really get to the main point of a paradigm shift in thinking, and they would all tend to be trivial. 

For example, one might notice they are unhappy because they don't travel enough, or can't afford the type of car or clothing they would like, or electronics, etc., and then change expectations instead of buying a lot more stuff.  That's all good, very positive and pragmatic, but only part of the issue.  It's not really right to say it's not on a deep enough level, more that a general deeper understanding and adjustment at a broad level is more the main point.  But smaller individual shifts are potentially a good thing, and not unrelated.

One basic type of desire always come to mind when I consider these things, the attraction to the opposite sex.  In modern life that's used as a marketing tool, and related to entertainment, with related images more broadly available than ever before, to some extent unavoidable.  I can't really say I've somehow "got past" that, or that I deal with it a lot better than most, or as I did.  I suppose one could try the "starving the tiger" approach to move towards limiting it, but it would be hard to get too far with that.  The next thoughts that occur to me relate to how close it seems to causing suffering (that one particular type of desire), or dissatisfaction, whether unfulfilled related desire causes a problem or not.  Who knows; to some extent, sure, but it's not how that's taken in Western society or where I live now (Bangkok; within Western-influenced Thai culture).

To me I've had more success with some introspection and consideration limiting my mental noise a bit, by offsetting the tendency to always follow things mentally.  I guess maybe I've just said a woman in a short skirt is an exception, or even a universal exception, for guys.  But I don't stress much over waiting on things, problems that come up, other people not making sense, wanting to own something, etc.  It's not so hard to take it for what it's worth.  All of this shifts in meaning if you take Buddhism to be a context-relative form of self-improvement rather than a spiritual quest to be fundamentally different.  But I'm not saying that's how to take it, it's just one possibility.

I guess this is how Buddhism or any type of introspection and self-improvement goes, you start from where you are, work on what's relevant, and the degree of change and successes relate to how you end up applying it.  I'm not even close to enlightened, and I don't really clearly know what that means.  Meditation and unusual mental states are related subjects, and I have had some experience with both, but it's almost a different story. 

Different people apply Buddhism differently, take different paths, if you like, and for some the ideas are what it's about, others would go straight to meditation, for others deep religious semi-mystical experience would need to be a component, and so on.  To the extent any of these could help improve everyday experience it would still be functional Buddhism. 

About karma, who knows, maybe that's relevant, possibly more relevant, or maybe not something a lot of people wouldn't benefit from sorting through.  For Thais it's the most central concern in Buddhism, merit score-keeping, but they don't usually seem to completely know what to make of it, and when it's time to let all that drop and do normal things instead they do.

Those women in that treatment center might be better for saying how well the analogy really works related to desire as a component of addiction.  For me and quitting smoking it wasn't so helpful, but then the story about my grandfather just willing himself straight through it was.  It seems possible some abstract theory about desire might actually help some people, even without a lot of context about enlightenment and meditation and the rest.

Progressive Christianity; stages of faith

I recently ran across an article citing numbers on the increase of people that associate themselves with "Progressive Christianity" in America, rather than other more traditional types (which as I recall they grouped as "evenagelical," but surely any category definitions would be open to debate).

I won't address the changes in percentages of people holding different beliefs in America, or really even address what I think the broad category means, besides introducing it.  My purpose here was to introduce my own past exposure to unconventional interpretation of Christianity, mainly in the form of religion classes I took at Colorado State University.

References:

The following general overview is cited from:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Christianity

The characteristics of Progressive Christianity can be summarized as:

• A spiritual vitality and expressiveness, including participatory, arts-infused, and lively worship as well as a variety of spiritual rituals and practices such as meditation
• Intellectual integrity including a willingness to question; distrust of dogma
• Understanding of spirituality as a real psychological or neural state (see Neurotheology)
• Liberal interpretation of the bible as a record of historical human spiritual experiences and ideas rather than of historical or physical facts. Acceptance of modern Biblical criticism.
• Acceptance of multiple understandings of the concept of "God", including God as Nature, as the Universe, as a shared psychological construct, and/or as community.
• Understanding of communion as a symbol of the church community as the body of Christ
• An affirmation of the Christian faith with a simultaneous sincere respect for other faiths
• An affirmation of human diversity
• Strong ecological concerns and commitments

My own study was most interesting related to a specific interpretation presented by a former CSU professor, Dr. Sanford.  He didn't spell out his own beliefs about Christianity, or offer a comprehensive interpretation of what it should include or omit from a traditional interpretation, but instead drew on a non-literal reference, tying Christianity to a lot of completely different types of ideas.  

