On being a temporary monk in Thailand

I was once ordained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand for over two months.  That was eight years ago now, back in the end of 2007, from November to January.  Since I've been mentioning a bit about that related to an expat forum discussion I'll pass on some of the same ideas here.  Of course this will be far from complete, just talking around where it happens to lead.

Why do Thais ordain as temporary monks?

at the kuti, residence area

This is actually a common part of their culture, with origins in the original, older Buddhist tradition.  Of course Thai Buddhism is part of the Theravada tradition, the older main branch of Buddhism, versus Mahayana and Vajrayana.  This isn't going to be an intro to Buddhism post though, just about my experiences, so people interested in such a thing can check the main Wikipedia Buddhism article, then go on to read another hundred sources to see what that left out or got wrong.

In the original form someone could ordain as a monk for the rainy season, then go back to lay-life.  The intention would seem to be a spiritual retreat period but it's conceivable this also enabled a more practical aspect of providing those people a place to stay and food, from alms round practice.  Given the context seems to imply it related to agricultural workers they would have already had a place to stay, and things should have went well enough with the farming that basic sustenance shouldn't have been an issue, but who knows really.  It was a different time and place, or given how it could have evolved over time maybe different times and places.

In the modern form in Thailand it's about accumulating merit for the family, more or less.  Some people--men only; females can be a type of nun but not a monk, with one exception in a splinter group in Australia, but that's a different story--even ordain immediately after the death of a family member related to this.  The point is that merit--good karma--doesn't just accumulate for that person, but also goes to family members, so even after death it's a way to support family that has passed, along with merit accumulated from memorial services, and giving gifts to monks.

  

How effective can these rituals be, in terms of generating merit?  There's no quantifying that, but there are ways to sort of add more "spiritual power" to effort, so a bit of a scale can emerge.  If "higher" monks take part these are more highly regarded, sort of "spiritually accomplished" individuals, so having a ceremony involving some such monks is thought to have more effect.  How would one know how senior, or highly regarded, or spiritually advanced a monk is?  They actually have ranks related to such a thing, and of course older monks in general have more personally accumulated merit from their own practice, one of many factors related.  All of this is drifting off the point a bit, though, that of covering some basics.

So the short version is that taking part benefits the monk (maybe not so much in this life, or maybe so, hard to be clear on that), and also their family.  The family receives a "merit / karma" benefit, which even extends to dead family members who are long since no longer around, or on to the generation not yet born.  Or at least that's one part of the story, a literal faith that relates to generated merit.

A special case, ordaining as a novice (samanane)

The idea that one might be a samanane or monk novice is an unusual special case.  Thais seem to only use this position for children, although I can't say for sure there is no convention related to an adult becoming a samanane, but I'm not familiar with any.  In the original form this is exactly what the role was about.  I won't go into details but apparently this came about originally (per the stories, and this is just my own take) related to the Buddha establishing a role for his own son.  Of course I'm not as clear that this was the direct cause, or just an existing role his own son came to take up, as a child.

It seems like special tourism programs in Thailand (at least one) use "ordaining" an adult male as a novice for the purpose of giving a foreigner a taste of the experience without drawing on full ordination, or altering existing practices to set up monastic experience as tourism.  Since I don't have a lot of background related to this I'm only mentioning it here as an interesting exception, and one that helps fill in a bit about this novice role.  Thais would likely not be so clear on this distinction since it's unheard of for adults to become novices, so I would expect that they would naturally assume these people were monks.

Foreign monks; special issues

Visas to stay in Thailand aren't really part of the potential benefit.  I know one long-term monk here (mostly online) that goes through the same visa issues others do, resolved mostly through use of educational visas.  As related background, I know one other layman expat using the same approach, here as a long term student.

Really all the same context of being a monk applies as to foreigners just as it does to native Thai monks; there is essentially no difference.  Some complications come up related to language, of course, especially related to learning the rules for a monk, since direct instruction on the rules becomes more complicated.  I'll cover all that in a later section.

The ordination ceremony requires a good bit of chanting in Pali, but since that's a language that Thais don't speak either it's not so different to learn by rote for a foreigner as for a Thai.  Thai is a tonal language but Pali is really not, so in that one sense learning random sounds in Pali should be a lot easier for a foreigner, compared to if one tried to do the same in Thai.


It's not directly related to this experience but I did study Sanskrit quite a bit, four four semesters, or for 12 credits at the University of Hawaii in grad school, and those two languages are very closely related (Pali and Sanskrit), with a lot of overlap.  Sanskrit is more or less a parent language that evolved to become Pali, which evolved to become Hindi, so unless I've got that completely wrong--which probably isn't so unlikely--Sanskrit is Hindi's grandmother.

