Mash note for Hitch

I am just finishing God is Not Great.  As I said in a previous post, I was not a fan of some of Hitch's political positions, but I get a great, positive kick out of his writing.  It's clear, bright, well-informed (mostly), and with just enough tartness to keep me awake and occasionally make me laugh. 

As I said, this was a Lenten exercise (as someone raised Protestant, we celebrated, but did not actively participate, in Lent, i.e., we were not required to give anything up, or do anything on a daily basis).  But in the face of increasing religiosity from all over, it seemed like a good, smack-in-the-face antidote.  GING kept me sane over the past 1-1/2 weeks of increasing religious fervor of Passover and Holy Week (interestingly, Buddha's birthday, April 7, was entirely ignored). 

I do wonder what Hitch would have made of the Republican primary season, with its reactionary claims of faith (ugh).  What ever happened to the idea that we should be electing the person who would do the best job, not the most devout believer in whatever brand of hypocrisy is in current vogue out there?  Actually, I am hard pressed to remember when any candidate was being judged by his fitness to serve, so - never mind. 

Hitch noted that many people of science needed to hide their lack of religious faith, or couch their expressions in vague language that would satisfy various authorities without making them feel like total fools for following the religious diktat of their times.  A couple of years ago I read Galileo's Daughter, which heartbreakingly spelled out the church's tightening noose around the brain of a brilliant man, along with how Italy fell behind in scientific research by prohibiting dissemination of Galileo's work there.  Smuggled copies that made it to Germany and beyond gave those countries a real advantage that they in some ways continue to enjoy.  Surely, that is as good a case of religion poisoning everything as you can get. 

Newsweek also chimed in with its holy week cover story on Jesus.  The writer noted that Thomas Jefferson cut passages from a bible and pasted them together to form what Jefferson thought (hoped?) were Jesus' direct words, and left out what he felt was unreliable, third-hand reporting in the gospels, along with the old testament silly rules and horrible bloodletting that characterizes the earlier book.  What the author in Newsweek chose to focus on was how Jesus kept saying that people should give up their worldly goods and trust in the lord and others' charity to feed and clothe them while they followed the word of god. 

The big problem with this, of course, is that the followers of Jesus would then have to depend on people who actually worked for a living.  If this was really the case (and the author made a brief, but okay, argument), then Jesus and his followers sound like the type of guy my dad would not have wanted me to go out with.  The author suggests this is the path to follow; however, I doubt very much that he or anyone else will be giving up their comfortable digs and ipads anytime soon.

I am not a materialistic person, at least not to the extent of many people I know, and I admire the Japanese aesthetic of rustic simplicity (though the cat hair keeps getting in the way), but I don't think I would last very long quitting my job and throwing myself on the mercy of others.  Mostly it's my sense of independence, very hard won, that keeps me keeping on.   Philosophically, at least, I am the embodiment of Buddha's idea of the middle path. 

I have a friend, whom I like and respect, who is about the be ordained as an Episcopal minister.  I have enjoyed occasionally playing devil's advocate with him.  He says I'm a deist; I say I'm an agnostic.  I talk about hypocrisy; he talks about "grace."  We drink beer.  We talk about something else. 

This time, if I get to see him on one of his treks to the northeast, we will have to talk about something else from the beginning.  It is very hard to read God is Not Great and not walk away wondering why any thinking person could buy what established religions have been selling.  Over the past 10 years there has been a lot of criticism of Islam here, but everyone who has made statements like that should really look very hard at their own glass houses.  Hitch just threw a great, big rock though every one of them.

Everything old is new again!

I was spring-cleaning my drafts email box when I came across this.  I believe I probably wrote it (it was undated) when I was not sure I would be able to log on to the blog from anywhere (I was wrong).  So, with minimal cleanup, read on...

People who know me know that I take a cultural- and aesthetics-based approach to iai practice.  This approach does not sit that well with some of my erstwhile colleagues, but that’s okay.  It’s mutual.  I don’t like their swaggering, I’m-a-warrior-and-I-kick-butt-with–a-sword (in a culture of guns) attitude.  However, that does not mean that good technique does not have a place in our practice.  But somehow, Americans, at least, think that’s odd.  It can’t emphasize aesthetics and also be effective, can it?

We are a culture of dichotomy, with so many examples abounding it hardly makes sense to point them out.  To be a Republican is to be a rabid libertarian.  To be a Democrat is to be a bleeding-heart liberal.  If it’s black, it can’t be white.  There is no such thing as grey, or marbling, or gradation.  If you are a Christian, you can’t be Jewish.  Or Buddhist.  And you CANNOT be nothing at all!  I could go on, but no doubt you get the idea.

Many years ago I spent some time practicing with a group that used a martial art style as an aspect of meditation practice.  The teacher was sincere about teaching the techniques, and a handful of students took him seriously, but the rest were simply lazy.  After a couple of practices, it was driving me crazy; watching the few committed people doing all the work of the practice (taking care of the space and the equipment, tending to the head teacher on his visits, and so forth), while the majority just showed up, used the equipment and paid perfunctory attention to the teacher who had flown hundreds of miles to work with them, and went home.  Finally, I said something to one of the senior, committed students.  His reply was surprising: “They aren’t martial artists.  They’re doing this for meditation.  They don’t care about the technique.” 

He could not have been more wrong in making such an excuse.  Meditation is actually seriously hard work.  It can take years of practice to begin to understand what you are doing in meditative practice, let alone to derive some sort of benefit from it.  Anyone who says different is lying.  Playing with a martial art form as some sort of prop to presumed meditative practice is ridiculous.  On the up side in this particular case, the teacher was getting paid, and now and then some students took the practice seriously.  But he faced criticism in the wider martial arts community for his lazy students and their poor technique.

