Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

[American Dream]

Cross-posted from the Economic Aspects of "Love" thread.

http://www.metahistory.org/guidelines/EroticUses.php


Audre Lorde:

The Uses of the Erotic
(Extracted from Cool Beans)

There are many kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise. The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change. For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives.

We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused, and devalued within western society. On the one hand, the superficially erotic has been encouraged as a sign of female inferiority; on the other hand, women have been made to suffer and to feel both contemptible and suspect by virtue of its existence.

It is a short step from there to the false belief that only by the suppression of the erotic within our lives and consciousness can women be truly strong. But that strength is illusory, for it is fashioned within the context of male models of power.

As women, we have come to distrust that power which rises from our deepest and nonrational knowledge. We have been warned against it all our lives by the male world, which values this depth of feeling enough to keep women around in order to exercise it in the service of men, but which fears this same depth too much to examine the possibilities of it within themselves. So women are maintained at a distant/inferior position to be psychically milked, much the same way ants maintain colonies of aphids to provide a life-giving substance for their masters.

But the erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman who does not fear its revelation, nor succumb to the belief that sensation is enough.

The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, and plasticized sensation. For this reason, we have turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling.

The erotic is a measure between our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves.

It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, from our lives, from our work. To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society is to encourage excellence. But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies.

This internal requirement toward excellence which we learn from the erotic must not be misconstrued as demanding the impossible from ourselves nor from others. Such a demand incapacitates everyone in the process. For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavors bring us closest to that fullness.

The aim of each thing which we do is to make our lives and the lives of our children richer and more possible. Within the celebration of the erotic in all our endeavors, my work becomes a conscious decision - a longed-for bed which I enter gratefully and from which I rise up empowered.


Of course, women so empowered are dangerous. So we are taught to separate the erotic from most vital areas of our lives other than sex. And the lack of concern for the erotic root and satisfactions of our work is felt in our disaffection from so much of what we do. For instance, how often do we truly love our work even at its most difficult?

The principal horror of any system which defines the good in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, or which defines human need to the exclusion of the psychic and emotional components of that need - the principal horror of such a system is that it robs our work of its erotic value, its erotic power and life appeal and fulfillment. Such a system reduces work to a travesty of necessities, a duty by which we earn bread or oblivion for ourselves and those we love. But this is tantamount to blinding a painter and then telling her to improve her work, and to enjoy the act of painting. It is not only next to impossible, it is also profoundly cruel.

As women, we need to examine the ways in which our world can be truly different. I am speaking here of the necessity for reassessing the quality of all the aspects of our lives and of our work, and of how we move toward and through them.

The very word erotic comes from the Greek word eros, the personification of love in all its aspects - born of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.

There are frequent attempts to equate pornography and eroticism, two diametrically opposed uses of the sexual. Because of these attempts, it has become fashionable to separate the spiritual (psychic and emotional) from the political, to see them as contradictory or antithetical. "What do you mean, a poetic revolutionary, a meditating gunrunner?" In the same way, we have attempted to separate the spiritual and the political is also false, resulting from an incomplete attention to our erotic knowledge. For the bridge which connects them is formed by the erotic - the sensual - those physical, emotional, and psychic expressions of what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us, being shared: the passions of love, in its deepest meanings.

Beyond the superficial, the considered phrase, "It feels right to me," acknowledges the strength of the erotic into a true knowledge, for what that means is the first and most powerful guiding light toward any understanding. And understanding is a handmaiden which can only wait upon, or clarify, that knowledge, deeply born. The erotic is the nurturer or nursemaid of all our deepest knowledge.

The erotic functions for me in several ways, and the first is in providing the power which comes from sharing deeply any pursuit with another person. The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.

Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy, in the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, harkening to its deepest rhythms so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, or examining an idea.

That self-connection shared is a measure of the joy which I know myself to be capable of feeling, a reminder of my capacity for feeling. And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible, and does not have to be called marriage, nor god, nor an afterlife.

This is one reason why the erotic is so feared, and so often relegated to the bedroom alone, when it is recognized at all. For once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives. And this is a grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.

During World War II, we bought sealed plastic packets of white, uncolored margarine, with a tiny, intense pellet of yellow coloring perched like a topaz just inside the clear skin of the bag. We would leave the margarine out for a while to soften, and then we would pinch the little pellet to break it inside the bag, releasing the rich yellowness into the soft pale mass of margarine. Then taking it carefully between our fingers, we would knead it gently back and forth, over and over, until the color had spread throughout the whole pound bag of margarine, thoroughly coloring it.

I find the erotic such a kernel within myself. When released from its intense and constrained pellet, it flows through and colors my life with a kind of energy that heightens and sensitizes and strengthens all my experience.

We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings. But, once recognized, those which do not enhance our future lose their power and can be altered. The fear of our deepest cravings keeps them suspect and indiscriminately powerful, for to suppress any truth is to give it strength beyond endurance. The fear that we cannot grow beyond whatever distortions we may find within ourselves keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, externally defined, and leads us to accept many facets of our own oppression as women.

When we live outside ourselves, and by that I mean on external directives only rather than from our internal knowledge and needs, when we live away from those erotic guides from within ourselves, then our lives are limited by external and alien forms, and we conform to the needs of a structure that is not based on human need, let alone an individual's. But when we begin to live from within outward, in touch with the power of the erotic within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us, then we begin to be responsible to ourselves in the deepest sense. For as we begin to recognize our deepest feelings, we begin to give up, of necessity, being satisfied with suffering, and self-negation, and with the numbness which so often seems like the only alternative in our society. Our acts against oppression become integral with self, motivated and empowered from within.

In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial.

And yes, there is a hierarchy. There is a difference between painting a black fence and writing a poem, but only one of quantity. And there is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love.

This brings me to the last consideration of the erotic. To share the power of each other's feelings is different from using another's feelings as we would use a Kleenex. When we look the other way from our experience, erotic or otherwise, we use rather than share the feelings of those others who participate in the experience with us. And use without consent of the used is abuse.

In order to be utilized, our erotic feelings must be recognized. The need for sharing deep feeling is a human need. But within the european-american tradition, this need is satisfied by certain proscribed erotic comings-together. These occasions are almost always characterized by a simultaneous looking away, a pretense of calling them something else, whether a religion, a fit, mob violence, or even playing doctor. And this misnaming of the need and the deed give rise to that distortion which results in pornography and obscenity - the abuse of feeling.

When we look away from the importance of the erotic in the development and sustenance of our power, or when we look away from ourselves as we satisfy our erotic needs in concert with others, we use each other as objects of satisfaction rather than share our joy in the satisfying, rather than make connection with our similarities and our differences. To refuse to be able that might seem, is to deny a large part of the experience, and to allow ourselves to be reduced to the pornographic, the abused, and the absurd.

The erotic cannot be felt secondhand. As a Black lesbian feminist, I have a particular feeling, knowledge, and understanding for those sisters with whom I have danced hard, played, or even fought. This deep participation has often been the forerunner for joint concerted actions not possible before.

But this erotic charge is not easily shared by women who continue to operate under an exclusively european-american male tradition. I know it was not available to me when I was trying to adapt my consciousness to this mode of living and sensation.