I'll get into more of what it was and what it meant, but the short version is that the main reference linked development psychology theory to Christianity and "stages" of faith, with an excerpt about what those were following (the "highest" four stages only, the rest is in that reference page):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_W._Fowler  (reference on Stages of Faith)

• Stage 3 – "Synthetic-Conventional" faith (arising in adolescence; aged 12 to adulthood) characterized by conformity to religious authority and the development of a personal identity. Any conflicts with one's beliefs are ignored at this stage due to the fear of threat from inconsistencies.

• Stage 4 – "Individuative-Reflective" faith (usually mid-twenties to late thirties) a stage of angst and struggle. The individual takes personal responsibility for his or her beliefs and feelings. As one is able to reflect on one's own beliefs, there is an openness to a new complexity of faith, but this also increases the awareness of conflicts in one's belief.

• Stage 5 – "Conjunctive" faith (mid-life crisis) acknowledges paradox and transcendence relating reality behind the symbols of inherited systems. The individual resolves conflicts from previous stages by a complex understanding of a multidimensional, interdependent "truth" that cannot be explained by any particular statement.

• Stage 6 – "Universalizing" faith, or what some might call "enlightenment." The individual would treat any person with compassion as he or she views people as from a universal community, and should be treated with universal principles of love and justice.

Background and interpretation

Note that none of this has much to do with belief in miracles and such, the most literal interpretation, or even to specific points in Christian teachings.  It's not about Christianity at all; really about faith in general, forms of it.  

Refer back to the first reference list of Progressive Christianity aspects:

• Understanding of spirituality as a real psychological or neural state (see Neurotheology)
• Liberal interpretation of the bible as a record of historical human spiritual experiences and ideas rather than of historical or physical facts

That's essentially it.  The discussion is about faith in general, on to how it relates to human experience, not as a set of guidelines or clearly determined beliefs, and the interpretation it points to is non-literal, so to a great extent the actual events or ideas can be seen as representative or even as possibly added later.

Non-literal New Testament interpreation; the idea that the texts changed over time

It's a bit of a tangent, but some other study on the changes in publication order in the New Testament text related to the latter point.  My take-away, based on much more specific findings through literature study, was that the different books in the New Testament were not written soon after the death of Jesus, and were not independent accounts, but some were based on others.  This analysis allowed for a study of the changes in the ideas over time as well, with the general trend that more miracles and more God-like attributes were assigned to Jesus as time passed.  That's definitely not literal Biblical-authority Christianity, in fact it disputes that there even is such a thing.

How could this be possible?  To begin, accepting it could require a lot more study than I conducted, a much closer review of research sources, and it seems likely that someone might end up concluding whatever they wanted to initially, especially if they held strong beliefs one way or the other at the outset.  But to answer the question, it was based on the study of the language used, not the English translation, but the original version.  But the Bible was translated over time, right, and original written texts wouldn't be available, so the study would be quite complicated.

My son and I were just discussing one issue that enables such dating and study; the changes to language over time.  It seems language doesn't change quickly, but at the same time every year new words are added to modern English use, and there is a slower transition from older terms for things to newer ones.  Hard to come up with examples, right?  Sort of, not exactly.  In that conversation with him I mentioned that curtains used to be called "drapes," and pants used to be called "trousers."  Of course I'm no linguist, and it's possible that in England right now someone is calling curtains "drapes and pants "trousers."  The general point remains the same, even if I'm terrible at giving examples.

I remember my Grandmother referring to a couch as a "Davenport" when I was young.  I never really knew the extent to which that was common (seems likely related to the city in Iowa, presumably where couches were manufactured at some point).  It would be a monumental task but scholars could trace the same types of changes in ancient Greek and Amharic texts to try and pin down when certain passages were written two thousand years ago.  

