A COSMOPOLITAN LAWYER: JUST SOME READINGS I HAVE ENJOYED LATELY

First, this blog replaces my previous blog, thecosmoplitanlawyerblogspot.com . Second, unlike that earlier blog, the present one is primarily meant as a record of my readings. It is not meant to suggest that others will be or should be interested in what I read. And third, in a sense, it is a public diary of one who is an alien in his own American culture. A person who feels at home just about anywhere, except in his birthplace . . . America.

Thursday, February 28, 2013

SUGGESTED SPRING-BREAK FICTION

Jim Crace, Harvest: A Novel (New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2013) ("It did not take many working days before I understood that the land itself, from sod to meadow, is inflexible and stern. It is impatient, in fact. It cannot wait. There's not a season set aside for pondering and reveries. It will not let us hesitate or rest; it does not wish us to stand back and comment on its comeliness or devise a song for it. It has no time to listen to our song. It only asks us not to tire in our hard work. It wants to see us leathery, our necks and forearms burned as black as chimney oak; it wants to leave us thinned and sinewy from work. It taxes us from dawn to dusk, and torments us at night; that is the taxing that the thrush complains about. Our great task each and every year is to defend ourselves against hunger and defeat with implements and tools. The clamor deafens us. But that is how we have to live our lives." Id. at 57. "I am excused, I think, for wondering f I am the only one alive this afternoon with no other living soul who wants to cling to me, no other soul who'll let me dampen her. The day has ended and the light is snuffed. I'm left to trudge into the final evening with nobody to loop their soaking hand through mine. And no one there to lift their hats, as our traditions say they must, when brought on by chaff and damp I cannot help but sneeze, an unintended blessing for the field. But I'd be lying if I said I felt as dark and gloomy as the clouds. I think I'm thrilled in some strange way. The plowing's done. The seed is spread. The weather is reminding me that, rain or shine, the earth abides, the land endures, the soil will persevere forever and a day. Its smell is pungent and high-seasoned. This is happiness." Id. at 175-176. From the bookjacket: "In effortless and tender prose, Jim Crace details the unraveling of a pastoral idyll in the wake of economic progress. His tale is timeless and unsettling, framed by a beautifully evoked world that will linger in your memory long after you finish reading.").

Sebastian Faulks, A Possible Life: A Novel in Five Parts (New York: Henry Holt, 2012) ("So be it, she thought. The project of my life is to make the most of what I have." Id. at 118.).

Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk: A Novel (New York: Ecco, 2012) ("For the past two weeks he's been feeling so superior and smart because of all the things he know from the war, but forget it, they are the ones in charge, these saps, these innocents, their homeland dream is the dominant force. His reality is their reality's bitch; what they don't know is more powerful than all the things he knows, and yet he's lived and knows what he knows, which means what, something terrible and possible fatal, he suspects. To learn what you have to learn at the war, to do what you have to do, does this make you the enemy of all that sent you to the war?" "Their reality dominates, except for this: It can't save you. It won't stop any bombs or bullets. He wonders if there's a saturation point, a body count that will finally blow the homeland dream to smithereens. How much reality can unreality take?" Id. at 306-307.).

Neil Gaiman, American Gods: A Novel (New York: William Morrow, 2001) ("Too much talking these days. Talk talk talk.This country would get along better if people learned how to suffer in silence." Id. at 44. "We do not always remember the things that do no credit to us. We justify them, cover them in bright lies or with the thick dust of forgetfulness," Id. at 376.).

Yasushi Inoue, The Counterfeiter and Other Stories, translated from the Japanese, with an introduction by Leon Picon (Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 1965, 2000).