[American Dream]

Relax, Focus, Enjoy:


http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3EC9ACAA7BC1DE5B

[American Dream]

http://makemag.com/review-too-much-to-dream/

Review: Too Much to Dream: A Psychedelic American Boyhood by Peter Bebergal



Too Much to Dream: A Psychedelic American Boyhood
A memoir by Peter Bebergal
Soft Skull Press, 2011
232 pages

Reviewed by Claire Shefchik

What makes us want to get high? And once we do – what next? One part addiction memoir, one part survey of the history and state of the science of psychedelia, Peter Bebergal’s Too Much to Dream takes a roundabout voyage toward an answer to these questions, on its way covering everything from the psychedelic writings of Aldous Huxley, Carlos Castaneda and Timothy Leary, to the rec-room pseudo-magicianry of The Lord of the Rings, Silver Surfer comics, and Dungeons & Dragons. But Too Much to Dream is no more a work of geek nostalgia than one of narcotic pedantry. They’re never just what Too Much to Dream is all about, in the way that, to Bebergal, getting high is never just what taking drugs is all about.

Born to secular Jews in the late sixties on the cusp of two generations, Bebergal witnesses the normalization of spirituality and mysticism – yoga clinics opened in strip malls, Kabbalah and the I Ching suddenly taught at community centers. Dungeons & Dragons – with its underground wizard’s mazes, extraplanar creatures, and polyhedral dice – served as Bebergal’s awkward, prepubescent non-hallucinogenic first trip: “[T]he game understood, at its core, something about the value of hidden treasures and the even greater value of having to fight your way toward recovering them…I grew up around hidden things, hidden fears, hidden worries. It was the suburbs, after all.” His spiritual guru in those days is a paranoid, drug-crazed mall security guard named Jacob, who teaches Bebergal how to read tarot cards, use chakras, and decode the mystical meanings of Black Sabbath lyrics. Music plays a large part in Bebergal’s story, and as a child Bebergal’s parents allow their son free access to Boston’s hardcore punk scene.

Something of a self-styled anti-hippie, his obsession with the hardcore punk of the early eighties (Minor Threat, The Dead Kennedys, et al.) gives way to the realization that “punk was only going to take me so far; psychedelic rock contained a perfect spiritual system at the ready, the greatest justification of excess a budding addict could ask for.” He acknowledges the tenuous, even incongruous, link between punk rock and psychedelia – punk rock at the time was often paired with straight-edge culture – and his inner longing for some sort of transcendence gradually led him away from “traditional” punk to other, more experimental bands on punk’s margins: the Electric Prunes, The Incredible String Band, and of course, Pink Floyd. For Bebergal there was an unavoidable connection between The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour (a record that was already over a decade old) and his psychedelic awakening. This awakening, it turns out, would eventually lead into a descent into a drug-fueled purgatory from which he and a motley band of fellow addicts, whose vulnerabilities he describes affectionately, would later fight to escape.

“The very first time I ever altered my consciousness with psychedelics, I was changed in an essential way,” Bebergal writes. “The doors of perception had shifted, just enough so that even with only the smallest opening, an unimaginable bright light poured in. For years I tried every conceivable method available to me to push that door open, sometimes even to break it down. All I was left with were the proverbial sore shoulder and bloody knuckles. It budged, but would never give enough to let me through completely.” For much of the book he circles, like a moth just flitting around the light, straining to touch the infinite, but forever beaten back by, as he suggests, his own personal failings and the sheer terror of the sublime.

Bebergal’s drug use starts out as a deep need to alter his consciousness and raise his perception. But the early meltdown of Jacob – his guru, the mall security guard – signals Bebergal’s own eventual trajectory into drug addiction and what will become the central paradox of the book and Bebergal’s own life. “Being an addict,” he acknowledges, “means that I am forced to accept the limitations of my consciousness, be they spiritual or otherwise. What merely bends for others is liable to break for me, as it did once before. And yet I cannot extract that desire for a direct spiritual encounter, like a splinter.” In short, as with many addicts, Bebergal must accept that the aspect of his personality that drives him to use drugs to seek truth will destroy him before he ever finds it. His drug days bottom out with him unemployed in a crack house, living to get high. Here, the book starts to read like a conventional addiction memoir, and the reader is left wondering whether the author’s addictive personality is necessarily entwined to his yearning for mind-alerting spirituality, or whether it’s a convenient, albeit literary, handicap to it. The book never effectively disentangles the two. The punk-rock misfit ultimately recovers to enroll in Harvard Divinity School, in a sense beginning his journey all over again. He writes: “While [20th-century Christian mystic] Evelyn Underhill was a believer in ‘the Reality’ behind the veil,” it was only because of a peculiar tendency among nonordinary people that this reality could be apprehended.”

Bebergal’s portrayal of the sterile, occasionally frightening suburban world in which he grew and lived is at times quite beautiful, recalling the fictional descriptions of industrial New Jersey in Rick Moody’s Garden State, and giving a nod to the frightening-yet-lovely dreamscapes of Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son. He skillfully shifts the tone of his writing back and forth from the academic to the bracingly lyrical. The result is a fusion of such violently bare drug memoirs as Jim Carroll’s The Basketball Diaries with the kind of wonkiness that should appeal to fans of offbeat journalists like Daniel Pinchbeck (Breaking Open the Head). In fact, Bebergal devotes many pages to the academic debate about the link between psychedelics and spirituality that has been raging ever since Leary and Ram Dass first experienced psilocybin during a 1960 spiritual ceremony among Mexico’s Mazatec Indians.

In 2006, Dr. Roland Griffiths and Robert Jesse of the Council on Spiritual Practices (CSP) at Johns Hopkins University used psilocybin, the hallucinogenic property of magic mushrooms, to try to answer this question: “Is there a universal, core mystical experience that is unmediated by tradition and culture?” They gave the substance to participants of various religious traditions and spiritual bents. “Twenty-two of the thirty-six participants described what would be called complete mystical experiences after psilocybin,” Bebergal notes, with many even ranking their trips among the top five most meaningful experiences in their lives, and likely the closest some of them have ever gotten, in our increasingly atheistic times, to genuine religion. Those of us who have experimented with mushrooms or LSD inevitably nod our heads in agreement, but remain frustrated because we still aren’t any closer to knowing why. Bebergal shares this frustration. Do psychedelics truly give us access to a deeper, transcendental field, or is “what is often described as spiritual…merely an interpretation?” he asks. During and after his divinity studies, he concludes that “People need to put these very alien encounters into some container, and religious language is the most effective at describing the irrational and the mysterious.”

But maybe, says an alternate view, drugs are merely the most accessible vessel through which to find the kind of meaning we’re forever seeking. Near the end of Too Much to Dream, Bebergal discusses the work of psychedelic comic artist Jim Woodring, who Bebergal notes was having hallucinogenic visions long before he ever experimented with drugs. As a final doppelganger for Bebergal, he’s effective, because like the author, he seemed born knowing that what we see is not all there is. However, unlike the author, the strength of his own visions was enough to anchor him to reality without succumbing to addiction – to him, drugs were a means rather than an end. Bebergal sought, on the other hand – from the Boston punk venues at which he started his long, strange trip, to marriage, fatherhood, and ultimate sobriety – to drink deeply from psychedelia wherever he could find it, even if he never quite seems to have felt himself able to drink deeply enough.