As for text dependency, that's a different issue.  One could determine which passage was sourced from another when too much of the content was common for the two to be independent.  Both would be impossible tasks for an ordinary person to really even fully understand but that's how specialized scholarship goes; lots of people work on things that would be nearly impossible over a long period of time, and if all goes well clear and correct findings would emerge over time.

But back to Christianity, or rather perspectives on faith in general, not document dating or revision, but the ideas.

Stages of Faith and non-literal faith; general ideas

The general point that text (Stage of Faith) and my professor were making was that faith can be reviewed in the form it occurs in, not only in being correct or incorrect based on to what extent different ideas are accepted.  The most literal and narrow forms relate to a simpler type of belief, and according to this theory simplest types of belief correspond to people also interacting in the most socially limited forms, and essentially framing the world in simpler terms.  So actually interpreting faith and teachings, rather than trying to accept them in the most literal and simplest forms possible, is a sign of psychological maturity, or in a sense also spiritual maturity.

If anything the whole framework was a bit too tidy, incorporating too many elements into too clear a form to be plausible.  But the basics worked; it seemed clear enough there could be some benefit to reviewing faith forms in general, and that faith could be structured in these ways to some extent, and that to some extent combining the ideas with other psychological aspects might be informative.

Mind you my professor didn't accept this as something he happened across and swapped out literal faith for.  He'd been a Southern Baptist minister for most of his life (per my understanding), and he was quite old when I studied under him, surely at least in his late 60's, so his ideas were informed by a literal lifetime of reviewing faith in very grounded contexts, both as theory and practice.  He'd been a practicing minister and marriage counselor, and it seemed his interaction in reviewing in detail how different people related to each other informed his understanding more than religious doctrine or psychological theory.

Of course I'm not suggesting that I accepted what he said based on faith in him over the literal Biblical teachings.  He didn't present his own ideas so directly anyway; it was convention for professors of philosophy to say as little about that as they could, identifying issues and questions to only lead to consideration by the students directly, and he inclined towards that format, even though he was teaching religion instead.  He would never say he didn't think Jesus came back from the dead, or anything about specific teachings like that.  He presented the idea that accepting faith more or less literally is possible, but not tied to specific interpretations, of his own or others.

Seems the review could get a bit wispy then, doesn't it?  If one wasn't going to embrace a review of what seemed literally true or not how could study progress at all?  One way is by focusing on the source content, a reference like Fowler's work.  Another is by reference to specific examples of different representations of faith, individual people and their beliefs, and by interpreting those.  This was an interesting part of the class, where people came in from different backgrounds, and we analyzed what they said based on a series of questions about faith issues and the form of their own faith, not just Christians but from different cultures.

Conflict of differing faiths; how could that work?

How could it be that both Christianity and Buddhism could be right?  This type of question gets to the crux of it, doesn't it?  

Literally maybe some points need to remain contradictions.  Or do they?  After death, are we reincarnated, or do we go to heaven?  It seems clear that Christianity says one thing, Buddhism another (or the prior Hindu traditional framework another--complicated how that works).  But there are heavenly realms described in Buddhism, so it isn't so clear someone would necessarily come right back.  Some Christians are inclined to accept "recycling" souls to some extent, although from that direction the canonical text background may not work so well.

Really the point is more about teachings either being so literally true or not, so the answer "goes between the horns of the dilemma," or doesn't accept the clear division.  Maybe agnosticism is a part of that, accepting a final destination wouldn't be so clear, or maybe picking one or the other as a personal belief need not be so contradictory related to what others believe or other ideas that could be seen as related or not.

The ethical teaching in both are so similar that contradictions occur less frequently.  On one read Buddhism completely rejects consumption of alcohol, so we could accept that as an example of a difference, but the actual practice and theory isn't so clear.  Of course both religions are going to condemn drunkenness, and most Buddhists tend to drink some alcohol anyway.  Both religions are more similar from there; "doing the right thing" is essentially the same, and not different in Western philosophy for that matter.  That last point gets complicated because there are two main branches for ethical practices basis in Western philosophy, the good of the many versus a logical derivation, to over-simplify, but it's not easy for them to derive to any particular differences in practices from there.

