Buddhism in comparison with Judaism and Christianity

I was just talking with a friend about the differences and similarities between Judaism and Buddhism.  It makes for an interesting starting point in explaining what Buddhism is.  It's too broad, but narrowing back to the points one might cover in such a discussion works.  We spent about half an hour talking about that theme, related to him leaving town (Bangkok) soon after; that's about right for how long such a thing would take.

No matter what writing or other channel one uses setting up an audience perspective, who you are talking to, is very important.  Before you do much writing it seems like talking to everyone, adopting a general listener perspective, would be completely workable.  In actual practice that doesn't work very well.  We are accustomed to communicating things to people in different ways, and "talking out into the world" only works for some subjects.  You have to assume what people already know, for example, or match use of language to what people can relate to.  Doing that "in general" is problematic, especially related to narrowing down a very broad set of ideas to what one might be able to say in 10 minutes or so.  We had a great discussion, and already had a feel for what each other might already understand, so all that worked out.

I'll start with a bit he told me about Judaism, but cut that part short, because it's interesting and somewhat related but not the main part of what I'm trying to share here.  Then I'll cover passing on a short take on what the Christian perspective is.  Odd, right; everyone knows that, don't they?  Maybe not.  I live in a Buddhist country, for example, in Thailand, and for people here it's a foreign religion.

Judaism

It's far from intended as a summary of what Judaism is all about but that friend made some interesting points, which I'll share an abbreviated version of.  The obvious qualifications apply:  I won't get what he meant completely right in my own summary, and he was only breaking off a part of the broad set of ideas that comprise Judaism to share them, based within a fairly limited scope conversation.  I'm not saying this is inaccurate, but a lot more is being left out than included.  Framing these ideas properly within the rest of what hasn't been expressed wouldn't be possible using only assumptions and extrapolation.  It's still interesting though.  I cut the material detail back even further to avoid making mistakes in interpretation, since I'm sure I didn't completely "get" what he was saying, only hearing part of a broad set of related ideas.

A main theme was that it's within basic human nature to desire things, and it's seen as ok within Judaism.  This was framed as a response to his take that Buddhism is really about cutting off all desires, simply eliminating wanting anything to achieve a very unusual form of inner peace.  That's not right, really, but I'll get to that part.  It's partly right.

Of course Judaism sets up plenty of limitations about what you shouldn't want, or shouldn't do, or experience (eating pork, murder, and so on).  We didn't get into all that.  The idea was that an interesting and novel form is set up for framing desires, and for satisfying them.  It's fine to want things, if they aren't prohibited, and fine to experience the things you want to experience, but you have to be thankful and receptive in very specific ways.  It's a form of communion with God and the rest of reality to be given things (with "given" here used in the broad sense, including earning them, in a conventional sense, or granted potential to experiences by chance).  Acceptance of positive things is responded to with a form of prayer, a step that occurs before you have the experience.  Like saying the blessing, right?  Just extended a lot further, across a lot of the scope of human experience.  It almost sounded more like a mindfulness related take on life, to keep track of all positive things as they happen to you, to emphasize self awareness and conscious experience of momentary reality.

To me this is interesting because it frames human experience in a different way.  Prohibitions and ethical guidelines, what you should do, are different kinds of things, and this enters into a different kind of experiential space.  It makes a lot of life experience a holy sort of undertaking.  Not just eating, as I took it many kinds of experiences, or as I took it all positive kinds.  Adjusting the form and perspective of routine activities, or special events and circumstances, frames much more of life experience within the scope of religious practice than occurs within Christianity.  Everything one experiences throughout their lives relates to God's setting things up, in Christianity, but the moment to moment experience isn't framed within religious practices, as it's commonly taken.  Christian teachings are much more active related to telling you what not to do and what general perspective to take up, then moment to moment you take it from there yourself, the form is a bit open.

This has been barely a shell of what I understood him to be saying, but I'll move onto the difference between that and Christianity, as I interpret it, and try to clarify this a little further through contrast.

Christianity

He asked me about the  Christian worldview, how it works out, moral guidelines and restrictions, adjustment of ordinary perspective.  People in the US just assume that everyone knows that, right?  There they kind of do.  Even someone raised to reject it would have some idea what they are rejecting, even if everyone isn't really on the same page about how it all maps out.

I just saw a fragment of an interview with Richard Dawkins, this one, which I may or may not get around to finishing, and it's strange to me how modern atheists seem to take on and reject relatively unsophisticated takes on Christianity.  The most literal forms are a bit absurd:  God looks like Zeus, he lives in the sky, Jesus is his son, you are following rules in order to gain admission to heaven, angels are related in some way, the Devil is out to get you, you can sin all you want, you just have to ask for the slate to be wiped clean and it's all good again.  Dropping out the most absurd half still leaves lots of relatively absurd parts.

To back up, I studied religion in a university program, or in two of them, really.  The second focused only on interpreting limited religious scope as philosophy but the first included actual religion classes, not philosophy-context versions.  To put details to that I studied religion and philosophy, focusing on Buddhism, in an undergrad program at the University of Colorado, and comparative philosophy for an MA at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.  And I'm an industrial engineer, which I studied at Penn State, but that doesn't relate.  I've considered different forms of religion a good bit.  Study of Islam came up more than Judaism, but I covered quite a bit on Christianity and focused most on Buddhism.

This gets odd because what I accept as the most sophisticated form of Christianity and that answer to how it defines a standard American's worldview are two completely different things.  Funny how that goes.  The same comes up in Buddhism; the core message and practices I don't see as overlapping much at all with a conventional take or worldview here in Thailand.  Even among monks, to some extent, but I probably won't fill that part in much here.  I was ordained as a monk here once, for two months, with an earlier post here on how that went.  Let's break all that apart then.  I'll start with how I see Christianity as two different things, how people tend to take it, what I see as a more mature and developed form. 