Claire Shefchik received an MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Revolution House, Compass Rose, Underwater New York, and placed in University of New Orleans Contest For Study Abroad. She received a grant to attend the 2012 Key West Literary Seminar. She lives in Minnesota and is working on a memoir about sailing tall ships as a modern-day pirate princes.

[American Dream]

WATCH: Getting High on Krystle.

http://www.vice.com/read/life-is-a-cosm ... -803-v18n5

Life Is a Cosmic Giggle on the Breath of the Universe

A Tour of Gordon Todd Skinner’s Subterranean LSD Palace

By Hamilton Morris

Photos by David Feinberg and Santiago Stelley
Archival photos courtesy of Krystle Cole


Krystle stands inside the silo tunnel where she spent countless hours tripping on various psychedelics.

Here is a peek into some related acid labs:

[American Dream]

Relax, Focus, Enjoy:


http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3EC9ACAA7BC1DE5B

Friendly User Guide

1. Relax. Starting now. Relax your neck and shoulders. Relax your forehead, your eyes. Relax your fingers. Be at ease. Repeat as necessary.

2. Stay Conscious. Yeah, try not to pass out, hehe. Naw, but seriously, it’s hard enough to maintain awareness (awareness of space, of stillness, of our bodies, of our thoughts) in everyday life, but in my experience it’s particularly challenging to stay present when I’m surfing online. The Internet evaporates my mindfulness, if I’m not careful. So while you’re here, try to really be here. Don’t just think about what you see; notice how it makes you feel. Notice if your heart starts beating harder (often happens to me when I’m about to publish something, like a post or a comment), if your breathing quickens, if you get chills, if you’re fidgeting. Notice if your posture has slumped. If it has, do your best to sit up: take care of your body for your own sake and the sake of all the people who love you. Nothing online, no matter how fascinating or irritating or absorbing, is worth ruining your back. Straighten up! Repeat as necessary.

3. Go Slow. Take your own sweet time. Just because the collective online world moves super-fast, doesn’t mean you have to. This stuff ain’t goin’ nowhere: that’s what archives are for! And when you’re done reading, shut the tab or window, close your eyes, and breathe for a moment. Just a few seconds. Then move on with your day.

4. Use It. Just as you would when reading a book, whether it’s a novel or non-fiction or poetry, look for ideas — spoken or unspoken — that might help you live your life better. Then test them out. If they work, keep ‘em up; if not, revise them or leave them aside.

5. Smile. Why not? Repeat as necessary.



http://kloncke.com/friendly-user-guide/

[American Dream]

Some sketchy material but also a treasure trove:

The Sequoia Seminars - A History

http://www.mygen.com/users/ufo/The_Sequ ... story.html

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/27/ ... your-mind/

WEEKEND EDITION APRIL 27-29, 2012

Getting on the Path to Emotional Liberation

Don’t Let Bigots Occupy Your Mind

by LISA MARTINOVIC

Despite a generation of sensitivity trainings and multicultural studies, an astonishing number of people still feel emboldened to express their misbegotten bigotry in very public arenas. Cops and vigilantes alike are caught on tape throwing down racial slurs before they kill, Rush Limbaugh has no compunction about “slut-shaming” for a national audience, and classroom bullies drive a steady stream of gay youth to suicide. In the face such madness we may be tempted to question the wisdom of the old nursery rhyme:

Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.

That’s what we were taught as children, but as adults we’ve learned a more nuanced understanding of the power of words. We recognize that to call an African-American a nigger, a woman a cunt, or a gay man a faggot is not only insulting and bigoted, it wounds the psyche of the person who’s been verbally accosted.

Need this be so?

I have no interest in defending those who spew epithets. But I am deeply interested in becoming a person who is not at the effect of the cruel words of others—not only because I aspire to psychological mastery, but for the sake of my physical health. However righteous our anger, absent a healthy outlet it has a corrosive effect on the functioning of our bodies. I don’t want my peace of mind and the equanimity of my nervous system to be dependent on everyone I encounter behaving in a way that feels reasonable to me. Ain’t gonna happen! So it behooves me to develop the capacity to not take things personally, and to remember that someone else’s bad behavior reflects their dysfunction not mine. Besides, why would I allow the ravings of a fool to occupy my mind?

This is not to suggest that we stop building a world in which we all treat each other with kindness and respect. That is a separate, though completely related, endeavor. Indeed, the less reactive we are in our interpersonal exchanges, the more effective we will be in our larger struggles to change the world.

That said, in the vast energetic scheme of things some harm may be inescapable. Given the interconnectedness of all that is, everything we do, say or think affects everyone else whether we are conscious of it or not. So even if I am able to achieve a state of non-reactivity, I live in a world where people routinely do violence to one another. I swim in the same sea, so no matter how well I bathe or how often, like bad perfume there may always linger some residue of the hatred and fear in which my culture is steeped. But though I am affected, I need not be taken down by it.

Now let’s back up for a moment.

The human nervous system, and that of all creatures, has evolved to accommodate all manner of insult—and recover rapidly from it. When the gazelle is being chased by the cheetah her body surges with hormones and neurochemicals designed to maximize her odds of escaping death. If she manages to outrun the cheetah she stops, catches her breath, and shakes for awhile to discharge the adrenaline that would be toxic if it remained churning in her body. A parallel phenomenon was described recently by a friend who found herself in a room full of people wielding energy so malevolent that she had to leave the room and “shake it off.” Having traded the veldt for the conference room, we are now subject to this more subtle form of assault: pummeled by thought-forms rather than fists.

The difference between mammals in their natural environment and humans in the modern world is that when the chase is over for the gazelle, and she has reached safety, the incident is history; it no longer lives in her body. There is no gnashing of teeth, no self recrimination about wandering into a dicey area of the savanna alone, no judgment about the inherent cruelty of cheetahs, and no plan to band together with other gazelles for a nonviolent protest march. No, the gazelle simply goes on about her life unconflicted. Her nervous system and hormones are rapidly restored to a healthy equilibrium. Meaning that her body did what it has evolved to do, and what it will continue to do time and again over the course of her life until, finally, she is dinner for some lucky cheetah.

Modern humans, on the other hand, no longer shake off physical assaults the way our ancestors did in the Saber-tooth tiger era. When we fall down we leap to our feet as quickly as possible out of sheer embarrassment, assuring everyone nearby that we are okay. In the event of serious injury we may be given painkilling drugs or rushed to the hospital—short-circuiting our innate responses. And, yes, in countless instances saving lives.

Ironically, even as the occasion for fight-or-flight behavior has steadily diminished, many of our physiological reactions have been transposed onto the emotional realm. Thus, we often respond to verbal slings and arrows as if they were psyche-threatening—which feels life threatening to the brain. We know this because social rejection activates the same parts of the brain as does physical pain.

Perhaps the point at which we began to perceive emotional assaults—and take umbrage—was when the power of our clever neocortical mind superseded the instinctual wisdom of our so-called reptilian brain. This shift introduced the double-edged sword of self-awareness—a psychological analog to original sin, the fall from Grace.