It might sound like I'm saying there is no contradiction between the different sets of ideas.  In a way I am.  Fowler's point was that to the extent someone could integrate very different types of beliefs as exhibiting common elements, and combing them into one worldview--not a simple thing at all--to this extent they had a more mature, sort of "global" perspective.  What is the opposite of this?  Someone that couldn't relate to anyone outside of a very narrow social group, essentially the narrowest being their own family, maybe with the next level being their own village, excluding anyone there with differences in belief as well.  Categories that might also relate are easy enough to cite as examples:  cultural groups, different types of social groups, Christian versus other religions or atheist, related to nationalities, maybe onto gay versus straight perspectives, and so on.

Progression of faith; how could that work?

How to get from one range of exposure to the next, to go from narrow to broad?  In short, increased exposure.  Someone with broad exposure to differing perspectives could expand their range of beliefs to address contradictions and incorporate more complex forms of understanding.  Or maybe they wouldn't; it would depend on how they assimilated their own experiences, in addition to that exposure.  

Me currently living as an expat serves as one possible example of broad cultural exposure; I live within a different culture.  It took years to adapt to this culture, and I don't feel fully integrated now, or that I ever completely would be.  On the other extreme some people never get very far from their own starting point.  On a visit home this year we went to see someone in a social group designed for a very limited exposure to outside influences, in the Amish community.  Of course it could sound as if I'm criticizing their faith, or form of it, or psycho-social development, but I don't know much about being Amish, or what they believe and accept, it's just an example.  I do know people from the more rural areas in my home area and some really don't have much exposure to different worldviews, so issues like foreign cultures or minority races are still a complete mystery to them.  Fowler or my professor might well claim this could limit their faith-form development.

But of course it's not so simple as that.  It depends on what an individual person accepts within their own worldview more than the general boundary of social exposure.  Someone could live in a place where they are in direct contact with people of other beliefs and still have absolutely nothing to do with integrating those beliefs into how they see things, even expats, or in their own domestic environment.

My professor gave an interesting example of how he felt college fraternities could potentially limit this type of development at a critical stage of a young person's life.  Let's go back to the original stages citation for an introduction to what I mean, or what he meant:

• Stage 4 – "Individuative-Reflective" faith (usually mid-twenties to late thirties) a stage of angst and struggle. The individual takes personal responsibility for his or her beliefs and feelings. As one is able to reflect on one's own beliefs, there is an openness to a new complexity of faith, but this also increases the awareness of conflicts in one's belief.

Right about at this stage, or just prior, someone in their very late teens or early twenties would often be exposed to the most social diversity they had been up to that point in going to college, or in a corresponding change of environment aside from education.  But according to that professor one aspect of life in a fraternity could be that someone joins a group based on others having a very identical perspective, with a screening process and isolated living environment and social exposure limitations in place to assure this.  In short, not necessarily a good thing.

I couldn't help but think back to this later when I lived with a roommate that had been a member of a fraternity that was one of the most socially isolated people I've met.  He wasn't anti-social--quite the opposite--but absolutely could not relate to our third roommate, or seem to connect with many other people outside of a narrow range of settings.  In response he focused more on a limited range of activities than others, sticking to spending a lot time in the gym versus the range of outdoor sports that were popular where we lived, and found a social "home" in a group of people he worked with.  I don't think he was unhappy but he did seem to feel a bit alienated by unusual perspectives, which were kind of the norm in that place and time (a Colorado ski resort in the 90s).

Per my professor's description moving to the highest levels of broad awareness typically had a "hard-won" aspect; this could only happen based on interactions and demands that wouldn't necessarily feel like natural or easy transitions.  The very highest level might be the hardest to relate to.  Of course Jesus or the Buddha would be on this level, but their own perspective is only available through close review of their teachings, and these seem inclined to be adjusted and distilled to rules and simplified points that don't really capture the essence of their intention.  