I can't do justice here to the range of how religions are interpreted; that's too long a subject for a 1500 word blog post only about that.  We reviewed a relatively old work on that theme, from 1979, that mapped out some interesting ideas on that, James Fowler's Stages of Faith, described in summary form in this related reference.

In a basic form Christianity is interpreted as a set of rules, an afterlife scheme, and an explanation for things people couldn't otherwise know (who started the world, what the earlier form of it was, what happens after death, is there a soul or spiritual form of people).  Those parts should be familiar to most.  You can pick and choose which parts to take up or leave aside, of course. 

In answering my friend's question this was more or less what I focused on, about how Christianity tends to define an American worldview.  Rules stand out; you should or shouldn't do a lot of things.  Stay within those bounds and in general the more prescriptive parts, about what you should do, or general approach, can be a bit flexible.  It doesn't necessarily relate to momentary perspective all that much.  Ideally of course I think it should; I'll get into more of that related to what a more sophisticated take might be.

Jesus taught about being more compassionate, about seeing yourself as connected to others, as here to help others as much as to help yourself (or more, one might reasonably interpret).  All this works well from a practical standpoint, and not just as a set of rules to follow, when you consider that your connection with your family, friends, co-workers, employment context, country, social groups, and so on really do define you. 

The more you consider all of those ties and demands as important the better a person you turn out to be.  Your own longer term good follows.

Beyond just being external rules to follow, or break, all the different ethical short-cuts also limit your support of and connection to those around you (lying, stealing, treating people unfairly, failing to be empathetic and supportive to others, etc.).  Benefiting others benefits you.  To the extent you are reliable, consistent, supportive, and so on you are a good friend, family member, employee, and social group member and all those connections will be stronger.  Only following a list of 10 or more restrictions doesn't help to highlight that.  Of course that's not exactly where the Old Testament left off, but that is a main difference in the two sets of ideas.

The most mature perspectives on religion develop this, and set aside the mythology.  Jesus was a person but it's not necessary to believe that he performed miracles, or was a divine being in some way, or that he talked to the Devil like my friend and I conversed. 

The mythology is what people like Richard Dawkins tend to attack.  They want to accept that you can just assume the ethics and social connections are important, and take them up and leave aside all the rest.  What they don't realize is that this also works as a mature interpretation of Christianity, that it is really the point, or also the point of any other religion. 

I've taken ethics classes, about the study of morality, and another part they miss is that it's not so easy to derive what Jesus taught as what we should do, as a positive approach to ethics and reality in general.  I'm not getting into all that here, just suffice it to say that it really doesn't work to use a standard approach to get to the same general context (eg. accept Kantian ethics derivation, or Utilitarian / Consequentialist versions instead).  Those approaches take the short-cut of heading for an end point they already accept, basic Christian and Buddhist morality, more or less.  They gloss over that what seems to be a complete and independent derivation really isn't that at all.  You already know what "doing the right thing" is because it's in the air; all that has been an underlying theme in every organized society since prior to known history.  If it wasn't people couldn't collect into an organized society; there would be chaos instead.  That does come up in places from time to time but there's a function in order; it tends to spread.

In the end I told that friend that Christianity asks us to put others above ourselves, to focus on the interests and needs of other people.  To me that is completely consistent with everything else I've said here, even though if what I mean by that isn't clear then it wouldn't seem so.  In the end that's really a pursuit of our own highest good, our own self-interest, because we really are linked in with other people in countless ways.

Jordan Peterson gets all this; the people who reject what he says about religion don't get him.  An example:  he admits that there is an appeal for successful men to have many physical or relationship partners, since they can.  An example like Tiger Woods might come up.  It's obvious enough why that doesn't work out in his own case; that typically prevents a successful monogamous relationship from succeeding.  Someone like Donald Trump might seem to be able to cheat the system, to have a wife and experiences outside that relationship.  But then he has two ex-wives now, and others end up identifying people for who they really are related to their values, as in his case.  It's atypical for an incriminating voice tape to turn up but that would come up in different ways.  It's not an isolated example; practicing generosity or empathy pays similar returns, and so on.

Buddhism

One mistaken take on Buddhism is that it suggests that people should cut off all desire, get rid of attachments of all forms, which will result in achieving an unconventional neutral perspective, and "inner peace."  Taken the right way all that sort of works but it's just as wrong as it is right, and it's much more incomplete than it is descriptive.  I'll pass on how I explained it.

Buddhism is about limiting attachments, about examining parts of a worldview and personal perspective and discarding what doesn't work.  What makes the cut-off or fails to is problematic to describe in broad terms.  The introspection / review process is a methodology, not a form of external mapping of that sort.  There is a good bit of ethical guidance in the core teachings, but that's only one part of a set of 8 main types of teachings.  I have a graphic about that handy:

Ok, maybe it touches on a couple branches.  That's only one broad, general model of what Buddhism is, so relying on that as a complete description only goes so far.  And it only breaks teachings and subject scope into 8 parts, which is of limited helpfulness, since detailed review follows or else it's meaningless. 

A more detailed idea mapping makes things worse than they might really be, since there are a lot of different starting points and relatively equivalent explanations for different parts:

In the end for me Buddhism is really a system of introspection and adjustment of self-definition and worldview, a set of ideas I'll get back to developing just a little more.

Thais don't necessarily take it that way, even though 90% of them are Buddhist.  They take it as explanations for supernatural reality, as ethical guidance, and so on, all a close parallel to how Christianity is most commonly interpreted in the US.  Go figure.  People get it that meditation is a part of it but even their take on meditation and mindfulness practices (two related but different things) tend to not be mature, in my experience. 

They think meditation helps you accumulate spiritual good credit, karma or merit.  Sort of, maybe, but there is also an introspective aspect, which is probably more of the main point.  It's not an ordinary form of introspection, and I can't really do justice to describing how it's different in a short space.  Mindfulness is about staying calm and consistent, being able to apply rules in different circumstances, but it's also a practical tool for clearly observing a layer of reality that usually goes completely unnoticed.  It helps you unpack what is typically only included as subconscious experience.  That should ring a bell, for students of psychology.  Being present in the moment isn't nearly as simple as it seems, and the inputs in how we interpret reality and what we react to aren't simple at all.