While I'm at it lets do a short tangent about how Pali and Sanskrit sounds relate to those in English and Thai, even though it's hardly related (it is related to the chanting, I guess).  The tones are out, which I already said, with the main difference left relating to consonant sound differences.  One vowel sound wasn't completely familiar, as I recall, but in general those wouldn't be so hard to get close to saying right with a background in either other language.  At first in studying Sanskrit I really was trying to get the consonant sounds right, but later it became evident we could just botch that part and the professor didn't really care, so I never really did master them.  

Maybe I could be clearer about what I'm even talking about though.  The main difference related to "aspiration," to the slight "h" sound or air release that corresponds to some consonant sounds.  I don't want to go too far with this, but notice that when one says a normal "t" sound in English (test, tone, take, to, any words) there is a slight hiss of air following the "t," but when pronouncing a "b" instead there isn't (bat, boy, bin--try it an you'll see).  Really it would be possible for someone to pronounce a non-aspirated "t" sound, to cut that part off, or an aspirated "b" sound, to add more slight hiss adjoined after to that.  This is what I mean; Sanskrit and Pali use more options with both, they break up the sounds into more of them.

Obviously if I could get that wrong for a Sanskrit class a monk wasn't going to stop an ordination ceremony and fix my pronunciation for that, though.  Compared to a Thai I would have a slight accent, perhaps, since the breakdown of consonants is a little different in Thai too, but since the chanting was in Pali a Thai would probably be pronouncing Pali with a Thai accent too, related to other sound differences.

Monks and money starting point:  they can't possess it

I'll go into monk's rules a lot more, and drift back to some more general background and a conclusion, but in short one of the main rules of being a monk is that a monk can't possess money.  Any guesses as to others?  Of course they have to wear robes, but there are so many rules about the robes it sort of seems assumed and prior to those.  


One interesting rule is that a monk can't physically touch a woman.  No problem; reasonable enough, right?  It's interesting how they would define what "touch" means.  What if a monk handed something to a woman, and accidentally touched her hand in the process?  They've got that covered.  A monk can't hand anything directly to a woman, or receive anything directly from one, so they are taking that rule fairly literally and seriously.  Monks don't eat dinner either; they can only eat a breakfast and lunch, sometimes more strictly interpreted as only one meal a day, but the formal form is they can't sit down to eat lunch after noon.  In theory they could sit down at 11:55 and there's no last word on when the meal needs to be wrapped up but stretching the rules is against the informal rules, the normal interpretation.

Back to the issue of owning money, and potential financial benefit, monks do receive money as contributions, in spite of a clear rule restricting them from possessing or spending it.  Strange, right?  One part of that is about contributing to a temple, sort of, but in Thailand monks have some degree of expenses to cover, so they're not quite as literal and strict about that rule as for the one about touching women.  Of course their expenses are very low, but they do have some very legitimate ones.  For example, some temples charge the monks for their use of electricity, with the understanding that with completely unrestricted access they might waste it (leave lights on, or who knows what).  Cell phones might seem a frivolous expense, although monks do seem to typically own those, but something like eyeglasses or medical treatment seems a valid use of money.  I've heard that medical treatments are covered by society, I guess by the government at certain hospitals, so there may or may not be some gray area remaining.  I didn't need money in the two months I was a monk, but then people did keep contributing things, so it wasn't like I would need to go to Tesco and buy a bar of soap.

There are examples that make the Thai news of monks exploiting their role for financial benefit, or spending money improperly, but my impression (guess?) is that these are exceptions.  Funneling some limited amount of money back to a family may not be so isolated, even if technically still not ok, but most monks probably wouldn't have access to enough money to waste a lot of it.  Given that what most do with what they do receive isn't much of an issue, if they really need a cell phone and such, although I could understand some people thinking they really shouldn't own modern electronics like that.  Others in the main temples, tourist centers, primary ceremonial centers, or probably those within the Dhammakaya sect in general probably do have access to more money (sort of the "Southern Baptist" version of Thai Buddhism, to go ahead and smear two religious sects at the same time), so it could become an issue if the access is there.

What other benefits would there be to being a monk?  That's really a separate issue, a bit of a tangent here.  I'd already mentioned that if one holds a literal form of religious Buddhist faith this ties to accumulating merit / positive karma.  Some form of spiritual development could be seen as the same thing or else as relatively separate from that.   I had a good bit of history studying Buddhism so it really related mostly to that, personally, a follow-up to other types of exposure, enabled by becoming a part of a Thai family.  Or maybe someone would just like the lifestyle.  I knew a long-term foreign monk at another temple that stayed on for that purpose, or so it seemed to me; he liked it.  I'll break all this out in another section.

Monastic life as a lifestyle choice

When I first became a monk my wife's aunt mentioned that people might become monks because they like the lifestyle, which seemed a little strange to me.  

Who would want a lifestyle defined most by over 227 rules one has to adhere to (more on that in a later section), covering significant restrictions like wearing normal clothing or physically touching a woman, or eating after noon.  There are also a lot of minor rules, for example a monk is not permitted to drink something while standing (or so I was told by other novices; maybe not).  Of course it wouldn't be a serious issue to break the minor rules (like drinking something while standing), and to some extent monks do possess money, going against one of the main rules, covered in this already.  