Or at least that was a general theme that came up; maybe it's not so simple to get to how that works, or final conclusions.  Really maybe that was more a point; if a set of ideas could be reduced to a dozen bullet-points then it wouldn't be a description of a general perspective, a worldview, a specific "stage of faith."  

Maybe a modern example would be easier to work with; someone like Martin Luther King or Mother Theresa might be cited (although the general intent was never to use someone as an example of the perspective or how to get there).  How could someone really adapt themselves to accept MLK's perspective on race identity?  It helps that American society generally integrated what he was saying 50 years ago as a change in overall perspective; races aren't seen as so distinct now, at least in America.  Or maybe for some people they still are, in much the same ways as back then, so I mean in general.  

Of course the point is more about a general perspective (I keep saying that, right), not specific views on culture, races, social groups, or specific ideas from religions.  Going further towards "New Age" instead of literal Christian faith wouldn't be the point; believing people of different races are just the same wouldn't either.  Understanding how perspectives differ within social groups or religions systems of beliefs and integrating that to a more broad personal perspective would be.  

So in the end "did Jesus come back from the dead" ends up not being the right line of questioning.  Someone might well accept that he did or didn't, based on a range of types of worldview, or might accept that maybe something really interesting or unusual could have happened related to that.  For me I'm agostic; how could I know.  That alone doesn't seem to necessarily indicate a level of maturity of perspective either. 

Is what I'm talking about essentially the same as modern Progressive Christianity, or a variation of it, or similar but relatively unrelated, a tangent, or not related at all?  I'm not really sure.  It may not be so easy to judge that, since Progressive Christianity seems to be a broad category of things, a general approach, which may overlap quite a bit with these other ideas, or may be relatively different.  It would seem similar, at least related parts of a larger whole.

the meaning of intelligence

I sort of am talking to myself on this blog, and something reminded me of a subject to talk to myself about:  intelligence.

I don't have strong feelings or ideas about this subject because it relates to Buddhism (which is supposed to be the central theme of this blog).  I really don't see how it does relate.  The Buddha essentially taught that different people have different spiritual paths (more or less; I suppose that's a bit loaded as concepts go), and it's possible that more intelligent people might take a more analytical approach. Or who knows; maybe the opposite would happen.


An article someone posted got me thinking about the subject, which rarely comes up for me.  I'll post most of it here since it's source-cited and no one reads this blog anyway.

Article on dating and Mensa

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/25/what-im-really-thinking-member-of-mensa


I’m almost certainly smarter than you. That’s not a boast, it’s a fact. I’m smarter than most. I can think and make connections, and spot discrepancies, too.

I’m a member of Mensa and I know what my IQ is (164). I’ve never held a high-powered job, I don’t have a string of qualifications. I don’t do terribly clever things in my spare time, although I enjoy the odd pub quiz. And I don’t tell many people. If I do, then if I say or do something stupid, there is glee and sarcasm: “And you’re a member of Mensa?”

At primary school I was fast-tracked a couple of years, which seemed like fun, until I ended up as a 12-year-old brat in a class of cool teenagers, who ignored or bullied me. I left education after A-levels, because I was bored. I could do most school work without a thought, so when subjects came along that needed hard graft, I gave up (although I’ve graduated through the Open University since. They let you work at your own pace, which for me means fast).

Relationships were a problem, as there aren’t many men who like smart women, but I did find some. I’ve stayed gainfully employed, but I wouldn’t say I’ve done anything remarkable in any job.

I tried socialising in Mensa. I don’t any more. Being intelligent doesn’t make you empathic or honest. Mensa was full of intellectual point-scoring. It’s an organisation for the smart-ass rather than the wise.


Oddly going back to find the article I ran across a recent Mensa dating site development, just for their members (kind of contradicts her findings, that it doesn't work):

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/23/tech/match-mensa-singles/


Already these are three different subjects, right, intelligence, then Mensa, then dating related to both.  This post will need to circle back to intelligence or it will just wander.


But I'll start with a few problems with what she is saying.


1.  her IQ is 164:  tests might give a number, but IQ isn't really set up that way, it's not like taking an SAT.  Unless I'm mistaken it's based on standard deviations, 110 is one standard deviation off average, and at over 6 from the norm that's lots of 9's after the first 99.xx.  Someone is that intelligent but it seems unlikely, and testing in that range is about math problems someone would need to train to do, not basic problem solving (which doesn't match the rest).