One might wonder what parts of self, normal experience, or reaction should be "cut out of" normal perspective and life practices, or at least what I'm claiming.  If Buddhism doesn't reject desire and does reject some view of self what is being retained, and what is left aside?  It's not so simple, but engaging such ideas is critical.  You drop what doesn't work, and keep what does.  There's not really as much clear, external, well-defined guidance for that as one might think.  In a developed conventional religion it might seem that there definitely would be, but to me that's not really what Buddhism is.  The starting point is your own perspective, life experience, and momentary experience of reality--only that.  As you delve into what you think you are, and what you really are, you untangle the knots of all sorts of assumptions.

An example:  it would be easy to define yourself based on what you own, in a consumer oriented society.  It's relatively low-hanging fruit, but examining the role of that within your own worldview could turn up that you've accepted the assumed importance of this as an external assumption, and you could later also drop it. 

An example:  that friend I started out mentioning talking to was moving without owning much; this is a very practical approach to experienced reality.  For some it would be natural to own a lot of clothing, furniture, electronics, collections of goods, and so on, but keeping all that limited simplifies your life.  The desire to always own more only complicates it.  This kind of realization would only work so well in the form of external guidance: "don't own a lot of things."  If someone could unpack what they think about a lot instead, what causes them stress, what goals they serve that can be cut back or simply eliminated, then giving themselves this advice works much, much better.

I'm into tea, and write more about that subject than Buddhism (here), and it comes up a lot related to people collecting teaware (or even tea itself).  Part of that is functional, but it also seems to become just a normal way of relating to things, that you mark out how much you enjoy a subject by how much you own related to it.  It can be a habit to collect things.  It's not exactly a vice but examining why it happens could be informative, and dropping it could free up space for working on something else.  You can only make tea in one device at a time; owning dozens of devices isn't necessarily functional, it's closer to collecting artworks.

Of course that's just an example.  In different individual cases different coarse findings would turn up earlier on, then more and more subtle levels of understanding and adjustment could occur.  The past and future are particularly fruitful areas to consider.  Regrets, worry, and even anticipation can cause people a lot of stress.  It's easier to say "just live in the moment" than it is to let the past and future go, and only deal with what is actually occurring in the present.  The tools of meditation and mindfulness help with this; they turn up what is simmering beneath the surface in your mind, and what is weighing down present moment perspective, in two different but related sets of ways.


I could keep going in lots of directions from there but that covers the main point, fleshing out what a friend and I talked about over the course of a half an hour or so.  Buddhism isn't about rejecting any normal view of reality, just uncovering what goes into one and improving it, little by little.  It's a negative process in the sense that things are removed or dropped, instead of added.  The end point is kind of a funny thing; eventually one gets to a purer form of more direct experience.  I'm not so sure about "enlightenment" or that process ever being completely finished; I guess that has to be a real thing.  It's generally as well to not worry too much about that.

So a Buddhist could definitely have a family, or own things, take up hobbies, exercise, and so on.  They would generally try to be positive and helpful to others, and take a leaner approach to material things, to not focus on them.  Really it's more about perspective than it is material ownership or following rules though.  It would be better to have more stuff and keep the perspective lighter, or really to do both, to focus more on positive forms of experience and less on piling up things and accumulating status.

Engaged Buddhism and crisis, related to the US election result

I wrote about why Trump might have won the election in the  last post, nothing at all to do with Buddhism, just reading up and passing on some theories.  It's funny that subject isn't dropping off.  More theories crop up about the role Facebook played (people see feed posts of only like-minded individuals, or even fake news), or blaming media sources for being biased (they were, just different sources for both candidates).

I was also just talking with a friend about the relation of Buddhism to this issue, about how non-attachment relates to potential stress.

His point:  we live in an imperfect world, and trying to experience it differently than it actually is isn't useful, or pleasant.  According to the teachings of Buddhism we need to live directly in the moment, which involves accepting things as they are.  So no freaking out, even if someone doesn't like the election result, or even in cases of real crisis.  I guess that could even extend to something like 9/11, so that a truly enlightened person might just think "we live in that kind of world now," but really how that reaction would work out sort of depends on interpretation.  Getting upset might be in order.

It sort of works, the extended "keep calm" take.  Sometimes it seems like freaking out is normal, maybe even for the best.  My grandmother died last year and I think it was healthy to be quite upset.  The King of Thailand died last month and this whole country was upset, and I think they should have been, that it may have been a healthier reaction than just saying "all things are impermanent" and moving on.  Buddhism has nothing to do with being emotionless, to me.  Of course that is just an interpretation, and I'm not claiming I've got it all figured out, that my take is just what the Buddha would have said.

This might be a good place to go a little deeper into what that friend was saying, which I'll quote:


The best thing is to not conceptualize your experience. Things are as they are. The interpretation that you conceptualize after the fact is totally subjective and not factual or even necessary. It is something to come to terms with, not the fact that Trump won or the King is dead. It is an indulgence of the world of ideas which have no basis in reality. Being in the here and now is the only antidote to this. 


It sort of works.  This sort of abstract take on things can also part ways with a practical, normal reality.  If I had no attachment to my grandmother then there wouldn't have been anything to be upset about, but I did, and that attachment was a good thing.  Now I'm mixing terms, since caring for my grandmother and the form of attachment Buddhist theory is talking about are almost certainly two different things.  The Buddha wasn't saying that people shouldn't love their grandmothers, and if he was then he was a jackass.  But I've spent a lot of time reading direct teachings from the Buddha, and interpretations, and it can all really make sense, and it's useful.  He was no jackass.

no need to let dying get you down, for some

It's hard to say if the Buddha transcended the normal experience of human emotion from the mix of old stories, if he would have seemed anything like us, or quite different.  It seems conceivable he was serene and transcendent in nature, but so much spin gets added to those stories that what is in them now hardly seems to be clear on that.  Teachings and descriptions say he did, essentially, that he was fundamentally quite different.  Per some stories he also did magic tricks and talked to deities, and in others he seemed to reject things like magic tricks and talking to deities (not completely unlike Christianity, although that is a different story).

