Last weekend was Indian Independence Day, and the local India League of America had a big celebration for it. As I planned to go, I decided to wear something in orange, since it’s one of the colors of the Indian flag. But the only orange t-shirt I own is this one, from Woot! shirts:
The event was in a giant expo hall, cavernous and noisy. People crowded through the aisles and booths in a manner equally fitted to a Delhi bazaar as a suburban American weekend. My friend Shriti and I swerved our way through the crowds.
We’d glanced at the booth of a local Hindu temple, looking at the books and pictures they had on display. As I turned to walk on, an old Indian man stopped me and looked at my shirt. “This is a very good shirt,” he said. I thanked him and started to move on, but he spoke some more. “Many companies these days will tell you lies through marketing. They tell you that their products are nutritious. It’s very bad, this dishonesty.”
I shrug and smile in agreement. I could have explained, “See, there’s this video game, and an evil robot tells you you’re going to get cake if you finish. But there really isn’t any cake.” But I figure if he wanted to think I was taking a stand against, say, Vitamin Water, I’d accept that as a valid interpretation of the shirt.
When the telephone was invented, The New York World condemned it in an editorial. “Of what use is such an invention?” they asked. Why would someone want to speak to someone who isn’t there? Of course, history proved that people would find many uses for it, perhaps not what Bell or The World ever could have imagined. So when I learn about new technology, I kind of want to be on the right side of history. Perhaps what it takes is to make sure the question is a question instead of a dismissal. If The World had asked, “What uses will people find for a telephone?” they may have started to see the banal and wonderful things we do with a phone.
It’s with this in mind that I approached the practice of tweeting. Instead of dismissing it with the question, “Why would anyone want Twitter?” I decided to explore with honest curiosity… “Why do people use Twitter?” Instead of a dismissive “Who cares about my tweets?” I decided to ask, “If there is someone who cares about my tweets, who is that?”
I can’t say I’ve pinned down an answer. But I’ve had some fun trying. It seems that Twitter is a game of attention. As I spend my meditation practice on a quest to understand what attention is, what it does and how to use it, I think that mindfully exploring the question of Twitter has had deep implications.
The Diamond Sutra says, “Thus shall you think of all this fleeting world: a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, a phantom and a dream.” A bubble or a cloud is not, in essence, a complete and separate thing. But I think it would be a misreading of the sutra to say that Buddha meant we should not pay attention to these phenomena as they come up.
People who use Twitter sometimes complain about other people’s tweets, particularly when there are a lot of them at once. This only is a problem if we think of the tweets as having weight, having an essence, being a thing. But like all phenomena in this world, they’re bubbles.
We can think of communications in two ways: an inbox or a stream. Twitter’s overwhelming if we think of it as an inbox, of a demanding pile of messages that are gathered into a backlog until we can catch up with them. But Twitter isn’t designed to be that, and it doesn’t work like that. It works like a stream; rather than trying to track down what passed in the stream yesterday, to pay attention you see what’s in the stream right now. The stream is useful not because every message gets attention from every reader, but because there are always messages and always readers.
I was about to say that new technology is moving toward more streams and fewer inboxes, but then I thought of television. My view of television has changed from a stream to an inbox. Rather than watching what’s on right now, when I go to watch I look for what’s in my lineup of things to watch–and that allows me to pay a different kind of attention to it. So maybe the answer is that we learn there are many more kinds of attention, and the more we know about them the more we know how to use them.
This week, PBS aired a documentary (which you can view–free and legal–on their website) of the life of Buddha. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone with any interest in Buddhism. It doesn’t exactly cover brand-new territory; the Buddha’s life has been the subject of many excellent books. But the perspective on it was interesting in a number of ways.
The story of Buddha’s life came to us through centuries of the oral tradition, somewhere between myth and history. Any modern retelling of Buddha’s life has to make a strategic decision about how to present the parts of the legend that seem more legendary than others. Some of these are part of the birth and childhood legend–his mother had a dream foretelling his birth, he spoke moments out of the womb, a tree stopped moving its shadow to keep him protected. Others come from his life and teaching, performing miracles.
And I think this is a particularly tricky balance. For many contemporary followers of Buddhism, the core teachings are an antidote to magical thinking. You change things by changing your own habits and efforts, not relying on an angel or ghost to help you out. Buddhism’s compatibility with scientific findings is a definite plus. But sometimes this tempts us to say that we know the story of Buddha’s life obviously didn’t happen the way the myths tell us. It’s as if we know Buddha better than his contemporaries did, and it’s a little condescending to the ways of thinking that most humans have had through history.
I like the way PBS’s The Buddha dealt with this. Many parts of the Buddha’s life were shown through stylized animations, giving a sense of story-telling through cave paintings, and it spent little time refuting or confirming the myths, just letting them speak for themselves. Whether we doubt them or believe them isn’t addressed. As poet Jane Hirshfield says in the documentary, “Sitting here in a room having had a cup of coffee, having taken it out of a beautiful blue and white porcelain mug…what could be more miraculous than that? Everyday life around us is already so implausible and so glorious but what need for further miracles. And that’s the teaching of the Buddha. That’s the miraculous teaching of the Buddha.”