After being a monk I could see what she meant.  It was hard adjusting to the schedule and the restrictions but after a month it all became a bit more normal, and along with some of those choices and options some responsibilities drop away.  A monk doesn't need to worry about most expenses, like food or housing, or much about their jobs (although many had harder jobs than a lot of lay-people, work that would be somewhat demanding and perhaps even stressful, requiring long hours).  Financial concerns would mostly drop away.  Again I'm not sure how that works for medical care, which may or may not get complicated.  One demand I didn't foresee, although I should have after studying for a month to repeat the ordination vows in Pali language, was that it takes a lot of work to learn and retain those endless chants they do in ceremonies.

There are other pros and cons, and lots of related factors, but I could see how in the end some people might like it as a lifestyle choice.  The rules are a bit much, though.  Lets go into that in the next part separately.

Vinaya, 227 rules

Here's a good summary reference for those 227 rules:  http://en.dhammadana.../vinaya/227.htm

Since I don't want to write a lot really explaining what those are--too much for me to take on in a summary opinion based piece--I'll limit this to my own experience of them, or really only part of it, since they were the main background for all of my experience.  This part gets a little strange; I never learned them when I was a monk (which again was eight years ago now).  They covered the main ones with me, or seemed to; it would be hard to narrow down what "main ones" really means, even though they broken into sets.

The reason for that gap in my training was simple enough.  They sent the new monks, or temporary monks, to informal classes on what not to do, but as a foreigner I wasn't going to catch that training in Thai language, and they weren't going to translate it for me.  It's hard to say to what extent the average Thai has already picked up the background of those rules.  Of course they know that they're not supposed to touch women and can't eat after noon but I'm not sure how many of the other rules would be familiar to most.

Some of the rules they don't really follow.  We've covered the background on #17 and #18 of the nissagiyas (I'm referring to that reference list in the external link), not to accept or use money, and they sort of do that, to a limited extent.  #1 on that list, not to keep an extra robe for more than 10 days at a time, they would also routinely ignore.  In practice they really don't store a lot of extra robes, although I don't know the actual convention for limiting it.  Maybe most would never keep more than one spare or something such.  

One might wonder the point of having a spare, or more than one spare, so I'll drift just a little into that.  The main answer seems obvious enough; eventually one is going to need to wash the robe, maybe even frequently, and it would be strange to wear it wet after that, so a spare would be really handy while that dried.  Another concern may not be so obvious:  they come in different colors.  Crazy, right?  In general the Thai city monks wear a bright orange robe and the Thai country monks wear a dark orange, sort of rust-colored robe.  Someone would not keep different robes to look the part, to dress in fashion, depending on where they are, of course, although monks do tend to travel more than one might expect, at least some of them.  Somehow it's also normal enough for Bangkok monks to wear a darker color for formal occassions, to switch from the neon orange to a more beautiful closer-to-rust color.  Of course that does get a little odd; monk formal fashion.

One more detail to this tangent, then back to the main ideas:  someone gave me such a robe once, a beautiful, formal ceremonial version.  I did like the color, but was at a loss for what to do with it.  I went to only one really, really formal ceremony, the kind of thing a brand new or temporary monk absolutely doesn't attend, but I went in my normal robe for that.  I stood out, but then I already stood out for being a foreigner, and for not knowing those long chants, and for being generally clueless.  I already had two robes, so technically I was already one over what I was allowed to own, with no real use for that robe, so I ended up just giving it away to another monk.

Essentially all the rest of those rules the monks really do practice, but some of those get a little vague.  One says to only shower twice a month, unless dirty, but that's open to judgement, and monks tend to keep clean now.  It's as well since it's hot here in Thailand.

One of the other new monks, the temporary, two-week duration kind, told me it was against those rules to smell a flower, and I asked a senior monk and he said it wasn't.  I just read the list and nothing about that is on there.  I didn't see a rule about not drinking while standing either, which the other monks said you can't do; funny how those minor rules inconsistencies might work out.  They explained to me that violating a minor rule isn't really a big deal, or one that somehow seems out of date, no longer as applicable, although of course that leads back to a need for learning which are most minor.  Most of it they really did apply very literally, with a lot of observed conventions that restricted monks to coming across as a bit reserved, sort of the intention of many of the rules.

Monastic culture; informal practices

A lot of those rules do cover things that might seem like cultural elements, about manner, or even thoughts one should have, like not to covet things, or talk with your mouth full, some relatively minor details.  What a monk can or can't do and how they behave really goes beyond that.  A main example:  a monk can't wai to someone first.  The Thai "wai" is a hand gesture, pressing hands together in front of yourself, that looks like a Christian prayer gesture, used as a greeting here.  But that's the short version; it can also mean "I'm sorry," and surely there's lots more to say about it.  The Indian version is pretty close to that, maybe with the hands just held a little lower, with arms at less of an angle, and I'd assume they use it differently.  And they say "namaste," a nice touch, which I've been told means "I show respect to the god in you."