2.  she's not boasting:  being in Mensa is about associating with being intelligent (it is boasting), and so is bringing it up in conversation, which she mentions, and writing articles about it (this).  Relationships would only be a problem related to her being intelligent if she made it a point somehow; it's not as if other people couldn't possibly understand what she was saying (something vaguely related could come up, but not as she mentions).


3.  she was bored in school:  really who isn't, even if it's not easy for them.  Skipping grades isn't so simple, and a child wouldn't initiate that, or teachers in any school system, so her parents had to be behind it.  Again she makes being intelligent sound normal, like she's not really "doing" it, when these ideas add up to her family seeing it the opposite way, singling her out as exceptional, and pushing for others to go along.  Who really knows how this plays out in dating, for her, but it seems the main problem might be letting it just drop.


Already I'm implying I know all about all this, right.  Maybe I should come clean and admit some of the same was true of me.  Of course not the 164 IQ part, but I tested high as a child, I was in a special program and all that.  If Mensa is supposed to be the top 2 % lots of people would be in that range (2% of close to 300 million is 6 million in the US; a good bit less to narrow the age range to younger adults, but not that rare).

http://www.iqtestexperts.com/making-genius.php

There are a riot of qualities and characteristics that go into the making of a genius. But IQ scores presents one of the most feasible and reliable barometer for grading the intellectual horsepower of people. A normal intelligence quotient (IQ) ranges from 85 to 115 (According to the Stanford-Binet scale). Only approximately 1% of the people in the world have an IQ of 135 or over. Genius or near-genius IQ is considered to start around 140 to 145. Less than 1/4 of 1 percent falls into this category. Here are some common designations on the IQ scale:

• 115-124 - Above average
• 125-134 - Gifted
• 135-144 - Very gifted
• 145-164 - Genius
• 165-179 - High genius
• 180-200 - Highest genius

I was still curious about the percentages, which I looked up on another table (following).  There are two different IQ scales (I'm no expert on all that; read further if you like) but 164 relates to 99.999 percentile or else 99.997 percentile, or one out of every 30,000 to 100,000 people.  High enough.  At an IQ of 200 you're essentially the most intelligent person in the world (can't be easy to test for that).

The page results of a Google search and this already clarify 2% relates to around 130, 135 to 1%.

http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/iqtable.aspx

IQ

15 SD Percentile

Rarity: 1/X

16 SD Percentile

Rarity: 1/X

164

99.9990072440%

100,730

99.9968313965%

31,560

More on what this means

Really this starts to get into my own ideas, which I didn't pull off a website, about how this table is wrong, on the same page as the first citation (so a bit strange):

Today, most cognition and neurology scholars would contend considering a person a genius merely because of his high IQ. Genius appears to have at least as much to do with creativity, referred to by professionals as "divergent thinking", as it does with the suite of reasoning, computational, and symbolic manipulation abilities called "intelligence", or "convergent thinking". Arguably, though, a person who has exceptional convergent and divergent thinking abilities is likely to be a genius. From this it could be said that genius is as genius does.


So genius is about what you do, not some measured capacity for learning or analysis.  I'd say the same is more or less true for intelligence.  It's a bit odd the first passage, about intellectual horsepower, and the second seem to contradict each other quite a bit, with the second essentially saying it's not nearly that simple.

Maybe one could do lots of things with a higher intelligence, learn abstract concepts like math, figure out puzzles, or even catch onto complicated movie plots (not Hollywood then, I guess).  But for the most part it just wouldn't matter, until you get around to rubbing other people's nose in all that.  Less intelligent people would hardly know someone is so much more intelligent, or likely even care, and other people of above average intelligence would likely care even less.

But then maybe not.  She tried to date intelligent people, right, and Mensa set up a restrictive dating website, and the whole point is selective inclusion.  They seem to care.  I guess that really would depend on people.