Hari Kunzru, Gods Without Men: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2012) ("Around them, tired deputies were slapping one another on the back, passing around a bottle. No one seemed to care they'd chased a man for days across the desert, then murdered him without cause. They were victorious hunters. Once the photographs were done, they started to cut brush and pile it over the corpse. Deighton tried to pull it away. He wasn't sure who was beneath it, but he knew they ought to carry him down, give him a decent funeral. Two of Craw's hands dragged him off and laid him on the ground. It's just and Indian, sneered one. He don't care." Id. at 232.).

Hari Kunzru, My Revolutions: A Novel (New York: Dutton, 2007, 2008) ("Nothing is permanent. Everything is subject to change. [] Annica is the Buddhist term. The cosmic state of flux." Id. at 17. "So I followed the path of educated misfits through the ages and got a job in a bookshop." Id. at 25. "You want to be a lawyer. Well, a lawyer needs to know something about politics, even a corporate lawyer who wants to climb the ladder, to buy the things her friends buy and go to the places they go. You're lucky that politics feels optional, something it is safe to ignore. Most people in the world have it forced on them. To be fair, I suppose you're a child of your time. Thatcher's gone, the Berlin wall's down, and unless you're in Bosnia, the most pressing issue of the nineties appears to be interior design, It's supposed to be the triumph of capitalism--the end of history and the glorious beginning of the age of shopping, But politics is still here, Sam, even in 1998. It may be in abeyance, at least in your world, But it's lurking round the edges, It';; be back." Id. at 47. "Does something exist if it's unobserved? Does something happen if it is not reported?" Id. at 184. "Because legality is just the name for everything that's not dangerous for the ruling order, because the poor starve while the rich play, because the flickering system of signs is enticing us to give up our precious interiority and join the dance and because just around the corner an insect world is waiting, so saying we must love one another or die isn't enough, not by a long way, because there'll come a time when any amount of love will be too late. But it's something, love, not nothing, and that's why I pull over and find a phone booth in a rest area and punch a number into the phone...." Id. at 276-277.).

Per Petterson, It's Fine By Me: A Novel, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett (Minneapolis, MN: Greywolf Press, 1992, 2011).

Karen Russell, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves: Stories (New York: Vintage Contemporaries/Vintage Books, 2006, 2007).

Karen Russell, Vampires in the Lemon Grove: Stories (New York: Knopf, 2013).

George Saunders, Tenth of December: Stories (New York: Random House, 2013) (From the bookjacket: "Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving int the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human." "Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious, the stories in Tenth of December--through their manic energy, their focus on what is redeemable in human beings, and their generosity of spirit--not only entertain and delight; they fulfill Chekhov's dictum that art should 'prepare us for tenderness.'").

RISKY ACTIVITY: READING INTERNET COMMENTS ABOUT ONESELF

The material below is from the "JD UNDERGROUND." It comments on a law review article I published in 2009. If, and I think it is a big "if," the sentiments reflected below are typical of prospective, current and former law students, then I am most definitely in the wrong profession. I am in the wrong profession! Also, I don't think I will be driving to Detroit anytime soon.

"dybbuk (Oct 16, 2012 - 12:50 am)

In 2009, Quinnipiac Law Professor Leonard Long wrote a law review article expressing his opposition to the instrumentalist barbarians who believe the purpose of law school is to train lawyers. Leonard J. Long, “Resisting Anti-Intellectualism and Promoting Legal Literacy,” 34 S. Ill. U.L.J. 1 (2009). As Long puts it, “For the anti-intellectual traditionalists in legal education, the dominant purpose of law schools, and the nearly exclusive aim of legal education, is training law students to become practicing lawyers.” Long, at 5. Long asserts, to the contrary, that law school should “cultivate [the] humanity” of law students, by offering instruction in “philosophy, history, literature, and the classics,” thereby allowing them citizenship in the “republic of ideas.” Long at 4, 18, 24. The full article is linked here:

http://www.law.siu.edu/journal/34fall/1%20-%20Long.pdf

As I read Long’s law review article, I kept waiting for him to address the question of cost-to-outcome. Should a law grad not feel angry and cheated if, after three years of expensive study in a professional school, he or she has no practice skills, a mountain of educational debt, and no job? Long consigns the question of costs to a few dubious and self-serving lines about how apprenticeships would ultimately be more expensive than law school tuition because starting salaries would be lower. See Long, note 33 at 14, 16, note 92 at 34. As to those law graduates who are never hired, Long explains that the fault lies in the students’ own vulgar desires for jobs and careers. He writes: “Does anyone doubt that the atmosphere and dynamics of legal education would be so much different were the acquisition of legal knowledge valued independent of its job, career, and livelihood utility?” Long at 36.

Long then pricelessly suggests that law school should be valued for its own sake, even if it does not lead to a job, much like one might value the memory of a pleasurable three year romance that did not lead to marriage:

“First, assume that upon the law students’ successful (very good grades, honor societies, etc.) completion of law school, job market for entry-level lawyers shrinks such that their law job prospects approach zero. From that vantage point, will those graduates still view their legal education as a good investment or not? If a legal education’s only, or dominant, value is that it prepares students to be lawyers, then it seem that three years of law school turned out to have been a poor investment. Contrast our law students with persons who happily (that is, successfully) date someone for three years, with plans to marry that someone at the end of three years (say at the end of law school) but, due to some external factors or events, that someone is no longer able or willing to marry (e.g., that someone’s job requires them to relocate to another country). Even though things did not work out on the marriage front, would these star crossed lovers view the last three happy years of dating as a poor investment and a waste? In some instances, yes; but in most instances, probably not.” Long note 97 at 36.

Given the disrespect towards law students expressed in his law review article, it should come as no surprise that Professor Leonard Long was written up in the University newspaper for offensive behavior towards his students. According to the Quinnipiac Chronicle’s February 28, 2007, article: “Professor offends law students,” Long sent an email to his students stating that, “several QUSL students will go off to be smug little assistant district attorneys and such, wearing ill-fitting power suit, and thinking themselves as doing justice.” Long then refused to respond to students who wished to continue the discussion he himself had initiated.

http://www.quchronicle.com/2007/02/chronicle-exclusive-professor-offends-law-students/

Notably, Long, during his brief three year career as a practitioner, did not do public sector or public interest law. Rather, Long launched his career in Big Law. After getting a JD from the University of Chicago in 1988, he spent a single year as an associate with Chapman and Cutler, LLP, and then two years with Wildman Harrold. (On the website of Edwards Wildman, the post-merger name of Wildman Harrold, the firm boasts of being a top 10 firm in closing private equity and venture capital deals). Since 1991, Long has been a law school professor, and has spent the last 16 years at Quinnipiac. I wonder if Long felt he was “doing justice” in Big Law, in contrast to the “little assistant district attorneys” whom he derides?

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/leonard-j-long/6/846/548

Recent job placement statistics should reassure Prof. Long: the vast majority of his students will never practice law of any sort, and therefore will not harbor thoughts offensive to Long about the value of their legal careers. The Law School Transparency site indicates that only 33.1% of Quinnipiac’s 2011 graduates got bar-required long term jobs within nine months of graduation. (Cf. Florida Coastal School of Law, 34.8%, Barry University, 34.4, John Marshall of Chicago, 41.1%)

http://www.lawschooltransparency.com/clearinghouse/?school=quinnipiac&class=2011&show=ABA

As for “doing justice,” I can think of one way: close Quinnipiac’s law school. But a small step in the right direction would be to replace Leonard Long with a professor who will treat his students with respect, and who will give his students practical training that they expect and pay for.

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johnnycakes (Oct 16, 2012 - 1:09 am)

I like reading these posts. Good work, as always.

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diligentsolo (Oct 16, 2012 - 7:57 pm)

Great post.

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redbirds (Oct 16, 2012 - 1:12 am)

You just can't make this nonsense up.