If I claimed my practice was solely about culture and aesthetics and the students lazily sleepwalked through the forms, I would similarly not be taken seriously as a teacher, and my students would be mocked for their lack of technique.  Even though, as John Donohue has pointed out, “martial arts” should be more accurately described as “martially-inspired arts,” a certain level of authenticity and excellence in technique is called for.  After all, what good is your meditation if your technique for pursuing it is no good?  And how can you get inside the head (however minimally) of someone from a time when swords were common objects in certain households without taking the technique seriously, as they once did? 

Again, it’s a paradox that something so potentially deadly is also beautiful.  It makes people uncomfortable, which is one of the reasons I like it.

Bad Church Day

In celebration of Lent, I decided to read Christopher Hitchens' polemic, God is Not Great.  I always liked Hitch's writing, for its intellegence, lucidity and wit, even when I did not agree with him (his support for US adventurism in the Middle east, for example).  As the world knows, Hitchen's primary thesis is that religion is fake, and belief in religious all faiths has caused a great deal of suffering in the world - for centuries.

It is very hard to argue Hitchens' latter point - there are just too many examples to chose from where competing religious groups pummeled each other to death in the name of - whomever.  The Crusades.  The Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants in Europe.  The genocide of Native Americans led, in part, by missionaries (and in Africa, etc., etc., etc.).  Of course, Christianity can claim its share of martyrs as well - at the hands of the Romans or "pagan" believers.  Oddly, Hitch gives Buddhists a pass, more or less.   (His chapter on Buddhism mostly draws on Brian Victoria's work.  It's an ok thing to draw on, but left me a little surprised that Hitch actually did not know that much about Buddhism's imperialist misadventures.) Levels of tolerance or lack thereof exist everywhere there are belief systems, which is to say - everywhere.

I am a pagan (or as my sister has said, "a heathen," though, honestly, I don't know the difference).  To those rude enough to inquire (and in New York, there is nearly always someone who is) I say I am a Presbyterian Buddhist.  This induces one of several reactions - either the knowing snort of someone who gets the joke, or a serious look of incomprehension by someone who doesn't get it, but does not know what to say.  Both reactions, actually, are sufficient to inaugurate a change of subject.

This past weekend, I was visiting my sister in Georgia.  In honor of the occasion (and including that my younger sister would be visiting too), I was informed that we would go to church on Sunday, and that I should bring appropriate attire.

I didn't really care.  I parted ways with the church some time ago, but I would still go to church with my mother when I went home to visit.  It was win-win - it made her happy (win) and it made my dad happy that he was off the hook (win).  And I had decided, after years of college-age rebellion (mostly on the basis of Christian hypocrisy - one of my best friends was gay, and the Presbyterians, in spite of a committee report that suggested that gays were as qualified to be ministers as anyone, refused to turn that into a policy), that I was neither being a hypocrite myself, nor was I making a testament of faith - I was making my mother happy.  She knew my position, worried about my lack of faith, but was nice enough to not say anything.  Just like you can't win an argument with someone of faith, a person of faith can't win one with an unbeliever, either.

I came by my religious skepticism honestly - through a small book in my father's collection on world religions.  Up to that point, I only knew of Christianity and Judaism, and I loved Greek myths, Norse myths, and fairy tales (you could say my interest in paganism started very early).  The book, a pretty dry tome, actually, acquainted me with basic tenets of Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism - stuff I had never heard of before.  I don't remember many of the specifics that were in the book (I later did more investigating on my own) but I was impressed that there were competing faiths, and, importantly, that they all thought they were right.

In later years, my father and I had several talks in which he claimed a skepticism, if not outright denial, of religion that would have made Hitch happy.  Unlike Hitch, he didn't begrudge people their beliefs; he did, however, rage about the intolerance that then, and certainly now, seems to be on the rise.  To him, no belief at all was better than hypocrisy.  And no amount of belief could justify cruelty to others.

For myself, I never understood the mutual exclusivity of Judaism and Christianity.  When I was a kid, we had the son of an orthodox rabbi in my elementary school class for awhile.  I thought he was way cool, especially that he got to have most of September off.  We even took a field trip to his house to see the tent in the back yard for Sukkot.  We had ice cream at the end of the visit! 

I tried to convince my mom we should celebrate Jewish holidays.

"We don't," my mom said.

"Why not?" I said.

"Because we're Christian," she said.

"But Jesus was Jewish," I pointed out. 

At which point the subject was changed. 

Back to church in Georgia.  White walls, white people, wooden pews, choir, two (count 'em) ministers, a reverend and a doctor.  The sermon was about how gen-Xers have turned away from god.  Examples included the guy who shot a bunch of civilians in Afghanistan and the guy who shot the kid in Florida and was not arrested.  If only they had known god, they would not have engaged in such violence.

Really?  REALLY?  For all anyone knows, both of them are church regulars.  In any case, I do not feel any sympathy for a pair of individuals with little in common except an obvious penchant for violence, because they have not found god.  What they did find was access to firearms, and they felt no obligation for discretion in using them.

The doctor might have made a few more points, but I had stopped listening.

Later, my sister expressed her dislike of the sermon, saying it was self-serving.  (I would like an example of a sermon that is not self-serving in this era of continual marketing.)  And anyway, it's not their regular church, which is smaller, less wealthy and more integrated. 

So why didn't we go there instead?  Maybe next trip.