Imagine a scene untold millennia ago, a tribe of hunter-gatherers feasting around a bonfire after a successful mastodon hunt. The leader gets distracted by the growl of an unseen animal in the night and inadvertently skips Og when he’s doling out succulent portions of liver. Og just happens to possess the most advanced neocortex of this up-and-coming species, homo sapiens. The neocortex has an unparalleled capacity to recognize and track patterns, to create meaning from random bits of information, and thence to make stories—which is what our protagonist is about to do. Then, as now, our stories don’t always accurately reflect the truth, but make them we do.

Og slinks back into the cave to ponder why he was slighted by the leader. He might feel hurt or angry, maybe confused. But he is among the first of Earth’s creatures who’s cooked up a story to explain to himself what happened, a story that will in turn help him formulate a plan about how to respond. Will he plot revenge, a takeover of the tribe? Or work harder to make himself more valuable to the leader? Might he instead nurse a grudge through the whole long winter, making himself and those around him miserable? Hmmmm, he’s gotta think on it, and think he will.

This bit of playful fantasy speaks to the fact that humans evolved from animals guided solely by instinct and the yearnings of the limbic system into creatures of enormous intellectual and emotional complexity. For all the seemingly infinite benefits that have accrued to us as a result, in terms of our equally infinite capacity to brood and ruminate, make mountains out of mole hills and drive ourselves crazy with our thoughts, it’s been all downhill since then.

Until now.

Unless we are in extremis, we do have choices about how to handle any situation. Once we become conscious of that and take responsibility for it, we begin to come into the fullness of our agency. Whether I’m sulking in response to a perceived slight, fulminating over the misogynist legislation proposed by some right-wing congressman, or raging over the phone at an indifferent bureaucrat, indulging those unbounded states is my choice, regardless of the provocation. Nobodyever “made me” behave the way I did. When I understand that at a core level, I’m on the path to emotional liberation.

The great American writer and social critic James Balwin gave us a potent example of this principle at work in his life:

What you say about somebody else—anybody else—reveals you. What I think of you as being is dictated by my own necessity, my own psychology, my own fears and desires. I’m not describing you when I talk about you – I’m describing me… I have always known that I am not a nigger… I am not the victim here… But you still think, I gather, that the nigger is necessary. Well he’s unnecessary to me – so he must be necessary to you. I’m going to give you your problem back. You’re the nigger, baby. It isn’t me.”

Few among us possess the Baldwin’s combination of insight and courage, but we can work towards it. I want very much to embody that level of equanimity on a consistent basis. So I hold in my consciousness the knowledge that in every moment of every day I have the opportunity to respond mindfully to life instead of reacting on autopilot. And then, as often as I can, I seize those moments. With equanimity, of course.

In our efforts to create deep and lasting social change, we need not be derailed by the cruel words of others. Make like a gazelle and shake it off. Then get out there and occupy your world.



Lisa Martinovic is a slam poet and wellness coach based in Berkeley, California. For more of her work please visit http://www.Slaminatrix.com and http://www.WellnessAlly.net

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

http://www.american-buddha.com/buddha.e ... AND%20EROS

BUDDHA AND EROS

by Baksheesh the Madman

Sex and the Life of the Spirit

The sexual urge is inseparable from the basic character of humanity. Nevertheless, the life of the spirit has often been associated with celibacy. This tendency derives from the ascetic tradition, which required that one weaken the body, and the desires associated with it, in order to gain power over the spirit. Celibacy has also been justified on the grounds that it liberates clerics from the expense, work and worry associated with caring for a family.

However, celibacy has not proven to be as attractive in practice as it might seem in theory. Celibate clerics often become caught up in the work of providing for the material needs of their spiritual family, so the labor saving concept falls by the wayside. Perhaps more important, the celibate lifestyle imposes stresses on the individual practitioner that are probably unnecessary. For most people, the fallout from attempting a celibate lifestyle is simply too much, and becomes just one more obstacle to the life of the spirit.

For your average spiritual aspirant, celibacy is highly impractical. Thus, we can consider ourselves free to explore the ways in which sexual activity can be helpful to pursuing a spiritual life. Indeed, once we take off our traditional blinders, there is every reason to believe that sex and the life of the spirit are mutually beneficial.

On a physiological level, given what we know about the way the body works, we can safely presume that the experience of orgasm releases myriads of substances into one's bloodstream that send the body an encouraging message: "Success! We have just made another contribution to the gene pool! Every reason to keep living!" The flood of neurotransmitters and other substances that begin coursing through the body at the mere thought of sex, and which crescendo at the moment of orgasm, are very likely triggers of future vitality. Far from being a precious, limited resource that we must hold for a lifetime, our sexual vitality is a resource that we are rewarded for expending. This characteristic of natural systems was described by Jesus of Nazareth in his illuminating saying: "To him that hath, more shall be given, and from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he hath."

The Real Tao of Sex

Sexual fulfillment is consistent with an optimal human experience of life.

Sexual relationships open people to criticism from their lovers, which promotes introspection and fosters growth and maturation.

Sexual relationships generate children, who make further demands upon the parents, which often results in a deepening of character and spiritual warmth.

A love affair generates powerful, clinically documented effects on body and mind. People in love literally can stay high for years, enjoying a little bit of paradise.

The state of sexual ecstasy eventually wears off, presenting people with psychological challenges that, once resolved, make them even deeper people.

Through family relations, people experience the most loving and protective emotions known to humanity. In Buddhism, the kindness and self-sacrifice that a mother shows for her offspring is routinely invoked as an example of the depth of concern that the bodhisattva feels for all sentient beings. A parent experiences this emotion directly. Experiencing concern for others provides a way to expand beyond the narrow confines of self-concern.

Sexual Imagery in Devotional Art

Fertility is the first icon of worship. The primordial neolithic stone Aphrodites are a key to the psyche of humans in that distant time. For our ancestors, life itself was the primary good. We are told that neolithic peoples had plenty of spare time, but on the other hand, they didn't live very long. A headman looking about at his tribe, facing an oncoming winter and depleted by hunting accidents, would be looking extinction right in the eye. In this environment, the sight of a woman giving birth was undoubtedly the best thing after the smell of cooking meat. Replacing the dead was an important activity. Hence the image of the pregnant goddess.

We may presume that neolithic works of art were primarily objects of devotion. How would such primordial rituals have developed? What genius turned rock into the shape of the primordial mother, and lifted it before the eyes of the tribe, that they might be inspired to live? Those early priests faced daunting challenges in their efforts to rally the minds of early humans around the central goal of survival. These works of art were not idle aesthetic expressions; rather, they were psychological anchors in a world of chaos. The very act of artificing, of changing a rock to a goddess, demonstrated an ability beyond that of any other animal. It was proof of human superiority, of our ability to turn even ordinary earth into a mirror of our own human features.

Those familiar with tantric imagery from India, China and Tibet know that explicitly sexual art has again and again found its way into mystical religions. Like the ancient Aphrodites, these works are meant to be used, and provide a mirror of the inner self. Traditionally, a meditator visualizes their own body as consisting of both a male and female deity clasped in sexual union, united by a single mantra in their unified heart. Thus, the individual experiences a simultaneous duality and unity. The inner experience that the meditator triggers by use of the visualization soon makes the image that is painted on canvas or wrought in stone a matter of small moment. Traditional sexual icons are often crudely drawn, and frankly exhibit a lack of aesthetic refinement. Sensory beauty is simply not the object of these pieces. Their raw, evocative power is simply intended as catapult for contemplation. Once having invoked the inner experience, the art object ceases to be of importance.