I'll edit down my response a little, in which I embraced that line of thinking, discussing the normal experience of emotions to what might be a reasonable interpretation of applied Buddhist non-attachment.  The discussion was between three people, so the response might seem odd.  My ideas were positioned against two different kinds of response, that Zen-like-state version and another friend's more typical take, a bit shocked.  Then again, a Trump supporter wouldn't be shocked, but no need to go into that tangent here, all of this applies more generally than to someone just being upset about that one thing.


I get it about making peace with the result and our own reaction to the result.  Trump as President is the new reality, in January, and only limited forms of rejecting reality make sense (eg. taking actions that actually do change it).  At the same time grief is natural, and loss of a person and loss of an understanding of reality and a set of expectations aren't so separate, in this case.  

An emotional reaction is in order; this is human nature.  Moving to acceptance is a process, and negative emotions are part of the process.  Or potentially even moving through denial and anger phases, then onto depression and acceptance.

I cope through discussion, and a little writing.  For someone else they might just flip a switch, and say this is now, that other set of circumstances was then, and all is well.  Things are just as they must be, a mix of external events and whatever response we naturally take.  I've only lost the idea that Americans would have better judgment, not a reality where they actually did.  That was always only an expectation.  It's nice philosophizing about loss.  

Don't do anything crazy, although marching around and showing public disapproval seems harmless enough, if one felt inclined.  That really is feedback, likely not so functional, but it's a real thing.  I do the same online, move some ideas around a little.  I share the experience with friends and talk it through with others that don't share perspective as well.



It might seem like I'm taking it a bit personally, more as a tragedy than necessary, or compared to people I've talked to back in the States not so much at all.  I guess I see it as move back to the perspective of the 1950's, one in which men are better than women, whites are better than minorities, and religious tolerance and tolerance for people that see gender differently are non-issues; it's normal to be straight, and not really ok to be Muslim.  And I don't want to go back to that.  I don't want to be better than Mexicans for being white, I want all people to be created equally, like it says in the Constitution.  But all that is tangent.  We could almost as easily be discussing my reaction to 9/11 here instead, any change or event that's hard to accept.

he can't be that bad

Engaged Buddhism versus a less active take on Zen

There are two different takes on Buddhism that map onto two reaction patterns, which may not be familiar to everyone.  Zen would be, in general, one interpretation of which that friend is advocating.  It's all about equanimity, dispassionate acceptance, staying at the center.  How to take that related to immediate experience and what we should do or not do could go in different directions.  Here I'm sort of condensing it to mean inactivity, although it typically wouldn't be equivalent to doing nothing.  That friend isn't saying "do nothing," he's saying don't get upset, because the cause for being upset is only the way you position the ideas.

The story about the one founder spending nine years facing a wall indicates otherwise, that inactivity is just fine, or even great practice, but even that circumstance was probably not exactly like that.  Maybe that guy (Dogen) meditated part-time, and was socially engaged otherwise, although that's not how that story typically goes.  "Real" Zen may be more like a second pattern I'm going to discuss, about a way to be active, to not get away from emotion or doing things.

It's about Engaged Buddhism, a variation of Zen teachings taught by Thich Nhat Hanh.  Sound familiar?  He is a pretty big name, still with  us, but getting up there in years now.  To be clear, he is teaching Zen, part of that tradition himself, and there surely isn't a lot of discontinuity between what he is saying and some other very inactive-oriented form.  Zen is zen; a direct experience of reality, and people are just describing it differently, or different but related means to the same end.  Here is a website about his community and teachings.  Here are some related points from his 14 Precepts of Engaged Buddhism:


Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering. Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world...

Do not accumulate wealth while millions are hungry.... Do not maintain anger or hatred... 

Do not lose yourself in dispersion and in your surroundings. Practice mindful breathing to come back to what is happening in the present moment. Be in touch with what is wondrous, refreshing, and healing both inside and around you.... 

Do not utter words that can create discord and cause the community to break. Make every effort to reconcile and resolve all conflicts, however small.

Thich Nhat Hanh (photo credit)

So he is teaching others to be active, but to change perspective.  The same ideas about letting go of attachment are there, common to all types of Buddhism, just stripped of any directive to not experience certain kinds of things.  We suffer to learn not to suffer, to get to the root of what it is, then the form of experience can change so we aren't adding that to it.

One point in there is interesting, about not just avoiding staying inactive in meditation, but also about not losing your self-awareness to activity, described more clearly here:


Buddhism has to do with your daily life, with your suffering and with the suffering of the people around you. You have to learn how to help a wounded child while still practicing  mindful breathing. You should not allow yourself to get lost in action. Action should be meditation at the same time.

Interesting!  He's not really saying we should do a certain kind of activity, again more related to perspective in general, really in this all a "being in the moment" theme.  More about a specific crisis event helps clarify that:


John Malkin: When the World Trade Center was destroyed, you were asked what you would say to those responsible. You answered that you would listen compassionately and deeply to understand their suffering. Tell me about the practice of deep listening and how you think it helps in personal situations...


Thich Nhat Hanh: The practice of deep listening should be directed towards oneself first. If you don’t know how to listen to your own suffering, it will be difficult to listen to the suffering of another person or another group of people.

I have recommended that America listen to herself first, because there is a lot of suffering within her borders. There are so many people who believe they are victims of discrimination and injustice, and they have never been heard and understood...

If America succeeded in that, she could bring that practice to the international level. The fact is that people know America has the capacity to hit. To hit very hard and make people suffer. But if America does not hit, that brings her more respect and gives her more authority...