To get back to the point, younger people wai to older people first in Thai culture.  If you do that wrong it's a bit of a faux pas.  It's not quite that simple; someone clearly higher in status shouldn't wai to someone lower in status first, or maybe at all in lots of situations, so for example you don't wai to the taxi drivers, at all.  As a foreigner in Thailand people don't expect you to get it right so a "farang" can just wai when they think it's a good idea, or only wai back.  Or foreigners can really apply it as they like, nodding instead, it's not a big deal how it goes in their case.  For a monk it's really simple; you don't wai to anyone, unless they wai to you.

As for the rest it's mostly about coming across as dispassionate, not showing anger or excitement, being polite, etc.  The rules point to this and other informal conventions carry on with that.  Who knows if I did all that perfectly.  I was lucky to stay in a residence area (or "kuti") with a number of monks that spoke pretty good English, as younger Thais in general do, so I was probably doing ok based on their guidance.

In conclusion

This was one of the most interesting experiences of my life.  I had studied Buddhism for 15 years prior to being a monk and there wasn't that much overlap between that knowledge and related personal development and that time and experience as a monk.  That I didn't expect, that monks really weren't talking about core Buddhism all that much, and if one was a monk and tried to that it might not get far.  Rules, rituals, and stories about the Buddha's life were the opposite, those did come up.  But then I was a "city monk."  If I'd stayed instead at a forest temple dedicated to Buddhist meditation training and learning things might have been different.


I did go on a meditation retreat in that time, out of the city.  I'd been practicing meditation daily at a temple beside the one I lived in, at a meditation center at Wat Mahadat, so the point was more to get exposure to some of those ideas.  This isn't completely unconventional, by the way, for a monk to travel or take up different purposes, but for a temporary monk probably it would be.  One foreign monk in Bangkok runs a meditation and learning group, just because that's what he does.  That stay out of the city, the meditation retreat, was very unusual because I stayed at a Dhammakaya sect temple, which is quite a bit different than the mainstream sect I was in, but given the length of this passage it seems as well to not go into those differences.

I'll pass on one more story about an experience and just leave this at that.  I remember one morning, early out on alms round, walking barefoot through the alleys near the temple.  This was normal for me, one of my favorite parts of the day, although it was odd waking up at six for that.  Alms round had an unusual feel to it, sort of quiet and almost somber, but peaceful.  


I was walking down a dark wet alley, of course wearing a robe, carrying only the covered bowl that monks use, and I saw a very small  lighted Christmas tree in the window of a closed shop.  I don't think it was actually Christmas day but it was close to that, and it might as well have been; monks don't celebrate Thai holidays, never mind foreign ones.  It sort of hit me:  what am I doing?  It wasn't a terribly sad feeling, since I was over a month into acclimating at that point, but somehow I felt all the more out of place.


It was my time to be a monk though, foreign to my original culture but a normal part of leading a slightly unusual life.  By the end of that alley I walked past someone familiar, an older woman that had been offering food to feed me somewhat regularly for those few weeks.  We didn't talk, there was really no personal bond, but to the limited extent that type of exchange was personal--which was really the opposite of the point, more about a religious role and ritual--I was grateful.  I said the short prayer of blessing Thai monks say and walked on, back to my morning routine at the temple.

Buddhism and death; what comes next

This is a subject that's been coming up way too much this year, with my grandmother and a few friend's family members dying, in addition to a number of our pets (later note; I wrote this in 2015, but never posted it that year).  What does Buddhism say about death?

keeping it light, even in the shadow of the coming end

Of course it doesn't just say one thing.  Buddhism is interpreted different ways, within a range of different branches and schools, so a range of answers would apply.


One might think there would be a way to go back to the original words of the Buddha and settle the matter but it turns out it doesn't work that way.  In some passages the Buddha explicitly said he wasn't teaching anything about the afterlife, that his teachings only referred to what is helpful for this life, to end suffering (not necessarily the best interpretation of that concept, but good enough for a working version).  In other statements he implied reincarnation / rebirth is the accurate model for life after death (rebirth, as people conventionally use the terms, but what's in a name, especially when these terms aren't so clearly defined).  Why would that be, an apparent internal contradiction?




A better Buddhism scholar than me might have a more complete answer, but there are some main groups of possibilities that come to mind.  There's a decent chance that anything potentially useful in what might actually turn up could be lost in the consideration of the different factors, but lets go there anyway.  One possibility:

-some of the teachings are wrong, not the original versions, or added later

Buddhism was an oral tradition for a long time, and we have clear evidence of the written Christian tradition changing over time, a very short span of time (the first half-century AD), so we could expect all the more of the same from one with a much longer history.  There are more related reference "documents" / teachings, communicated over decades instead of a few years per the origin story.  A reliance on chanting for transmission may have led to inaccuracies, and there is no way to go back and cross-check oral "records."  Even a limited review of early Buddhism mentions a lot of branching of practitioners into different groups, relatively early on (sort of relates to another point, depending on how this is interpreted).