There’s a famous story of the Buddha in which he responds to a question about the creation of the universe. Buddha uses an analogy; imagine someone shot by a poisoned arrow. A doctor tries to remove the arrow, but the victim won’t let him. “Before you pull out the arrow,” he says, “I want to know who shot me. Was it a man or a woman? Were they old or young? Why were they shooting at me?” Buddha explained that this is our predicament when we focus too much on metaphysical questions.
I imagined a sequel to this story. After the doctor pulls the arrow out, the victim still has poison in his bloodstream. Fortunately, the doctor knows the antidote to the poison and gives it to him to drink. “Who made this antidote? Where did he live? Is it true that he worked miracles? Is it true that he could stop a rampaging elephant with his mind?”
I don’t know which parts of the Buddha’s story are true and which were added after the fact. But that makes it no different than any other story. Surely we all have stories that we tell one way, but other people who were present for the same event tell differently. Why would a story from 2600 years ago be different? And yet I also believe that these stories are part of the antidote, part of what’s been passed over the centuries to alleviate the suffering in the world. If I want the antidote, I can at least play along with the myth. I know it’s more rewarding to watch Buffy if I can play along and believe that vampires are real, and more fun to watch The Simpsons if I play along and believe that Krusty the Klown’s face is on every product ever sold to kids. So if the Buddhist path will be more rewarding–and will be a better antidote to the poisons–if I believe that business with the elephant, then I’ll go for it.
After the Ignite Detroit event, I was talking with another Andrew, who had just given a presentation about ham (amateur) radio. I noted that radio enthusiasts have for years been networking, seeking, and communicating in ways that have now become mainstream. Living in the Information Age, we have to acknowledge that the geeks got here first. In the 1980s, fans of Star Trek and Doctor Who gathered for conventions to discuss their favorite TV shows. Today, people like to discuss their favorite shows, network with other fans and provide an atmosphere of feedback. I might guess that if we didn’t have Star Trek conventions decades ago, we wouldn’t have American Idol today. (If you’re not a fan of American Idol, don’t take that as an insult.) I think of it as the geekstream, the culture where niche is normal, where everyone can participate in enthusiastic fandom.
I think back to 1996, when I did most of my Internet searching from a computer lab on campus. I’ve always had a niche taste in music, and my very favorite at the time was singer-songwriter Kristin Hersh. One day in the computer lab, I checked the message board and saw a message from Kristin’s husband that their son had just been born. I started to dash off a note, “Congratulations!” when a classmate of mine came by and asked what I was writing.
When I explained, he seemed amused. “So, it’s fan mail?”
I was a bit surprised by the choice of words. It wasn’t the type of fawning letter I think of as fan mail, wasn’t telling her I was her number one fan, wasn’t promising her I’d name my firstborn after her, wasn’t begging for a signed photo. In fact, the note had little to do with that. It said exactly what I’d say to a cousin or neighbor who had a baby.
I still post congratulations and short greetings to celebrities, but now it’s mostly on Twitter. Some might argue that this means I’m a little shallow and fame-obsessed. But I think it shows the opposite. It shows I treat the famous people in my sphere with the same kind of consideration I’d use for anyone else in my sphere. I think starstruck silence would demonstrate more fame-obsession, or if I spent weeks composing a careful letter that gushes out all my adoration for them.
With Twitter, it’s just as easy to reply to celebrities as it is not to reply. It only takes a moment to type, “@ryanseacrest Great job on last night’s American Idol! (What’s up with Danny Gokey?)” For me, it’s acknowledging that the media is part of my life, and I can thank these people for being a good part of my life. It also shows that there’s nothing unspecial about me that prevents me from saying hi.
So I promised at the end of the last post I’d tell you my best Buddhist book for the year; thinking over the problematic triple-genre of Buddhist books made it clear that one of them succeeded at all three tasks in interesting ways.
Brad Warner’s book Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate surprised me. In part, because it didn’t seem to be as controversial as his other books. Maybe I missed something. But it was his most radical statement on the way Buddhist practice shaped his life–and best of all, it works in surprising ways. As I referred in the last post, sometimes the Buddhist narrative seems like Amazing Grace with the subject changed: “Amazing Dharma, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” Wretchedness to sweetness.
Warner’s story takes surprising turns and we see that he didn’t let all the wretchedness go, and he knows it. It’s not about being saved by Buddhism; it’s about letting go of the belief that a change in belief will make everything perfect. As a memoir, it’s a rewarding read.
As an argument, it’s extremely thought-provoking. I don’t agree with all of Warner’s conclusions, but I’m glad he’s working with the question. He pulls back the cover a little on Buddhist organizations and shows that, even in communities that are searching for enlightenment, there are still politics, and still interpersonal wrangling, and that’s not going to go away. His vision for the future of Buddhist organizations is well considered, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out in practice over the coming years.