Violent action creates more violence. That’s why compassion is the only way to reduce violence. And compassion is not something soft. It takes a lot of courage.


So it would seem his advice is for people to understand why they feel as upset as they do about any changes, to make peace within themselves, and then apply the same process to others.

An interesting question:  would Thich Nhat Hanh still get angry?  On one read, no, he would be past that.  A philosophy and religion professor of mine once told a story of being at a function where Thich Nhat Hanh spoke, of being involved with the organizers and presenters, and conveyed how at one point someone in the crowd interrupting and asking questions that weren't relevant was throwing off the communication.  Thich (a bit much always writing all that) went in the back at one point to cool off a little, and expressed that the disruption was making him angry.  He was still human; he still experienced the normal range of emotions.  Some might say "he's not a real Buddha then" but I'm not sure he would claim to be one.  Emotions aren't a bad thing, but keeping a balanced perspective is still better for us.

Of course America isn't going to turn into a country full of millions of Buddhas.  This is intended as practical guidance, though, nothing abstract.  He thinks we can make peace within ourselves, and then make peace with people we would ordinarily consider our worst enemies.

It's odd thinking of a Trump supporter as an enemy in the same sense as a terrorist, but the dynamic is playing out that way this week.  Violence and hate is occurring on both sides.  Compassion and understanding won't work like flipping a switch but there is something to this, it's practical, or at least potentially so.

Of course we can't take "the other side" with us, completely.  If someone absolutely hates minorities and they don't want to change, or can't find influence to shift that perspective, then there is only so much that can be done.  Talking ISIS or Al Qaeda out of conducting terrorism seems a stretch.  But Thich Nhat Hanh is saying we can more or less break that cycle, bit by bit.  Or at least that's our best chance, not success through being the last one standing through successful application of violence.

Our President-elect isn't much of a Buddhist, but the rest of us can do better, and even he can.  A simple part of shifting perspective might just relate to giving him the benefit of the doubt.  When he says "illegal immigrants from Mexico are criminals and rapists" he is more or less expressing racist views, but it might be better to accept that as rhetoric aimed at coordinating shared views about concerns over the impact of illegal immigration with other Americans--his supporters--than jumping to the conclusion that we've elected a new version of Hitler.  The KKK supports Trump, and is happy he was successful, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he or his average supporter shares most of their views.  These teachings from Buddhism apply to trying to understand the most extreme opposing perspectives, to try to sort out the roots of views that seem clearly wrong by relating to them.

My friend's point was more about our own initial reactions, something much easier to control than to actually conduct peaceful relations with ISIS and white supremacists.  Our family is Buddhist--we live in Thailand--and although my own beliefs and background aren't so simple in terms of alignment I try to teach my kids to apply the most practical aspects, and then it's their mother's job to enforce the religious ritual aspects.  As I tell my son, if you can't control yourself then you don't stand much chance of controlling anything else.  Of course this isn't folk wisdom from my own tradition, in which righteous indignation is quite acceptable, it's from Buddhism.  On that subject, I'll add a little more about my own take on Buddhism related to everyday experience here.

looks cool, might be functional

Buddhism and everyday experience, some of my own thoughts

We just celebrated Loy Krathong here; that's sort of one set of practices related to Buddhism, holidays, rituals, and such.  That relates to floating a small bread or leaf and flower boat, lit with a candle along with incense, to carry off your sins.  I don't know the connection to Buddhism, but then Thais aren't always clear of those ties either.  I'm talking about something else, about immediate perception, not rituals.  About those boats, in addition to clearing off sins you also get to make a wish, kind of a common theme in Thai Buddhism.  No need to worry, America, I've got you covered; I burned my wish asking for that political / social mess there to clear up nicely.  Now hopefully it's not like the birthday one, where you can't tell anyone what it is or the magic doesn't work.

This subject naturally drifts into review of the related Pali terms, and parsing out roles of teachings and meditation, and separating mental faculties, etc.  I'll try to simplify beyond all that, of course limited to describing a very rough version of my own take.  Per the Buddha, we make life worse than it is, through mistakes in our take on perception and self, or even related to how we deal the past and future.  Accepting present reality as it is really is a lot of the message.  That doesn't mean dropping out our role in possibly changing it; our own activities and intentions are part of that present, as much as external factors are.  But we can't change the past of the future, and suffering over what happened or being stressed over what might don't really make sense; we only exist in this present.

Suffering is used in an odd way.  It's really a translation, and as with a lot of language translation the original range of senses doesn't match the translated version.  Even within one language, tradition and worldview a concept like "self" may not be pinned down as well as it initially seems, but when a concept is at the core of an unusual model of reality things really get unusual.  As I'm describing I see this as prescriptive as much as descriptive; it says how we can do better for perspective, just as much as it describes what people ordinarily do, mentally, in terms of context of perspective.

It matches everything my friend said, and what Thich Nhat Hanh is saying, it's just not as clear as it could be what those really mean.  According to a bad read my friend might be saying "just get stoned and let it all drop," and Thich Nhat Hanh might be saying "just try to be open and understand everything, and be compassionate, but not necessarily do anything."  Those aren't the point, although they may overlap with some of the ideas, and just miss the proper end point, the right view.

Suffering--in the one special sense--isn't being used as pain, or even mental anguish, but in a special sense.  It's about things being unsatisfactory for being different than they "should" be.  Everything really should be exactly as it is, in this present, because there is no changing the present, at all.  We can act, but then that's part of the present moment too.  To some extent sadness is still a reaction about a change that is natural, a carry-over from the past, but we can only part ways to a limited degree with normal human experience.  Maybe the Buddha had moved on, or maybe he didn't, but in a sense we don't need to worry so much about that.  If anger moves us to violence we have went way too far with embracing normal human nature, or if being upset takes us over, but to some extent reacting through emotions is fine.