The Contrabandization of the Body

People are born naked. Usually, they are conceived by people who are naked during the act of conception. In a medical setting, nudity is not considered shameful. Nevertheless, modern humans routinely have embarrassing dreams in which they find themselves naked out in society. We may presume that such dreams do not afflict people who live in primitive tribes and wear little clothing.

The nudity prohibition is, however, internationally accepted. I am sure that you can get yourself thrown out of most any restaurant in any country for going around bottomless. Indeed, "no shoes, no shirt, no service," gets the idea across pretty well. So, we are all born naked, but required by law and custom to conceal ourselves. To go about wearing little is earn the name "exhibitionist," a pejorative, last I checked.

Which is not to say that nudity is unavailable. As many a standup comedian has noted, the United States seems to have developed a rash of "gentleman's clubs," where partial or total nudity is sold one dollar at a time by girls working "for tips and tips alone." Video store shelves are burgeoning with x-rated films that generate billions in revenue. Hollywood films market their own soft-core versions, having progressed from titillating by exposing the lascivious conduct of the underclass to depicting the freewheeling sex life of the affluent. All of which keeps the wheels of commerce turning.

What more can we say than that our own images have been stolen from us and licensed back in socially-approved and disapproved versions. The approved version appears as glamour, fashion, and privileged promiscuity. The disapproved version appears as pornography. This is a difference in marketing style, not a moral distinction. Hand in hand with the nudity prohibition we find pervasive and profitable commerce in images of nudity and sexual activity.

Sexual repression has turned the body itself into an item of contraband. As with the prohibition against alcohol and drugs, efforts at suppressing the illicit substance only give birth to profitable black markets. A prohibited line of business that remains profitable will attract criminals, who will conduct business in a criminal and extortionistic fashion. Compared with the tremendous financial value generated by the sale of their images, models in the pornography industry are grossly exploited. Worse is the situation for prostitutes, who face an elevated risk of being robbed, infected with venereal diseases, assaulted and murdered, all because society is unable to come to terms with its sexual appetite.

Modern western society has rid itself of many superstitions. However, the nudity prohibition remains. It is unlikely that anyone will formulate an agenda to repeal the nudity prohibition. One can hardly imagine a political platform more likely to incite obloquy. "Crackpot," would be the kindest epithet applied to a candidate who would champion such a social initiative. Which simply shows how deep rooted some prejudices are. As usual, society cannot be changed.

What can be changed is your own awareness. You are free to experience the effects of sexual art on your body and mind. You are free to do so without feelings of guilt or immorality, once you realize that these emotions are merely the artifacts impressed on your personality by the social pressure of the nudity prohibition. Consider the source of the anxiety you feel when you find yourself naked in a group of people while dreaming. Once you relax internally with the idea of nakedness, these dreams will either become less frequent, or you will find yourself surprisingly nonchalant about your nakedness. Appreciate your own body. Appreciate the bodies of others. Appreciate the genetically engineered perfection that makes us live, breathe, walk, talk, flirt, love, and mate.

Cruelty-Free Sex

Once we step off into the realm of sexual art and experience, we find ourselves in a strange new world. By exposing ourselves to greater and more diverse sources of sexual stimulation, we will likely find ourselves thinking and engaging in sex more often. The question is, where does this lead us? There are plenty of negative images already pressed into our minds by society.

As in meditation, difficult thoughts will arise, so in sex, difficult experiences will be stimulated. The sexual experience is one of vulnerability, but social norms make it difficult for men to accept vulnerability. They may substitute sexual performance for emotional tenderness, feeling obligated to satisfy their partner through stimulation. Women, on the other hand, feel obligated to protect their partner's self-image, and famously pretend to have orgasms they have never felt.

The fundamental purifying factor in sexual relationships is gentleness and empathy. Social depictions of sex, in pornography soft and hard, represents a caricature of a sexual experience. Due to generations of bad acting in film, people have exaggerated notions of how to behave in bed. Frustration and misunderstanding can bubble up in intimate moments, making a love relationship a source of embarrassment and humiliation. To navigate these experiences with a lover is the work of a relationship that is sexual in and out of the boudoir. Whether one may grow through sex without love is a matter of contention. One thing is certain -- it is an inestimable aid.

Finally, there is the business of sex. The creation of erotic images has been thrown into hyperdrive by the digital cameras and the Internet, and funding for the business of photographing naked bodies has never been more abundant. Ethical rules are needed, and notably lacking. Balanced against the right to enjoy free access to sexual art and imagery is the need for fair treatment of the human beings who work in the industry. At a very minimum, erotic art should be created in a safe, healthy, non-threatening environment in which the vulnerabilities of the models are respected. The prohibition against child-involvement in creating erotic imagery is of course fundamental. And the industry as a whole should move toward fairer compensation of the people whose images feed sales. Simply put, like any other product, sex should be cruelty free.




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[American Dream]

http://www.american-buddha.com/material.manifes.htm

THE MATERIALIST MANIFESTO

by Charles Carreon




The Materialist Manifesto, Part 1:

The word "manifesto," according to Merriam-Webster.com, has been in current use since 1647, and means "a written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer."

In the year 1647, the following things occurred in English history:

-Charles I fled to Scotland following his defeat in 1645.

-On August 6, Cromwell led the New Model Army into London and took control of Parliament.

-The Levellers sought the abolition of the monarchy and social reform leading to equality among people. The Leveller philosophy was popular among the lower ranks of the New Model Army and a catalyst for revolt in the summer of this year.


One can presume that the manifestos were flying hot and heavy in those days. Manifestos are the sort of literature suitable for pamphleteering and other distribution on the cheap. Hot words, cranked out quick, consumed by the masses to fire their brains. Surrealists had manifestos, presumably outfitted with fiery denunciations of nothing and everything. Tantrics have manifestos, in which they refute everything and nothing. Material Buddhism must have its own manifesto. So here goes.

To say "materialist" is necessarily to sneer at the person so described. They are bad ab initio, unworthy of love or appreciation, guilty of valuing things more than people. They deny the existence of the mind's deathless nature, and spread the heresy of this-life-only. They fall into self-indulgent pleasure, or into abysses of depression and despair. No one would want to be a materialist.

Be it clear henceforth that Material Buddhism has nothing to do with these straw men, and stands on the solid footing of real experience. The sword of Manjusri is the sword of empirical perception, distinguishing that which exists from that which does not exist. The mind exists, as does the body that provides the foundation for its appearance, as does the universe that provides the environment for the body. Every thought, perception, notion, emotion, mood or illusion exists as an event that resonates in the web of being.