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dtejd1997 (Oct 16, 2012 - 3:06 am)

"professor" Leonard Long's law review article is sort of like free flowing consciousness.

He got a seed of an idea and just went with it...

Who reads this stuff?

Of what societal value is it?

I pray this skam ends before too many more people get enmeshed in it.

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dupednontraditional (Oct 16, 2012 - 6:47 am)

"It is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all...by the way, that will be $150k. Thanks."

What a smug prick. dybbuk, keep up the good work. You should do a full-up blog on this stuff, or publish a book given the amount of work you're doing here.

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dybbuk (Oct 16, 2012 - 10:07 pm)

Would a blog really reach more people?

One thing I like about JD Underground is that old threads can be bumped to the top, though I understand that this should be done sparingly. So... next time, following their natural inclinations, Princess Nancy Leong says something supercillious, or SpearIt says something idiotic, or Paul Horwitz makes a jackass of himself, or Michael Sevel reaches into the pockets of law students to fund his studies in philosophy and theology, I, or anyone, can revive and update the old threads.

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vanity (Oct 16, 2012 - 10:42 am)

Love these posts.

To a southern woman, three years of dating that does not turn into marriage is a rotten failure.

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lolskewl (Oct 16, 2012 - 11:21 am)

If law school has some inherent value, than why wouldn't Professor Long volunteer his time to teach students?

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onehell (Oct 16, 2012 - 11:35 am)

I can't fault professors for responding to the incentives that are placed in front of them, as any rational human would do. If you have the credentials, being a law prof is a fantastic job and there is no good reason not to pursue it if you're interested in an ultra low-stress "life of the mind."

Of course, no one wants to think of themselves as part of a problem, especially not people like law professors who have been good, law abiding overachievers their entire lives. As humans, they are good people, and good people don't generally like to do bad things so they need to come up with rationalizations for their endeavors. Law (and the liberal arts in general) as an end unto itself, rather than a means to an end, is one very common such rationalization.

In fact, at the UG level the "end unto itself justification" is one I can actually buy into. The traditional college experience (not this online or for-profit nonsense) is very enriching socially and, if you put real effort in, intellectually as well. If it works as it is supposed to (which it often doesn't due to the dumbing-down of undergrad, but that's another discussion) you emerge with a broader perspective, able to think critically and write well, and this will serve well in most any endeavor. And, with an average debt of 20k, the price is actually still somewhat reasonable. I get all that.

But law school is simply too expensive, too focused, and too much of an assembly line (based as it is on large class sizes and no research component) to be thought of as an end unto itself. Law professors cannot, much as they understandably want to, regard themselves as do other professors who teach and work with undergrads and a few masters and PhD students. Law school is not real grad school. It is professional school. If it were grad school, it would be largely funded, would provide teaching opportunities for students, and would be research-based (with peer review) like any other PhD program. It would, in other words, look like the SJD programs that are offered at a tiny handful of universities.

As it is, law school, like med school and business school, is professional school. It may not be as lowbrow as full-on trade school, but it is and will remain a means to an end. If its students cannot reach those ends, it is failing.

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lawlawtemp (Oct 16, 2012 - 11:42 am)

Law students had 4 years in undergrad to dilly-dally around in the liberal arts, it doesn't belong in law school.

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onehell (Oct 16, 2012 - 11:47 am)

That's true. The more theoretical, intellectual side of law school is really just philosophy-lite. People who would go to law school as an end unto itself would probably be better served pursuing a philosophy PhD. Of course, that would be infinitely harder to get into and would come with funding, teaching opportunities and research expectations, which illustrates precisely the folly of thinking of law school as the graduate school the profs want it to be, rather than the professional school it is.