Where is the right balance?  Hard to say.  It's potentially problematic to put ourselves on a scale of irrational / emotional up to Zen-line Buddha state, because we might just experience gap.  The idea is to improve over time, to personally benefit from a perspective shift, and to use that to help others.  Meditation is described as one tool for doing so, or the teachings are another, with mindfullness emphasized more than both in some traditions (conditioned momentary awareness).  So there is no magic bullet, along with there being no clear end state.

As with any subject someone claiming to be an expert is a bit of a red flag, although some others have varied experiences and perspectives.  I was ordained as a monk here in Thailand for two months once, and it's odd how that shifts things, someone being an authority based on wearing certain clothes, being in a formal role.  Lots of monks could be a lot more familiar with these basic ideas.  We learn from whoever or whatever is a good teacher, and someone in a formal teacher role might have the most potential, or they might not.

Really personal experience itself, our own momentary perspective, is the best grounds for learning.  In a limited sense it's the only basis for it; no one can pass on their perspective to you.  A teacher can lay out examples, or advise about practices, or explain teachings, even hit you with a stick if that somehow seems relevant, but everyone takes the steps for themselves, or else doesn't.  You either notice all this works and experience changes in perspective or you don't.


Unpleasant experiences can be quite useful, although again conventional suffering and our reaction to that suffering as a different kind of suffering are quite different.  Dissatisfaction with very uneventful experience could also be instructive, or maybe physical pain could be, or fear of the future.  Proper perspective of those would be critical, which typically wouldn't stem from just experiencing them, some guidance on how to take them would really make a difference.  Contemplation of death and impermanence as a means to learn is commonly referenced.  In a sense I'm really talking about un-learning, removing parts of ordinary experience that aren't useful, assumptions that relate to self and point of view.


And all that is kind of the simple version, as far as I might go without going on and on.  I like to discuss philosophy (and tea) so if I can help further with discussion I'd be happy to; just look me up.  Of course I'm no living example of these practices completely extended; I'm an ordinary person.  I feel all this works because following it to a limited extent seemed to help, and it has seemed accurate based on introspection.  It might be as well to close by noting this isn't really tied to any particular belief system, to reincarnation or making wishes, or separated from others, although lots of people would certainly take it that way.

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.

The role of narrative themes in everyday experience

This topic isn't exactly Buddhism, but at the same time essentially based within the same set of ideas.  It seems likely to me that if some of the most related themes in Buddhism (on duality, or rather non-duality, for example) were developed more in contemporary writings it might seem more so.

The rejection of self is seen as a more common starting point, or the aspect of experience of suffering.  Non-attachment also tends to come up more, and to me that's fair as a critical concept at the core of Buddhism.  In modern writing Zen emphasizes a potentially improved perspective when  ordinary thought and experience relate to not over-analyzing reality, taking things as they are, but I've not researched how these are derived from earlier Buddhist concepts and teachings.

Some of these general themes remind me of mindfulness teachings.  One of my favorite references is Mindfulness with Breathing, by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, so this is tying back to the Thai Buddhist tradition and early Buddhism.  When you read some of the content (like this introduction) there might seem to be no connection to narrative themes in experience at all, or perhaps even just a focus on meditation without a clear connection to everyday experience.  But it goes in that direction later, and the effect on everyday experience is really the point, not accumulating merit or a vague and general "inner peace."

At any rate this take is sort of my own, for what that's worth.  It's only here because it's close enough that I won't start another blog for psychological observations that relate to Buddhism but don't clearly map onto core teachings.

It's based on personal observation, just my take on things, so there are no Pali-based concept references.

Role of narrative themes in everyday experience

So what is the role?  We like to think that what we do makes good sense, that we are rational, and that both ideas and actions in our life are based on a logical framework of how things make sense.  To some degree this is true, and for some experiences it's not as relevant.  Something like a change of employment should relate to a lot of reasoning; a favorite ice cream flavor not really at all.  But my point here is instead that we tend to map most of what we experience into a series of narrative themes, regardless of whether that is functionally required or not.

Assuming I had established that to be true--the next part--we might wonder, so what?  Is this really related to Buddhism, or is it a good or bad thing, or not really functional or non-functional?  To what end do we do this, or just as habit, not towards an end.  But then I'll get to that after some more background.

How we organize events into narrative themes should be apparent to everyone with a worldview and life experience, to everyone, but then for the sake of argument I'll have to assume that some aspects of experienced reality aren't really apparent to everyone.  Put another way, that different people "do" introspection to different degrees, so that it could make sense for me to explain it all.  Of course sometimes I wonder if I'm really making any sense, but that's a separate issue.

One starting point for noticing this came when I noted that I tended to organize days into good or bad days, that early in the morning things seemed to be going well or not well.  "Luck" was invoked to explain why a train might have a long queue, for example.  Some of the same ground might be covered by the concept of "getting up on the wrong side of the bed."  That wouldn't relate to the timing of trains, or traffic patterns, but it would set a positive or negative tone for the earliest part of the day.  But then I could be more superstitious than most, right?  Or maybe I was caught up in explaining things that didn't really need to be explained, as much as really doing those things myself (meaning maybe the tendency to categorize was as much a function as the tendency to examine and explain, as it was a "real" thing).

A separate aspect of this general theme relates to noticing patterns in your own mind, how events match up with more general series of events.  Of course any version of this is essentially what reason was originally for.  My later thoughts on this have turned towards the role social media plays in this, how a decade ago we might have described these many small events to someone else in conversation, but now we do so in short messages in lots of different places online.

I'm not sure if this means narrative theme means more now than it would have a decade ago, or if it is experienced differently now or not.  Surely conversation would have covered a lot of the same ground in the past (the distant off-line-experience past of 25 years ago), just not as frequently, and not as documented in text.