-the contradiction was intentional

The Buddha was pretty open about teaching different things to different people related to how different people could relate to helpful ideas differently.  The idea was that they were essentially the same teachings and practices, just in different forms, not unheard of in the Hindu tradition (which was really a general group of related ideas and traditions, not just one cohesive set with the exact same underlying assumptions). 

To oversimplify, one person might do best with an intellectual approach, and they could benefit from a complicated framework like the dependent origination model to explain reality.  For someone else a more devotional practice-oriented inclination might require something quite different as a starting point and methodology.  On the surface the ideas could seem to be saying different things but really the final end-point could be essentially the same.  Or at least that's the general idea.

If this is right the Buddha might have really said a number of different things that seem to conflict, with related assumptions that really do, because those things were all useful and informative within the range of the one particular discussion or teaching.

-multiple branches of Buddhism teach different things

In reading up a bit for this post I read that Buddhism had already split into a number of different groups prior to establishing the Pali Canon (not the best reference for good information, but the Wikipedia version is one starting point).  Another reference mentioned the sutras from the different groups of that time period were relatively similar, so it seems likely that core teachings wouldn't differ so much from them (although maybe that's not true), with more significant differences in the different later schools. 

This reference on the different sets of Buddhist texts identifies some of these main branches and groups.

Whenever you see someone in a blog post or article citing different sources, going back to reputed words of the Buddha, then ahead to historical teachers, and up to the present day, maybe even sampling across diverse contexts like philosophy and religion, it seems like they are referring to solid evidence of consistent teachings.  But really they could just be starting from one conclusion and then selecting whatever happens to match what they want to conclude, even by picking and choosing from completely different types of sources (different branches / schools / interpretations / types of sources).  It sounds as if I'm accusing some people of interpretive bias for doing this, and I guess that is the general point, that you don't really start "from scratch" to read up on one point in Buddhism, it doesn't work that way.

Really specific groups tend to follow internally consistent sets of ideas, derived from a related framework, but that doesn't need to be the case for individuals, and even larger, old traditions could potentially shift interpretations over time.  I visited a temple for a monastic group related to Thai Buddhism (of which there are already sub-branches), the Dhammakaya sect, that broke quite far to postulating heavens and essentially a semi-permanent self (really permanent, in the way they framed it). 

Of course different people could interpret their teachings and goals differently, but one reviewer summarizes the standard criticisms of this Dhammakaya sect as:


Its critics say it is little more than a commercial venture, preying on the vulnerable who are fooled into believing they can literally buy a better place in their next life


My take is that the teachings seem really unconventional, not in keeping with anything else I encountered, and the meditation practices and other supernatural claims were just as unusual (lots about magic, heavenly realms, angels and such).

So some diversity is really out there--obviously.  But does it mean the Buddha might have been accepting rebirth in one set of ideas, and not clearly expressing that in another?  It seems if you go on volume alone and taking references to rebirth as confirmation then you have to accept the Buddha did teach it, but there is still room for drawing different conclusions aside from that.  I'll explain further.

My take:  it sort of doesn't matter

I get it that people really want to know, to take a guess and go with it, or be part of a system of faith that tells them what is coming next.  The uncertainty can be a bit much, and every death of a loved one we take personally is another reminder, a very open question--what became of them?  What becomes of us?


It always seems odd to me that some people are such "devout" atheists, but I guess that's more of the same.  They want to know, even if their conclusion is a negative in the sense of accepting that nothing is coming next.  Their take is that logic dictates this, that the arguments are so strong anyone would be compelled to think as they do, but it seems the real drive might well be the desire to know, to come to a certain conclusion, so not completely about logic.  Logic really doesn't extend to past everything we currently know and experience, or could experience, unless you start buying into people talking to ghosts or remembering past lives as valid, factual evidence, but then you've already bought into the assumption and conclusion you want to end up with at the outset.

The fact of the matter is whatever it is, isn't it?  A wrong guess on our part could have catastrophic results, eternity in a hell realm, if you believe some takes.  Schemes with reincarnation / rebirth are a little more forgiving, just adding a few cycles, and that is really based more on other things than beliefs.  This line of thinking leads towards a cost-benefit analysis approach to belief, but that really doesn't help much with the facts of the matter.

Conclusion; I don't conclude

So I'm agnostic.  I don't know, and I sort of don't guess.  I've studied a lot of Buddhism and have been influenced a lot by the ideas but my take is that one could come to different conclusions based on such study.  It would be natural to believe in rebirth as a result, but not necessary.  It's hard for me to see how such a belief would be claimed to be effective anyway, as it is in Christianity, where the belief itself does something. 