Why the slam on materialism? Remember George Harrison's album after he went Hare Krishna on us? "Living in a Material World." The way Harrison sang it, it was a curse, a back-breaking drag to live in a material world. With his twangy guitar turning soulful to woeful, he spun out two disks of material, and impressed the cover with a palm-print with Kirlian aura -- a chilling foreshadowing of the use of biometric scanning. The blue handprint had the effect on the mind of patterning your psychic palm, making you feel stuck to the image, imprisoned by having a hand. Downright scary when you think about it. You couldn't argue that you don't have a hand. Therefore you are material. Therefore George is right -- you live in a material world. So let's cry along with George and sell incense for Swami Prabuphada. And dance our way out of this dreadful material world. Of course, George never transcended the material illusion enough to give away all of his money, did he?

But he can't be blamed. He was just another person who found it easier to believe something absurd than to accept the evidence of his senses. Like a madman who gets an electric bill he can't pay, and convinces himself that the government or Wayne Newton perhaps, is going to pay it. That's how a nice boy from Liverpool ends up believing that a fried-food addict like Prabuphada has the true teachings of life, and God is a sexy blue flute-player who screws milkmaids to pass the time in his endless frolicsome existence of total bliss. George funded publication of numberless full-color volumes of Prabuphada translations of classic Hindu religious texts. All indications were that he was a "sincere devotee" of Lord Krishna, Lord Caitanya, Lord Rama, all the magnificent incarnations of Vishnu.

Prabuphada, a 70-year-old retired Indian pharmaceutical executive, arrived in New York in 1965, and sold fundamentalist Hindu Vaishnava doctrines to disaffected flower children and acid burnouts, offering people too cool to believe in Jesus an alternative, but still very concrete God in His heaven, plus rigid male-female roles, for that comforting feeling of being just like mom and dad. Eventually, the cult became involved in drug dealing and murder so lurid it fueled a true crime book, "Monkey On A Stick," an expose of the drug killings at the palatial West Virginia temple that was the cult's crown jewel:

MONKEY ON A STICK wrote:

"Shoot him!" Drescher screamed at Reid. "Shoot him!"

St. Denis was hit twelve times. He crumpled and went down. But then, almost immediately, as Reid and Drescher watched in amazement, he struggled back onto his feet and half staggered, half ran back down the path toward the Blazer.

Drescher dropped his gun, ran after St. Denis, and dove into him, hitting him behind the knees. The big man went down. Drescher rolled him over and climbed onto his heaving chest.

"Get a knife!" Drescher yelled at Reid.

Reid felt like he was going to vomit. For an instant he thought about running away, but he was afraid if he did, Drescher would come after him and kill him, too. He ran into the cabin and came out with a kitchen knife.

"Chant!" Drescher was screaming. "Start chanting!"

Drescher thought he was doing St. Denis one last favor. Krishna had preached, "Those who remember me at the time of death will come to me. Do not doubt this." By forcing St. Denis to chant, Drescher thought he was guaranteeing him a more spiritual life in his next incarnation.

Drescher grabbed the knife and stabbed St. Denis. Again and again. Hard and deep. Finally, the blade hit a rib and snapped.

St. Denis fought on, shrieking in agony, coughing blood, and gasping for breath. Reid found a hammer and Drescher hit him with that, punching a one-inch hole in his skull. St. Denis went limp.

Drescher and Reid dragged St. Denis down the logging road to the dammed-up stream. They dumped the body on the swampy ground. Reid picked up one end of a plastic sheet, about to wrap St. Denis's head in it, when the big man opened his eyes.

"Don't do that, you'll smother me," he said.

Reid screamed—a long, piercing scream of pure terror.


Well, it certainly was a clumsy murder ritual, especially compared with the undoubtedly austere and impressive murders of the four Dalai Lamas whose lives were snuffed out before they assumed worldly authority. That would be the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th. I mean, stabbing people to death while telling them to chant mantras might be one way to help others practice Dharma, but I go for less drastic methods. And all because he wouldn't give a big enough donation! Apparently that was St. Denis' sin -- he wanted to open a flower shop with his wife's inheritance instead of giving it to the "temple." And you thought God spurned coerced offerings!

But why am I starting off here talking about murders, of Dalai Lamas or American Hindus? You thought I was going to give you a materialist manifesto. Well I am, but I'm also following the historic precedent of Lucretius, who at the outset of his "On the Nature of the Universe," described the murder of Iphiginea, the virgin princess, a "sinless sacrifice" to nonexistent gods, to obtain a favorable wind for the Greek fleet, departing to make war upon Troy:

LUCRETIUS wrote:

Raised by the hands of men, she was led trembling to the altar. Not for her the sacrament of marriage and the loud chant of Hymen. It was her fate in the very hour of marriage to fall a sinless victim to a sinful rite, slaughtered to her greater grief by a father's hand, so that a fleet might sail under happy auspices. Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by superstition.


The use of religion as a flag of deception, flown by scoundrels to conceal their low intentions, is so well-established a practice as to justify simply overthrowing the presumption that religious persons are good persons. We are so likely to be led astray when we take leave of empirical landmarks, so likely to have our faith used and abused when we accept any close-ended doctrine offered by a know-it-all believer, that the practice of believing in unverified things can safely be condemned as contrary to all sense.

Lucretius, however, does not rest his argument with the negative. He knows that people will not discard superstitious beliefs simply because occasionally someone will kill a princess for a trivial reason. The only way to "dispel the dread and darkness of the mind" is "by an understanding of the outward form and inner workings of nature." Why is this? Because, at bottom, all superstitious explanations explain life in a distorted fashion. Instead of learning what the world truly is, the superstitious embrace nonsensical beliefs because of prejudice. They cannot abide the notion that death separates us from our loved ones utterly, so they carve out a belief in the afterlife. They cannot abide the notion that the cruel prosper and the humble suffer, so they carve out future lifetimes in which the balance will be redressed. Then a fairy-tale backdrop is painted in, with gilded highlights, and the pious equivalent of canned laughter -- canned piety -- is spread all over, and in hushed tones the absurd doctrine is consumed with the solemnity of a host proffered by a priest.

Truth, Lucretius knew, is discovered only after one makes up one's mind to discard all superstitious notions. Then one is free to begin the enumeration of the obvious. Lucretius' discoveries flow fast and free, one upon the other, after he declares his intent. The world is all material and the space in which it exists. Nothing can be accounted for except by its concrete character. All things are made of matter, which can however be spun to levels of great fineness. Mind is the finest of all matter, composed of infinitely subtle, smooth and small spherical particles that are set in motion by the slightest stimulus. Mind is connected with heat and breath, and leaves the body at death. Life infuses the blood, and its departure from the body causes death. The heart is the center of life, and a wound that goes to the heart is fatal. So much Lucretius reveals for us. Where Jesus cast the moneychangers out of the temple, Lucretius cast the soothsayers and oracles out of our minds. He shows that their explanations, prophecies, remedies, cures, invocations, and promises mystify matters while claiming to make them clear. We are human beings. There are no gods. The mountains, thunder, wind, rain, fire, and all of the appearances of this world are the proper subjects of our curious mind. To fantasize a cast of characters operating our world behind the scenes is to think like a child.

Do you want to think like a child? Do you want to be hiding under the blankets of your bed, afraid that terrors lie in wait for you? Do you want to waste this life fearing an afterlife that does not exist? Can you convince yourself that you have, in a billion-to-one shot, found the one true dogma that has ever blossomed on this earth? Lucretius will only cluck his tongue and take your example as proof that good sense is the rarest thing on earth.