Back to Buddhism

Seems a good place to circle back to why I see this as related to Buddhism at all.  The connection reference might be clear already; it's about the Zen directive towards direct experience.  Now more than ever we experience our own reality through our own commentary of it.  As a lot of commentary has it to an absurd degree, so that talking about our lives in messages becomes more of what we do than actually living it.  But then that perhaps that separation is artificial; it might be as well to say that one of the main components of life experience is commentary on life experience, or perhaps small talk that doesn't even relate to much.

The typical take in Zen teachings is that this isn't a good thing.  The thinking goes that direct experience is the main defining aspect of our lives, so constant talk about actual experience (the non-verbal, non-logical part) is noise, except in the other cases where the higher order message is necessary.  For example, you need to resort to abstract verbal constructs to order lunch.  During lunch you don't need to talk constantly or keep typing text messages, or surfing feed images.  Then again it's hard to imagine how looking around, or focusing on the actual experience of eating, could be so much better than those things.  In a McDonald's it probably wouldn't be, but that doesn't necessarily contradict Zen teachings, that in general people probably should drift towards eating decent food in more pleasant surroundings.

This "ought" might not be clear still.  What's the problem with observing story lines in our daily life?  To start, it's really not clear any tenet of Buddhism should be interpreted this way, or that any "should" really applies.  It's a possible connection I'm discussing here, because it's an interesting line of thought to me.  To most people, even those interested in Buddhism, it might not be.

To clarify further, let's assume there is some potential problem with seeing every single life event as part of any number of individual story lines.  Put the opposite way, let's assume there is some benefit to not doing that.  What is it, or what is both?  I'm proposing that life really isn't like that, that many things are just random, with no point, and no connections to other series of events, and it's a waste of time and an improper use of logic to keep linking them.  I guess this starts to overlap with a critique of superstition, although it's still a different thing.

I can't really say I notice this is a huge problem in how I experience reality, so some of the "what if" related to suggesting a problem doesn't work.  I have noticed that my mind can tend to get a bit noisy as a matter of habit, and that in the past steps I've taken to quiet it down have been positive.  In general I can't suggest an easy way to do that, since I've had mixed results with meditation, and the only thing that really did work was spending a few days alone in nature.

Continuity versus change in narrative

The function of the stories is really to put an order to things, to measure out real patterns for what they are.  One could easily overdo primitive human references but it's obvious enough how in the distant past gathering food and avoiding danger would draw on recognizing continuity in what happened before related to the present.  Of course we're not exactly in those circumstances, so as well to not make too much of all that.

In the present one type of narrative one might follow could relate to patterns of how a spouse or significant other is helpful / not supportive / etc.  Or related to work, or hobbies, or any number of social circumstances.  Drawing on the continuity in those patterns would sort of be the point, even though there would be regular variation.  What if a significant other or job or whatever other subject altered between positive and negative, between desired outcomes and positive correlations and the opposite?  Our own read would be inconsistent, always changing.  This seems to be how experienced reality actually works.

Not necessarily a bad thing, of course.  One could say the degree to which we rise above the ups and downs to measure it all well we are actually rational.  Or maybe that's going too far.  There is a tendency for people to accept that men want to be more rational, and women are better about accepting that ordinary experience isn't about reason, so there is a natural gender-based tension related to both the nature of reality and reason.

Being married it's easy for me to pin inconsistency on my wife, for not stepping back and weighing out what individual variations in experience mean.  She comes across as "crazy."  This definitely doesn't relate to writing out too many text messages, of course.  If she wrote a lot more or a lot less I think the end result wouldn't be so different.  We tend to add our interpretive biases to those messages, and within the conversations they are a part of, so the narrative themes are already there.  Someone I send messages to would already expect my wife to be crazy, and for me to be whatever the messages would say I am, as often not supportive or the like but related to negative triggers for communication.  So goes married life, or at least mine.

What alternative, direct experience?

This part I'm not so clear on.  It seems we have to keep doing this, that human experienced reality really does depend on it.  I recently took a break from my smart phone and it is possible to not send messages or check feeds but I still can't say how it actually changes experience.  Maybe it did seem slightly more direct.  Here there seems to be two related but different considerations:  by typing messages or updates into a phone a few times every hour we seem to condense our off-line lives into commentary more consistently, and then also life experience seems to be conditioned by including that ever-present element, so that in a way we never completely leave there.  Still hard to condense all that into a "we shouldn't."

It would help to have a "Buddha" as a reference, someone experiencing reality in a different way, one that somehow seems clearly better.  Unfortunately even the people that claim to have taken a limited step towards that are typically selling something, or just a bit out there.  I've interacted with a lot of monks in the last 8 years (in addition to having been one, briefly) and there's not much direction from there either, no higher perspective to draw on.  Even people that just talk about Buddhism seem to be all over the map, more often simply repeating cryptic, archaic references than making useful points (as likely myself included, just with less references).

A long time ago it seemed that to the extent I was able to notice the nature of my own experienced reality that I could also change it, experience it in a more direct and consistent way.  Maybe to some extent I'm still doing that; maybe not.  One could as easily argue this direct experience should be about noticing less, not doing so in a different way, but really who is to say.

I try to be aware of my own immediate reactions (the mindfulness part) and also keep an eye on the interpretive themes I'm adding, and maybe to some degree that helps me work with what I've got.  For me it's also helpful to keep in mind that not everything means something, that to some extent relatively random things can also happen, so there's no need to organize or manage or make sense of a lot of things.

Bill Murray on mindfulness (sort of)

I recently ran across a nice article about Bill Murray that relates to Buddhism, or at least I'm seeing a clear connection.  A quote of the passage, following the link and title:


http://www.vulture.com/2014/09/7-steps-to-living-a-bill-murray-life.html   He says:


You think, Dammit, someone else is trying to be me. ... I don’t have to armor myself against that idea if I can really just relax and feel content ... If I can just feel, just think now: How much do you weigh? This is a thing I like to do with myself when I get lost and I get feeling funny. ... try to feel that weight in your seat right now, in your bottom right now. ... if you can come back into the most personal identification ... which is: I am. This is me now. ... There’s just a wonderful sense of well-being that begins to circulate up and down, from your top to your bottom.