Some practitioners could reasonably claim their beliefs relate to actions they take in this life, that karma and rebirth are real, and they take a straight path towards effective results for working out the best-guess truth, but that's hard to completely accept.  Even if true that their guess is good, that we are reborn, morality in the different systems is pretty consistent, so being a devout Christian or Pagan would serve you pretty well even if the Hindu / Buddhist answer is right.

I was just at a Thai Buddhist memorial ceremony related to this last idea.  Thai Buddhists emphasize the concept of merit quite a bit, so the things one does are effective, offering gifts to monks to produce merit (good karma, essentially).  One interesting twist is that these are said to benefit other family members as well, even dead ones.  They really might extend that to thinking that thoughts are effective as well, back to where Christianity lands, but per my extensive exposure to Buddhist teachings that doesn't have much basis in what the Buddha actually taught.  Actions are effective, and intentions, and even more so states of mind are relevant, perspective and such.  Beliefs come into play--right understanding is part of the core eightfold path--and of course these tie back to mental states and actions, but they still aren't effective in the way Christian faith can save you.  For a Christian without that belief you're in trouble, regardless of how you choose to live your life.

People with different beliefs related to Buddhism would still want to know what's coming next, and would still seek to justify their beliefs are valid and accurate, as Christians and atheists do.  They could turn to teachings for that, citations of different references, and within their own school there would be plenty of reassuring evidence.  Oddly sometimes that points towards heaven as a destination, even though this seems a bit inconsistent, but there is a lot of Buddhism out there to draw upon.

Researching a bit; background on what Buddhism is saying about death

This is where things get messy; charting it all out a bit.  Fair warning:  this doesn't really go anywhere related to a clear conclusion.  This section starts in about why Buddhism does say reincarnation / rebirth is how "afterlife" goes, then the next gives evidence against that conclusion, and I'm not sure either has a clear edge.  So it's a you-pick-um; believe what you want, and if you want evidence then believe the set of ideas and background that points toward that conclusion.


I scanned a version of the Dhammapada (a set of Buddhist sayings and ideas) to refer to what it includes about death and reincarnation / rebirth (a reference I would have read many versions of a long time ago back when I was into such things).  There isn't anything.  Of course this is just a selection of some sayings, bits of different ideas, so maybe other sutras would be a better reference.

But don't take my word for it; give it a read, with a clear enough version here.  Or there is a bit more interpreted and poetic version here.  Keep in mind the biases in the school / group of the person interpreting belongs to will show up as pointing translation of certain concepts towards what they expect the text to be saying.  Some ideas and expressions from 2500 years ago wouldn't easily or clearly translate, so when one section says things about a monk or a holy man they were talking about the context of people in different roles back then, and we really can't know how that compares to now.

Here is a citation that describes about as much as there is in the text about afterlife:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.13.than.html

Get up! Don't be heedless. Live the Dhamma well. One who lives the Dhamma sleeps with ease in this world & the next. Live the Dhamma well. Don't live it badly. One who lives the Dhamma sleeps with ease in this world & the next.


Not much!  One could read this as a rejection of atheism but even that would seem a stretch to me.  Literally it did just say there is a next world, so there is that.

Here is that from the other source, interpreted, but it doesn't go so far in explaining it:

Verse 168. The Righteous Are Happy - Here And Hereafter

Rouse yourself, be diligent, in Dhamma faring well.
Who dwells in Dhamma’s happy in this birth and the next.

Explanation: Wake up to reality; do not be delude. Live in accordance with reality. The realistic person lives happily in this world and in the next.


It's strange how different sources say completely different things about Buddhism and rebirth / reincarnation.  I'll skip calling that by both names for now, and I do get around to citing the supposed difference, which gets back to the rejection of a permanent soul.  It would take the kind of understanding these sources wouldn't provide to sort that out, but it's not so hard to cite a passage that starts in on it.

One typical Western short-answer cross referenced source says Buddhism doesn't say anything about rebirth, and of course a Wikipedia page on the subject completely assumes it does, and moves on directly to explaining and siting what that is.  So what gives?

To back up and provide a little more context, these are just citations that appear high in a Google-search review of the subject for "Buddhism and reincarnation."  It would be possible to find lots of sources that go in both directions, saying different things about why, different types of references that seem better or worse depending on what someone likes in researched or reliable sources, speaking from different types of authority. 

Bear in mind there are lots of different schools of Buddhism from a few main branches, which refer back to different core texts, so these all really should be saying somewhat different things.  Some say heaven or hell is the next step, seemingly a third alternative to coming back or nothing happening next.

This guy wrote a long blog post (Alen Peto; surely doesn't ring a bell) explaining the differences, and since he accepts rebirth is part of Buddhist teachings he cites references saying that's the case.  Per his take reincarnation assumes a permanent soul (rejected in Buddhism), and rebirth doesn't, but then it's not so clear to me that convention is a given except based on a framework of ideas that already assumes it.  Surely if you look up both in a dictionary it's not specific about that.  He freely mixes references from different branches, so there are authorities (modern ones) and limited text citations supporting what he's saying, but then surely one could start from the opposite assumption and write the opposite blog entry, seemingly just as well supported.