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onehell (Oct 16, 2012 - 12:02 pm)

Oh here's another thought. I actually like the prof's analogy to dating and whether it is purely a means to an end, namely marriage. It's more apt than he realizes. Think about it. It's absolutely true that when you're 18-22 (college undergrad years) you date for the fun of dating with no expectation of marriage. The relationship is not a means to anything, it is an end unto itself and indeed both parties are aware that they will in all likelihood break up eventually. BUT look at what happens when people hit 30. At that point, dating IS purely a means to an end and no one wants to waste time if it isn't going anywhere. Indeed, if someone in their 30s spends 2 years in a relationship that does not end up leading to marriage, that is some serious wasted time lost to a major ticking clock.

Law school is the same. These kids came to LS because it's time to focus and get a career. College was fun, but now it's over and the clock cannot be turned back.

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dupednontraditional (Oct 16, 2012 - 5:36 pm)

Bam! 180.

Unfortunately, onehell, your observations are entirely too logical and reasonable, so they will be essentially ignored by the establishment. Money talks, you know.

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dybbuk (Oct 16, 2012 - 9:57 pm)

Great comments, onehell. I completely agree with the distinctions you draw between the purpose and value of an undergrad education and a law school education.

One more distinction: Though the professors one encounters in undergrad generally earn much less than law professors, they are far, far more likely to be authentic, or even renowned, scholars in areas such as “philosophy, history, literature, and the classics.” (as Long puts it). In law school, you tend to encounter intellectual dilettantes who teach their law and literature courses and do their "critical studies" as a fig-leaf for their overall lack of ability to train students to practice any kind of law.

Here is my counter-proposal to Long, to prove that I am not anti-intellectual and that I actually do treasure "philosophy, history, literature, and the classics.": Allow and encourage law students to walk over to the other side of campus and audit any undergrad course or graduate seminar they want free of charge. Hell, for what law schools extract in tuition, perhaps the right to audit courses in these areas should be a lifetime perk that comes with the JD.

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onehell (Oct 17, 2012 - 11:34 am)

Yes, definitely. "Law and..." profs are not generally recognized as much by the "and" discipline. For example, a world-renowned scholar of "law and economics" will be very well-known in legal academia, but would never be hired by an actual economics department because his scholarship isn't peer-reviewed and is therefore not real scholarship.

It's a good idea to say that intellectual students should be free to take other courses at the university, and I think proposals like that more importantly demonstrate the choice that needs to be made: Law school can be grad school, or it can be professional school, but it cannot be both. Well, a very small number of schools at the absolute tippy top of the rankings are able to pull off being both, but that has more to do with the high intelligence of the students than anything else.

For the rest, if law school wants to be grad school, then the programs would get a lot smaller, heavy on prerequisites, become tuition-free (with the students teaching undergrad law courses as other PhD students do), and the students' success would be based on peer-reviewed research and not test scores. If, OTOH, it wants to be a professional school, it needs to hire a lot more adjuncts with actual practice experience and concentrate much more heavily on clinical experiences. It will then continue to be able to charge somewhat high tuition, but it will still be cheaper without all the prof salaries and research activity.

There is room in our system for both modalities. Higher rank of school would generally correlate with more likelihood of adopting the PhD model, while low ranked schools should probably be staffed primarily by practicing adjuncts. Freedom to take undergraduate courses could enable them to hang on to some intellectualism in even those programs.

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moviegoer (Feb 7, 2013 - 10:17 pm)

"I can't fault professors for responding to the incentives that are placed in front of them, as any rational human would do."

I absolutely fault them for responding to those incentives. They are tremendous beneficiaries of a system that uses tremendous deceit to destroy the careers and financial solvency of some of a generation's best and brightest, at tremendous cost to both the individuals and society at large.

How is this unworthy of fault? If law professors were presented the same incentives, but earned it by torturing kids rather than doing...well, whatever it is they...should they still be held faultless?

Not trying to be a dick, just trying to understand this seemingly nihilistic attitude. It's strange to me that it's common, and even more strange that it's unremarkably so.

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dopesmokeresquire (Oct 16, 2012 - 4:21 pm)

professor Leonard "let them eat cake" Long...what a fuckface.