Actually the advice just before that, step 6 of 7 on how to live a Bill Murray life in the article, provided some context:

You have to remind yourself that you can do the very best you can when you’re very, very relaxed. No matter what it is, no matter what your job is, the more relaxed you are, the better you are.


Both of these points relate to ideas from Buddhism, although to some extent Buddhism also relates to ordinary life, so everyday perspective, wisdom, and Buddhism need not be different.  In fact to me to the extent these are separate things, and Buddhism is more about an abstract set of ideas, then in that case it's really not Buddhism at all.

Interpretation section

The context is being relaxed in everyday life, and the second more specific point (step 7) relates to being present in the present moment to help achieve this.  I won't get too far into Buddhist terminology and concepts for this since it really does defeat the points being made, which are probably about as clear without explanation as with one. 

I will reference a couple related concepts but bear in mind these are interpretations of interpretations of individual ideas within a large framework of concepts in Buddhism.  Building the individual ideas up as a system of related ideas helps describe them to some extent, and also drifts off the point in another sense, related to tying them back to actual experience.  In the end it has to be about a simple change to everyday perspective, taking something problematic away, removing conceptual structure, rather than adding a lot of ideas.

not exactly the same but related

What Bill Murray is saying works well as real Buddhism because the context is there, about being relaxed, and also "when I get lost and I get feeling funny." There's no way to really describe getting caught up in ideas and attachments well so that works. About "trying to be me," I'm not so sure, but the general idea of rejecting self and attachments is that unnecessary connections cause problems for people.  This could involve trying to force the past or the future to be a certain way, even though both are out of reach in different ways since we act only in the present, or getting hung up on ties to expectations or self-image.


The part about weight is nice; an easy to grasp and use tie to the present moment.



The apparent connection to self is not as much a problem as it would seem to people without a grasp of what it means to reject self in Buddhism.   As I've been going on and on about in other posts it's a limited form of rejection. It could be interpreted related to people saying absurd things, in effect rejecting the continuity that being a person must involve, or some could see even that approach as a useful tool.

My take is that stating absurdities completely misses the point, except perhaps as a limited thought model (perhaps not the best framing since "thought model" invokes lots of what is being rejected in the first place). Gaining a more developed relation to a continuity of self is the point, not imagining or creating a world where some internal consistent person doesn't exist at all. A relatively continuous perspective is no problem, per Buddhism; interpreting that as what it's not and stressing over what really isn't real is a real problem, and a very common one, part of a conventional worldview.

More interpretation, closer to Buddhist concepts

The cited passage is talking about being in the moment.  Dragging in concepts and relations between them, like non-attachment, doesn't help much, but I will a little anyway.  A rejection of self could be tied in even though this seems to be saying the opposite, the "I am" part, but again that's more about shaking concepts than adding them.

Relaxing is about non-attachment, dropping ideas of self and other imaginary connections that aren't useful, that invoke stress of different kinds.  One useful tool for doing this is mindfulness practice, being aware of the present moment, including one's own mental state and perspective.

Talks on Buddhism regularly provide examples of ways to practice better momentary awareness.  For me spending a few moments watching breathing and relaxing the breathing process works, naturally drifting into more stomach breathing than chest breathing.  Others are a bit simpler yet.  One technique (trick?) a monk described in a dharma talk once as "doorknob zen:"  you can take a single second to check on momentary awareness before opening a doorknob, losing essentially no time out of your day to trigger better momentary awareness.

bumps!  photo credit linked

When I used to snowboard a lot different types of centering and focus techniques really did help me set aside my "self" and get on with the boarding.  It was actually necessary because I loved to ride bumps (moguls, if you rather), and hitting large obstacles and making extreme turns more rapidly than once a second isn't something one can consciously do.


Think about it and you can't keep up, and fall.

this was my house, Beaver Creek; credit Dave Park

I experimented with lots of methods.  One was to focus on my hands briefly on the ski-lift ride up.  Why my hands?  Lots of nerves there, a familiar body part, easy to keep a focus point on them.  On the actual runs sometimes I would "play" music in my head.  To improve the focus before going out I would do some yoga.

In the end I could keep up a very long run of very extreme boarding, indefinite, not really by establishing a rhythm since the rhythm was coming from the terrain, not from me.  Riding in trees was another way to reinforce consistent, effective turns since the alternative--crashing into a tree--would serve as immediate negative reinforcement.

The Razor's Edge

To me this is Bill Murray's best work related to Buddhism, although there is more on the internet comparing Groundhog Day to Buddhist themes (related to cycle of rebirth, of course; more on both here).  There are different references about this movie but nothing seems to really capture what works and what doesn't related to Buddhism (to me), so maybe the Wikipedia summary is as good a stand-in for actually seeing the film as there is.  But it's quite worth seeing.

The movie is interesting for directly engaging Buddhist concepts; his character went to India to find himself, after war experiences led to a personal crisis and reading and introspection didn't suffice.  His character is not exactly portrayed as enlightened, or anything of the sort, but there are explicit references to spiritual insight.  The movie doesn't work as a story about where such insight actually leads, since his character is involved with more difficulties that show the limits of transcending normal perspective.

So why do I bring it up, if the deep insight isn't really there, in the form of a how-to?  It's about as good as story-based movie fragments of Buddhism get, and worth watching, and Bill Murray is the lead.  To me any criticism of the movie is about someone just not getting it, which is fine, no reason why most viewers would have much background knowledge of Buddhism.

The third movie of Murray's referencing Buddhism is Caddyshack, related to his character Carl Spackler, the greenskeeper, who says a little about Buddhism (see some quotes here, or movie background here).  Chevy Chase's character Ty Webb was even more Zen-like and cryptic.  To me it's one of the best comedies ever made but I'm not sure how much Buddhism one could pick up from it.