It seemed like that's what I was going to do, right, cite around a lot and sketch out the fact of the matter per different takes?  Not so much, but I would like to turn up the core teaching where the Buddha defers describing if the afterlife is one way or the other.  I'll keep on that.


Here is one core teaching that one encounters frequently about setting aside certain scope of ideas:


...Then, as Ven. Malunkyaputta was alone in seclusion, this train of thought arose in his awareness: "These positions that are undeclared, set aside, discarded by the Blessed One — 'The cosmos is eternal,' 'The cosmos is not eternal,' 'The cosmos is finite,' 'The cosmos is infinite,' 'The soul & the body are the same,' 'The soul is one thing and the body another,' 'After death a Tathagata exists,' 'After death a Tathagata does not exist,'...


To make a long story short, the Buddha goes on to explain he's not going to answer those questions, or determine these issues.  Why not?  The idea is that other issues and concerns are more important, and these one needn't focus on, or at least not as taught from the Buddha.

Related to that teaching, the explanation given for it is colorful:


It's just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison. His friends & companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon, and the man would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a brahman, a merchant, or a worker.' He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know the given name & clan name of the man who wounded me...



Really the Buddha's words describe what he means by the analogy clearly, why he's just not going into a lot of different ideas in his teachings (attributed; been awhile back, he probably said something close to this, but really who knows):


And why are they undeclared by me? Because they are not connected with the goal, are not fundamental to the holy life. They do not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, calming, direct knowledge, self-awakening, Unbinding. That's why they are undeclared by me.

And what is declared by me? 'This is stress,' is declared by me. 'This is the origination of stress,' is declared by me. 'This is the cessation of stress,' is declared by me. 'This is the path of practice leading to the cessation of stress,' is declared by me. And why are they declared by me? Because they are connected with the goal, are fundamental to the holy life. They lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, calming, direct knowledge, self-awakening, Unbinding. That's why they are declared by me.


Oddly enough it seems a given that different people are going to use that same passage to explain why the Buddha did or didn't teach about specific things, rebirth being one of them.  It seemed he just set it aside, right?  Or maybe not.  It wasn't clearly part of the list.  The part about rebirth of a Buddha he didn't go into (using expression of Tathagata), although the natural read in other teachings is that after enlightenment one isn't reborn (as a collection of causes; a permanent, independent soul is out in any interpretation, really, although some more radical schools still end up going back to that).

A school that is agnostic about reincarnation could easily use such passages as justification that the Buddha just didn't say what comes next, and in this particular teaching that seems to be true.  In general, again not so easy to summarize.

One interesting reference is a long description of this general issue, and an extended explanation / argument for why rebirth is an integral part of the Buddha's teachings.  Note this is coming from someone within a school accepting rebirth, so it's not really an unbiased take on what a broad selection of teachings clearly indicate, it's more a justification of an accepted position.  A citation of this contains a quote of an original Buddhist teaching related to justifying this position:

3.  Rebirth and Action

There is still the question, though, of why the Buddha felt compelled to discuss the issue of karma and rebirth. We know that he refused to take a position on other issues that were hotly contested at the time — such as whether the cosmos was eternal or not (MN 63) — so what led him to take a position here?

The first part of the answer is that knowledge of rebirth formed an integral part of his awakening experience, playing a role in all three knowledges that led to his attainment of total release. Knowledge about karma played a role in the second and third.

In the first knowledge, he recollected many eons of his own previous lives:

"When the mind was thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of defilement, pliant, malleable, steady, & attained to imperturbability, I directed it to the knowledge of recollecting my past lives. I recollected my manifold past lives, i.e., one birth, two... five, ten..

So this author's point is that the Buddha might have needed to include this idea (rebirth) when leaving other metaphysical concerns aside because it played a role in the process of obtaining a higher level of awareness.  I guess this is the kind of point essentially none of us (almost none) would ever be able to relate to one way or the other, what role individual beliefs play in advanced states of Buddhist awareness (or higher states of consciousness; whatever that's about).  At any rate this doesn't seem closely tied to ordinary perspective or experience.

Of course this is coming from someone defending a position in a certain school, related to early Buddhist teachings.  This doesn't necessarily discredit the points made but the pattern does seem to follow accepting a set of ideas as correct to start and interpreting back to why, rather than the other way around, looking at the whole picture.

He actually wrote a really good summary of the same type of interpretive revisionist process being followed once before related to Christianity, in an earlier section (although I'm saying he's not really done this, or doesn't seem to have):

Borobudur temple, Java (not really related)

We in the West have done this sort of thing before. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, many European Romantics and American Transcendentalists found that they couldn't accept the worldview of the Bible because they were born in an era of new scientific discoveries — of geological deep time and astronomical deep space — that called the biblical worldview into question. Nevertheless, they valued many of the psychological teachings the Bible contained. So they developed an historical approach to the Bible, stating that its worldview may have fit in with the cultural presuppositions of the time when it was written, but that that worldview had to be discarded as science advanced.