Is there any reason someone would be more comfortable around people of a similar higher intelligence level?  Seems not, to me, but again it could depend.  I'd think that would relate more to ego, seeing yourself a certain way, valuing it, then getting acknowledgment back for being part of some sort of grouping, formal or not.

Intelligence and ego, sort of back to Buddhism

The Buddha was pretty clear about rejecting ego, although he said a lot more about self.  Long story, but the two concepts are pretty closely linked, lots of overlap.  That woman may stay single because she's too intelligent to date "normal" people, and somehow can't really relate to more intelligent people either.

If she's in the 99.999th percentile just turning them up on a comparable level would be a problem.  It may be more of a problem testing them out to tell, then competing over being so smart all the time.  Sounds awful, smart or not.

It would seem better to just let it drop.  She has related to her job and her hobbies (she says), but it sticks with her in terms of self image.  She doesn't tell many people, but she does tell some people--the "if I do" part, and the guys in Mensa she was dating out of knew.

But then maybe she's not Buddhist, and I've just assumed the Buddha really is telling us the easiest way to live, how to be happy (to end suffering, per some starting points, but it works both ways).  Of course he wasn't giving dating advice, that I ran across at least.

I always wondered if I'd somehow match up with someone really intelligent, and couldn't help but at least consider it related to the women I dated.  Some seemed quite bright.  It wasn't a priority but some aspects of that was cool, it could relate to a shared perspective, to some extent.  I didn't include that as a factor related to dating my wife, and she's probably in the normal range (but then who knows about such things, really).

It seems almost scary how bright my kids are, so nothing was lost there.  I'm not sure I'd want to see them a lot further along that spectrum anyway; it's not exactly all positive.  But then maybe all that is another story.

Reverse culture shock

Visiting back to where I'm from recently,  Pennsylvania,  I had the unusual experience of reverse culture shock.   That's when one's own native culture seems unfamiliar due to acclimating to another culture,  from living abroad (see Wikipedia description; as usual pretty decent).

This diagram, from a blog post about culture shock, covers a number of separate stages including initial and reverse culture shock phases (which I won't really go into):

from www.deborahswallow.com; follow link for more details

Not exactly Buddhism,  right.  It is an unusual indicator of how expectations factor into normal experience though, a subject common to Buddhism.   Normally such a frame of reference is transparent,  especially if one only travels a normal amount,  perhaps with the occasional week or two in another country and culture.  With a longer stay in a very unfamiliar culture lots of small differences can be hard to deal with, but this is normal culture shock, not the "reverse" kind of adjusting to one's own native environment.   A few typical examples might help.

What is culture shock:

Asians never wear shoes in their houses, and it was hard for my wife to adjust to seeing it happen in America.  One might imagine the instinctive revulsion this could trigger but without sharing it someone couldn't completely relate to it.   For me it was hard to adjust to the Thai culture trait of saying what is expected rather than an edited version of one's actual thoughts.  A normal expression relating to complete disagreement in Thailand might be a silent smile, but in America at most someone would say something noncommittal,  and smiling is reserved for being happy or intentionally appearing so, not as an expression of politeness.

Reverse culture shock is an odd variation of these.  Immediately people seemed too forward and friendly when I first arrived back, actually engaging me in conversation when they didn't know me.  Just the way people looked seemed odd, so different,  even though I had been quite familiar with that range of appearance and looked relatively similar myself.  One subtle point could be lost here; it seems possible to have trouble adjusting to experiencing one's own traits in other people.  In Thailand I'm as direct or reserved as I see fit to be, for example I'll do the unthinkable and offer help to visitors that seem lost, but someone I don't know initiating conversation would seem odd.

Even talking to family could seem unusual, although since I had remained in more close contact with my parents the experience didn't really relate to them.  It could be that other aspects seemed unfamiliar instead, how people that don't know each other relate, or other types of experiences.  It was odd that this overlapped with a sense of nostalgia,  which was triggered by just seeing different streets, or a drug store or grocery store interior.