Was Lucretius right in all things? Of course not. His speculations miss the mark here and there, but never on this point -- he never explains the actions of inanimate things by imputing karmic purposes, such as retribution or reward. Lighting never strikes the evil because they are evil. Lighting strikes for the same reason every time. This is the no-consolation, unappealing side of true materialism. Living without fantasies means no more imaginary joys, no more imaginary flights from real pains. But to lose a false consolation that obstructs true understanding is actually a benefit. By surrendering superstition, we amputate a dead limb that has no value. By discovering new truths, we lay the foundation for future discoveries that will be even more true and comprehensive. By remembering that there is always more to learn, we eliminate any possibility of reaching a final conclusion, so we can never suffer boredom. By knowing that to know all is simply a fantasy, we are not troubled by despair over our limited understanding. By accepting the limitations of our understanding, we become conscious of how unlimited is the realm of the knowable. By fully exploring what we can know, we are always thrilled by the vast expanse of the unknown and the unknowable.

The Materialist Manifesto, Part 2:

Lucretius' First Principle was this: Nothing is ever created by divine power out of nothing. Since I am not worthy to step ahead of Lucretius in line, I will take this for my own first principle, after restating it in the affirmative as the Law of the Conservation of Matter and Energy: The sum total of matter and energy in the Universe is constant. Quick research on the Net tells me that the post-Einsteinian formulation is: "...Energy may be transformed from one form into another but is neither created nor destroyed..." This accommodates our post-Lucretian realization that matter is a complex assemblage of energy and particles that break down into further assemblages of energy. However we express it, the First Principle will give us "... a clearer picture of the path ahead, the problem of how things are created and occasioned without the aid of the gods."

Since he did not have a cyclotron or an electron scanning microscope, Lucretius disproved the theory that things are generated from nothing by applying the common understanding of his day that living things arise only from their parents, which share the characteristics of their offspring. Thus, "each is formed out of specific seeds, it is born and emerges into the sunlit world only from a place where there exists the right material, the right kind of atoms. This is why everything cannot be born of everything, but a specific power of generation inheres in specific objects."

As soon as we make room for the miraculous occurrence of events outside the laws of nature, we violate the structure of our honest understanding. It is as if we were to say, "One and one make two unless God chooses to show us otherwise." The existence of the exception destroys the value of the rule. We will need to develop a list of circumstances under which God requires one and one to be more or less than two. Perhaps our first entry will be the Miracle of the Loaves and the Fishes told in Matthew.

Let's begin there. The believer's understanding is that one boy's lunch turned into a feast for the multitudes as an expression of Christ's divinity. As a child, this story disturbed me. If this were true, why could all scarcity problems not be alleviated through faith? While we always prayed grace over our meals, this never made one steak into two, or a dozen tortillas into thirteen, much less twelve-hundred. Today, I adhere to the First Principle, and know that there must be another answer.

What happened was this. The crowd was on the cusp of leaving or staying. Many were saying that they were hungry and had no food, so they had to leave and eat. But if you've ever traveled in Asia, you know that actually, in amongst their baskets, clothing, etcetera, there was water, fish and bread. It's not like there was a kosher McDonald's that they figured they'd hit on the way back from the lecture. Many people had food, but no one wanted to reveal it, because they thought they would have to share and be left without enough for their children. But when one young fisherboy said, "Here, I have more than enough, and I can go get more," Jesus seized the opportunity to speak out, making an example of the boy's faith. Faith in what? That Jesus could make more food? Surely not. Faith that he could afford to share, to miss a meal, to run down the beach and find more fishermen with extra fish. Pretty soon, everyone started unpacking their little stashes of food and water. They started sharing. Nobody left. They had a feast, and afterward Jesus was able to tell them "See, you can do it. You don't have to be animals driven by hunger and stupidity to hoard food."

Now, not only is the lesson derivable from this re-understood Jesus story more plausible, it is also more useful to people faced with hunger or other forms of scarcity. You could tell a group of starving aboriginals to pray to God, tell them the story of Jesus and loaves and fishes, and watch them die as surely as if they'd drank Jim Jones' Kool-Aid, but while that would be a testament to your ability to sell the aboriginals a raft of bullshit, and they would presumably all go to heaven, as a member of the aboriginal group, I would object to this result. Particularly if you jumped in a truck after giving me your pious lecture and went back to the USA to eat KFC.

Whence comes my take home lesson for examining your beliefs: "Put your mouth where your money is." In other words, if you don't solve hunger by prayer when you are hungry, then don't tell yourselves that you can. If you buy food at the store that comes from a truck that came from a warehouse that was filled with food by the efforts of farmers and fishermen and cattle ranchers, then give them the credit. Blow the smoke out of your head and appreciate the way things really are.

So I conclude Part II of this Materialist Manifesto. May you have a real day.





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[American Dream]

http://www.american-buddha.com/sleepers ... RS%20AWAKE!

SLEEPERS AWAKE!

by Charles Carreon

In this review of the essential lessons to be drawn from the notorious "Zimbardo Prison Experiment," attorney Charles Carreon draws parallels between the Buddhist cult experience and the voluntary assumption of a prisoner-role. He concludes that, just as the experimental subjects in the prison experiment were unable to extricate themselves from the psychological bonds they assumed when they joined the experiment, similarly, the Buddhist cultist is unable to end cult servitude without the outside assistance that brings an "intrusion of reality." Modern American Buddhists must take up the work of knocking on the cocoons of modern Buddhist sleepers who have forgotten freedom in the dream of joyful subservience.

You have probably heard about the Stanford Prison Experiment, aka "The Zimbardo experiment." Conducted in 1971 at Stanford by Philip Zimbardo, the study sought to uncover the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. Zimbardo set up a simulated prison to observe the effects of the institution on behavior.

Starting out with a single group of young men who volunteered to participate in the study for $15/day, Zimbardo randomly assigned half the participants to serve as prisoners, and half to serve as guards, for the duration of the experiment. The prisoners were arrested at their homes without notice by real police, and delivered to Zimbardo's custody. They were placed in a mock prison that had been created by fitting offices with barred doors to create cells, walling off a hallway for a common area, and establishing a special room for solitary confinement. The guards worked shifts and wore uniforms, including mirrorshade sunglasses. The prisoners wore smocks, a chain around the ankle, and stocking-coverings on their heads to simulate buzzcuts. Guards were given discretion to adopt rules and policing strategies as needed.

After one day, the participants had gotten so far into their adopted roles as prisoners or guards that they could no longer distinguish their role-playing from reality. Several prisoners experienced breakdowns, one went on a hunger strike, several served time in solitary confinement, and a rumored jailbreak never materialized but put the guards on red alert and overtime for an entire night. On the sixth day the experiment was halted, by which time one third of the guards were displaying sadistic tendencies, three prisoners had been released due to psychological breakdown, and Zimbardo himself had become absorbed in the role of prison warden.