Interesting, sounds worthwhile, but it doesn't seem to be his project.  Maybe a bit on the opposing view.

The opposing view:  Buddhism doesn't necessarily entail rebirth

Again this gets a bit tricky because if you look for people advocating Buddhism teachings much closer to agnosticism or even atheism they're out there, and they will cite different evidence for backing up those views.  Here is one example.  Of course that's just a blog post, short on citations of any kind, and the author simply says in his own experience (mostly related to Zen) there was no connection of what he learned related to afterlife schemes of any kind.  So that's one person's take, but not really much of an argument. 

The main thing he says is that a lot of sources don't tie Buddha's direct teachings to rebirth, but then again some do, not that he clearly states that.  His conclusion even rejects agnosticism, which to me is a bit odd, since it is only a rejection of a position, or what he is stating:


So, in considering whether I should believe in rebirth, I have so far not encountered the necessary evidence for the belief.  Just as important, I have not found a reason why such a belief would be necessary to motivate my practice.  And even if I could think of such a reason, I would still need some evidence.  For me to believe without proof goes against the lessons in integrity and careful discernment I have learned from Buddhism itself. In the meantime, I hope to remain unattached to any views that might be for, against, or agnostic about rebirth. I believe that peace is found in not clinging.


So there is that, but there isn't much to it; he sort of says the teachings sort of don't say, not that he could possibly be familiar with a good proportion of all of Buddhism. 

Here is the Buddhist discourse he cites in the beginning of the blog that essentially says a similar thing, that Buddhism as a set of teachings doesn't really say, from the supposed words of the Buddha, from the Sabbasava Sutta:


18. "That person considers improperly thus: 'Did I exist in the past? Did I not exist in the past? Who was I in the past? How was I in the past?[15] In the past, who had been I and who was I [in the subsequent existence]? Will I exist in the future? Will I not exist in the future? Who will I be in the future? ....  "Also as regards the present, uncertainty arises in him thus: 'Do I exist? Do I not exist? Who am I? How am I ? From where has this soul come? Where will this soul go?'

19. "In a person who thus considers improperly there arises one of the six [wrong] views. The view 'I have self'[16] arises in him really and firmly. Or, the view 'I have no self' ....

[18] That self of mine is permanent, stable, durable, incorruptible and will be eternal like all things permanent.'  "Bhikkhus! This wrong view is called a false belief, .... who is bound up with the fetter of false beliefs cannot escape rebirth, ageing, death, grief, lamentation, pain, distress and despair. I declare that he cannot escape dukkha.[19]


Seems clear enough, right, best not to worry about that, the same general ideas in the earlier citation, just a bit more clearly stated.  It seems here the Buddha really is an agnostic, one who sets aside such questions.


But then, if you wanted to believe the opposite, that either rebirth or even heaven are alternatives worthy of believing in, there are other teachings out there, even other people collecting citations and offering modern twists on all of it.  The Buddha surely put the most focus on working on immediate experience but from there it's a bit more open.  That could be because error crept in later, or diverse teachings are somehow appropriate, who is to say.

Final conclusion:  is there even one?

one possibility (attribution)

Christianity makes it nice, in comparison, right, so clear.  Some Zen teachings at least give you that moment of death perspective is important, so that's a bit more to go on, but not much.  With people saying different things about what comes next, and so little guidance on the why of it, how it works, it's hard to do much with it.


You'd think a tradition like Thai Buddhism would be clear; surely they believe in reincarnation, that we are all just coming right back, but not so much.  Somehow heaven enters the mix, or undetermined states, or ghosts, and people accept whatever they want to accept.  In a very vague sense it's a given that how you live your life and your own perspective are somehow more important, and the effects of doing positive and negative things, but nothing so clear about all that either.

I guess in general that's it; you can be as certain as you want about any conclusion, but will need to accept an external reference if you want some background for that.  It's nice that you can pick whichever outcome you want, and whichever set of evidence and support, but for some that's not so nice, too indeterminate.  In some of the systems there really is a "you" that gets to find out (at the pearly gates, and such, or whatever that means metaphorically), but in Buddhism there's a decent chance most of that will pass away with this life-span, so what continues on isn't all that clear, maybe some inertia of will and karmic effect, collections of experiences and inclinations, or maybe not that much.

I wish I could be more comforting, to really say something.  One guy I talked to online while he was dying really believed that he had experienced out of body travel, and that was his personal justification for belief there was more coming, and he seemed comfortable with that.  My grandmother believed in heaven, so to her it was no big deal, she was just going on to that, to a reunion.  I guess best to be at peace with any understanding, even if it is atheism, or agnosticism, to accept that what will be will be.

I guess the only people that need to worry are those that believe in a literal hell, and that they are going there, but surely those must be the minority, given the leeway faith systems that support that generally allow you.

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.