So, the last questions is whether it’s a helpful book. It’s not trying to be a self-help book exactly, and someone looking for checklists on ethical or meditation practice will probably do best to look elsewhere. But perhaps it’s helpful to take Warner’s worldview seriously, not for his sake but for your own sake. It’s a how-to guide for people who have started to get overwhelmed by the “-ism” of Buddhism–the organizations, the businesses, the magazines, the Tibetan craft shops, and the charismatic smiling teachers who bring them all together. The “Buddh-” part, if it’s working, will help us see through the “-ism,” and by unveiling many of his own flaws and struggles, Warner paints a better picture for us.
So that’s my vote: Best Buddhist Book (I read) is Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate by Brad Warner.
Of course, I think a lot about Buddhist books. Duh. Looking over my list of books read in 2009, I see nine explicity Buddhist books, four others that would count as “religious studies,” seven that deal with Buddhism to some extent, and one written by someone I met at a Buddhist temple. And I’m trying to put together a plan for another book, one that I’d hope to see on the “Buddhism” shelf of your local megabookstore for so long.
Publishing is a business (as four other books on that list were wise to remind me) so I’ve been looking at the business side of it. We can lament this or cover our eyes and say “A good book is a good book,” but the truth is, some books sell and some books don’t, and it’s probably good mental practice to observe which ones do and which ones don’t.
What’s interesting about “Buddhist books” as a genre is that they’re at a strange point of overlap between the broader genres we see in the publishing industry. There are three areas in particular:
It’s a juggling act. I think I’ve been tempted to stress the second part. I think Buddhist writings should help people. Some Buddhist books (I’m not naming names here) seem to stress the memoir and argument; I feel like summing them up as, “Here’s my story: I found Buddhism, and it helped me so much and made me happy and now I’m so happy!” Maybe someone gets something good out of them, but they leave me a little cold. It also makes me question the memoir–as you do with any memories–because it often seems the story must be simplified to reinforce the simple point, “Yay Buddhism.”
The problem with emphasizing the self-help aspect is that it can make the book seem preachy. Also, for better or worse, book buyers are most swayed by what rhetoricians call “appeal to ethos,” or what literary agents call “platform.” Basically, this means reputation. People considering buying a self-help book are more likely to buy from names they recognize; barring that, they look for cues that a writer has a position to give help. Which doesn’t bode well for a first-time writer.
Then I think of Turtle Feet, the last book I read in the year. It is purely a memoir of a former Buddhist monk. It’s funny, surprising, suspenseful–yet I wonder if it belongs on the “memoir” shelf alone. I’d be curious to have someone with no background in Buddhism read it and ask, did you get an understanding from this book of what Buddhism is? And then I’d ask a perhaps unanswerable question: Does this book help you live better?
It’s a threefold burden that other books seem exempt from. When we read a self-help book like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, we don’t want to hear the writer’s story. When we read a good memoir like one by David Sedaris, we don’t think too much about whether he has an argumentative point, or whether reading it will help us live better.
So Buddhist writing is tricky, but when it’s done well, it’s successful three times over. Tomorrow, I’ll post my choice for the one Buddhist book I read in 2009 that, in hindsight, did all three jobs excellently.
After the busy news day yesterday on the celebrity-death front, my friend commented that it didn’t seem fair that Michael Jackson’s death was getting more attention than Ed McMahon’s or Farrah Fawcett’s. It brought back memories of the weekend in 1997 when news broke of Mother Teresa and Princess Diana’s death.
I guess I wonder, particularly in the world of Facebook and Twitter, whether short lines of grieving from fans count as elegies–that is, whether we should feel compelled to dedicate them to noble celebrities and eschew them for unworthy ones. What am I really saying when I tweet about a current obituary?
We use these tweets and status updates to work through our feelings in public, to negotiate a way of feeling about things through our friends. Of course, my daily life changes very little with the passing of Michael Jackson or Ed McMahon. I don’t have to worry how I’m going to live without either of them. And both deaths might be seen as trivial in the face of other deaths at war or in fights for civil justice.
But I can’t say that I have complicated questions about Ed McMahon to work through, but I think we all have complicated questions about Michael Jackson. At one point in the 80s, Jackson was one of three major pop solo artists, along with Madonna and Prince. Those two, while having complicated relationships with the limelight, both are still making music. It’s not hard to imagine an alternate path of history where Michael Jackson kept releasing new music and performing well into the 21st century. As it happens, he didn’t. His media persona overruled his music. Who would have thought in 1985 that of those three, Michael Jackson would be the one to go off the deep end?
As I said in my last post about Rachel Getting Married, there are two strategies for getting attention–success and failure. Ed McMahon was, by all reports, a good man and a good role model. Michael Jackson left behind a legacy of musical talent, but for the last ten years was much more likely in the news for a court battle than for a song.
Michael’s failures got more attention than McMahon’s successes. It’s not fair, but feelings aren’t fair. If people need to talk through their feelings about one death more than another, that’s okay.