It seems I should be able to leap to some insights about expectations in experience but it's hard to summarize any points on a lower level.   The range of behaviors, appearance,  and communication patterns we expect varies more and runs deeper than is easy to notice,  but it's hard to say what that really means.   In some branches of Buddhism, like Zen, the communicated goal seems to be to notice underlying patterns as a function of self and minimize these (in extreme forms eliminate them,  but it seems more accurate to say notice and minimize them).  But it's not so clear this really makes sense, removing expectations and relationship patterns, in general or related to culture and culture shock.

It seems if others around you are drawing on and utilizing this layer of assumptions even if it was possible to minimize them one cost would be seeming odd to everyone else.   Or it may be possible to make these more clearly understood and to communicate using them more consciously,  but not drop them.  Speech without levels relating to social role or familiarity would seem impossible.  It's interesting how foreign language study makes this clearer, and how these ordinary functions of a native language wouldn't be nearly as transparent as it would first seem.  Maybe an example again would clarify, and a bit of the tangent about languages.

Language use variation and culture differences:

Languages tend to have different ways built in to contain level of formality, to the extent that you can't simply leave it out.  Words like "hello" or even "eat" can be expressed in far different ways with essentially the same semantic content (meaning) but quite different context, variation in how one says things or to who.   In English it's common for this to occur in using whole sets if roots in different ways (per my limited understanding;  I'm no linguist) so that over time the Latin and Germanic variations can serve as different levels of formal or informal speech.

I don't experience it directly but I have read that Thai language does the same thing related to words based in Khmer origins versus Pali or other sources.   All this is drifting a bit from the related points I'd meant to make originally but it seems the far distant past  generally includes spheres of influence that help define this, and it sticks long after those connections would seem relevant.  By this I mean that the way Latin and Germanic derived English words are used would tie back to how different regions related to England as English evolved to a relatively modern form.

Thai also includes explicit and  literal additions to adjust tone, something English language generally doesn't.   Since it doesn't no good direct example works but in a similar way adding "sir" at the end if a sentence includes almost no actual content but does change tone.  There are a number of vaguely related words in Thai that are not actually any sort of title, they just adjust tone.

In Buddhism it's common enough for the ideas to be practical.  Even if all I'm saying is clearly how perception and interaction works there needs to be some relevance to applying that, or it's not really in the scope of Buddhism.  It would need to improve self awareness in some way that increases general satisfaction with life experiences,  or put the opposite way something that removes sources of dissatisfaction.  Self awareness is an important component of Buddhism but really only when it's practical.

Practical culture shock, reverse culture shock

So can it apply in such a way, can noticing the experience of culture shock be useful?  Again I'm not sure.   Normal culture acclimation can take years and I guess to some extent greater awareness could speed up the process.  Reverse culture shock is mostly re-acclimation, with a limited experience of adjusting to changes over time.  I was just back in Pennsylvania and everything seemed a lot more normal in a week.   Of course something unrelated could've been a factor,  like jet lag, or other changes in personal relationships brought on by people I know aging.

So I'll leave this without saying exactly what it means, or how to use it.  Someone could try to experience something related directly during foreign travel but in my experience it doesn't work that way.   The "shock" part is about immersion within a culture and two weeks of seeing tourist theme attractions doesn't entail that experience.   Even spending a day with a local family wouldn't cause it,  although a little of the awareness function might trigger.

Reverse culture shock is a bit counter-intuitive because even though cultures can shift slightly over time the problem is re-adjusting to a familiar one, not so much those changes (in my experience).  It is strange when new habits of new word use comes up (like people always messing with phones), but then to some extent such changes would be likely to have been encountered in the other culture, or in personal discussion or through media coverage.  As I've experienced it the odd part is not having the same perspective as in the past, not about external changes.  I think I could probably re-acclimate more quickly than I have here in Thailand (many years in I'm still gradually integrating), but then my experience with "going home" in a more complete sense is still limited, so maybe not.

In the Wikipedia article I referenced earlier they claim that for reverse culture shock "the affected person often finds this more surprising and difficult to deal with than the original culture shock."  An expat I met from South Africa, living in the United States, expressed this opinion, claiming you can't really go back, so in a sense you won't completely fit in anywhere.  Of course the related diagrams assume you can completely adjust to a new culture or re-adjust, and the different articles conclude it works out differently for different people, and some do adjust--in different ways--and others don't.