While stone walls alone may not a prison make, Zimbardo was able to create a reasonable facsimile by using the following behavior triggers:

1. Arrest and confinement;

2. Notice of a rationale for the loss of freedom -- the warden informed prisoners of the seriousness of their offense and their new status as prisoners;

3. Procedures to make prisoners feel confused, fearful, and dehumanized, such as stripping, searching, blindfolding, delousing, and shaving their heads;

4. Providing uniforms for the prisoners that were debasing, emasculating and de-individualizing, and also chains around their feet;

5. I.D. numbers instead of names;

6. Badges, tools and uniforms of authority for the guards, such as khaki uniforms, whistles, billy clubs, and special mirror sun-glasses to prevent anyone from seeing their eyes and reading their emotions;

7. Small living cells and a minimally adequate diet;

8. Occasions for the guards to exercise control over the prisoners, such as the 2:30 a.m. wake-up count;

9. Lack of specific rules to guide guard behavior which led to use of physical punishment for infractions of the rules, or displays of improper attitudes towards the guards or institution, such as push-ups, jumping jacks; and menial, repetitive work such as cleaning toilets, psychological tactics of harassment, intimidation, control, surveillance and aggression, such as stripping the prisoners naked, taking their beds out, forcing prisoners into solitary confinement, and granting special privileges to make the prisoners distrust each other, as well as placing informants;

10. Manipulating appearances on “visiting day” to make the prison environment seem pleasant and benign; making the prisoners wash, shave, and clean their cells, and feeding the prisoners a big dinner, and playing music on the intercom, and having an attractive cheerleader greet the visitors.


What followed from the imposition of this regimen? A virtually immediate disconnection from reality and near-total absorption in the roles of prisoner or guard, including the gamut of pathological and coping behaviors.

Participants were helpless to re-start their former sense of independence. Prisoners referred to themselves by number, obeyed the rules because they felt powerless to resist, and because their sense of reality had shifted to no longer perceiving their imprisonment as an experiment.

Even though they hated their situation, none of the prisoners asserted their right to terminate the experiment, a right that they unquestionably never lost, since the criminal laws against unjust imprisonment remain in effect. Many suffered from acute emotional disturbance, disorganized thinking, and uncontrollable crying and rage. One prisoner testified that he felt he had lost his identity and had in fact become his number. Another had to be forcibly reminded that he was not a prisoner, and could leave since his health required it. “Like a child waking from a nightmare,” Zimbardo described the young man’s face as he realized that he was a free man.

None of the guards voiced unwillingness to proceed with the experiment, and in fact were extraordinarily punctual and volunteered extra time when prisoner rebellions required it. Some of the guards were hostile, arbitrary, and inventive in their forms of prisoner humiliation and appeared to thoroughly enjoy the power they wielded. Most were upset when the study was prematurely ended.

We noticed some similarities between the Zimbardo experiment and religious cult behavior, including:

1. Voluntary entry into a system that limits freedom of action and speech;

2. Imposition of a doctrine that rationalizes the loss of freedom as being in the best interests of the members and makes students feel confused and fearful;

3. Using dharma names instead of real names;

4. Establishment of a hierarchy of authority;

5. Adoption of badges of authority by those in the dominant position;

6. Adoption of signs of submission on the part of subordinate members;

7. Lack of modern rules to guide behavior, and many aspects of students' behavior falling under the control of the leaders;

8. Small living spaces; and a minimally adequate diet;

9. Occasions to exercise control;

10. Physical exercise; menial, repetitive work; psychological tactics of intimidation and control; special privileges;

11. Manipulating the situation to make the environment seem pleasant and benign.


By adopting these rules, the students lose their connection with the self that existed before becoming a cult member. The loss of identification with the former self that voluntarily chose to enter cult society, develops into rejection of that former self as a pitiful fool or stubborn blockhead. Students compete within dharma society for authoritarian roles. Students begin to identify with the cult system adopting its social norms as their own rejecting any suggestion that their loss of freedom is undesirable.

Clearly role-playing games are a form of psychological quick-sand. Role playing is addictive, and evidence shows that role-playing participants feel psychologically compelled to continue role-playing because of interpersonal self-esteem issues, commitments and vows. Once it happens, you are indeed a prisoner. Like in the song Hotel California, “you can check out anytime you like but you can never leave.”

Another shocking piece of data from the Zimbardo experiment is the rapidity with which the transformation occurred, and the power of behavioral triggers to induce psychological assimilation of role characteristics, such as the emergence of genuine sadistic traits among 1/3 of the "guards." Guards and prisoners quickly identified each other as adversaries in a game of dominance that the guards were fated to win, stimulating the creativity and paranoid strategizing of the guards to outwit and frustrate prisoners' bids for dignity and freedom. To the guards, freedom itself became the enemy in short order. For the prisoners, release became the only goal towards which they could progress, but since no act of theirs would assist in reaching that goal, they became fragmented and depressed.

The only threats to the experimental mindset were occasional incursions of reality. A "prisoner" who became deranged was derided as a faker, trying to cheat his way out of participation, until at last his behavior became so outlandish, that his actual insanity had to be acknowledged. Another psychologist, Christina Maslach, delivered the reality-based insight that brought the experiment to a halt when she saw that the abuse of the "prisoners" by the "guards" had become frighteningly inhumane. This fact had apparently escaped Dr. Zimbardo himself, who perhaps unwisely placed himself in the position of prison "warden," a role from which he found it psychologically impossible to remove himself.

Eruptions of reality seem to provide the only opportunity to break out of self-disempowering role playing.

So since people cannot re-assert their ability to think and act freely after having renounced freedom of speech and action, the spell of the role playing must be broken through by the intrusion of reality outside of the role playing environment. It is unlikely that the individual will generate this force from within, once the role playing process has gotten underway. While this renunciation of freedom may seem to be a matter of voluntary choice, similar to the decision to become a heroin addict, inasmuch as the renunciation of individual freedom undermines political democracy, it may lead to the establishment or strength of overtly authoritarian regimes. Thus, it is well within our rights of political self-protection to strike that blow of intrusive reality that can break open the cocoon of self-delusion that the role player inhabits. While many individuals, cocooned away in their voluntarily adopted subordinate role, may perceive such criticism as an assault on their freedom of belief, an annoying distraction from the effort to become fully absorbed in their assumed role, the racket that they are objecting to is being raised for their own benefit.

Structuring roles is very important. We have to get out of bad roles and it's fair to go around knocking on people's cocoons and telling them what's going on. That's called helping people out. Because they are deluded. It is something genuinely for their benefit. Inducing vow-breaking is fair and what we should do is shine the light on the situation.




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[American Dream]

There is a term in Buddhist psychology that can be translated as “internal formations,” “fetters,” or “knots.” When we have a sensory input, depending on how we receive it, a knot may be tied in us. when someone speaks unkindly to us, if we understand the reason and do not take his or her words to heart, we will not feel irritated at all, and no knot will be tied. But if we do not understand why we were spoken to that way and we become irritated, a knot will be tied in us. The absence of clear understanding is the basis for every knot.

If we practice full awareness, we will be able to recognize internal formations as soon as they are formed, and we will find ways to transform them. For example, a wife may hear her husband boasting at a party, and inside herself she feels the formation of a lack of respect. If she discusses this with her husband, they may come to a clear understanding, and the knot in her will be untied easily. Internal formations need our full attention as soon as they manifest, while they are still weak, so that the work of transformation is easy.

Thich Nhat Hanh, “Internal Formations”