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ballsnottt (Oct 16, 2012 - 4:26 pm)

This guy is a true PIECE of TRASH. Fuck him. Yes, let's go to Quinnipac fuckin' Law School to hang out and shoot the 'academic' shit for three years and even if we are unemployable after and it cost 210k, it was still a fun time. Right. This shitstain of a school was just on 3TR, apparently it costs 46K per year for tution (HLS is 49K). So 70K a year factoring COL sounds like a great deal to listen to this jerkoff and his ilk wax poetic for three years.

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shithead (Oct 16, 2012 - 4:32 pm)

I had a great time in law school. Was it worth the money? Absolutely not.

I hope this law professor dies in the gutter without a penny to his name.

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moviegoer (Feb 7, 2013 - 10:19 pm)

To each of your sentences: Me too, me too, me too, and me too x 10000.

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thedetroiter (Oct 16, 2012 - 5:04 pm)

I hope his car gets stolen if he's ever in town.

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shithead (Oct 16, 2012 - 5:41 pm)

Do you think the average law professor like this has any idea how much they are despised by a large number of law grads?

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shad246 (Feb 6, 2013 - 9:50 am)

I went there for UG. Some pretty nice cars in the law school parking lot that were most likely faculty. One guy had a 93-95 Supra Twin Turbo T-Top, don't see many of those.

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lurktastic (Oct 17, 2012 - 12:37 pm)

1. Law school is generally NOT pleasurable (as opposed to hopefully most relationships).
2. Law school debt is NOT dischargeable in bankruptcy unlike consumer debt incurred for romantic dates, vacations, and gifts.
3. Law school takes up the majority of one's life, especially during 1L and does not allow for working or earning very much while enrolled. Relationships not only permit one to work; generally, most people prefer that their significant others have a job during the entire duration of a relationship.

Law school is nothing like a romantic relationship. I think this law professor is an idiot. And horrible at comparisons.

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onehell (Oct 17, 2012 - 4:24 pm)

1. Law school is quite pleasurable if you're the sort of person who was essentially looking for a "philosophy-lite" grad program. Lots of the "international human rights law" tools I knew LOVED law school.
2. True dat, but with IBR who cares? (says the naive 0L).
3. Law school does not take up the majority of one's life. It is frickin' easy. All you do is skim a textbook and - if called on - talk about it the next day, followed by a brief cram-fest for your one and only test at semester's end.

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sparky (Feb 6, 2013 - 10:44 am)

I had around three years of romantic "bliss" and when it was over, it cost me a hell of a lot more than law school did.

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secondcareerlawyer (Feb 8, 2013 - 9:31 am)

It's fairly easy to make these judgment calls when you have a 6 figure paying, 15 hour a week work schedule, w/tenure."

WHERE ARE THE WORKING-CLASS RADICALS? HAVE THEY ALL BEEN CO-OPTED INTO THE PETITE BOURGEOISE OF, SAY, LEGAL ACADEMIA?

Staughton Lynd, Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism, New Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 2009) ("So it was not ideology that determined the political choices of ... tenant farmers. It was economic interest." Id. at xi. "My tentative answer to questions about the political choices of working people is . . . as follows: Poor and working people, unendingly pressed by economic necessity, will ordinarily focus on personal, short-run, material gains: owning the land that one's tills, protecting the market for the goods produced in one's shop. Extensive experience with other kinds of workers, common oppression (as in a prison or in war), or a dramatic disruption of shared expectations (such as a plant closing), may give rise to a broader class point of view. But it will always be more difficult for lower-class protagonists to rise about the interests of the moment than it is for upper-class historical actors, who, then and now, have more money, more leisure, and a smaller number of persons to organize into a cohesive force, and who instinctively gravitate to the preservation of the system as a whole." "This conclusion should not be understood to devalue the aspirations of poor and working-class persons, then or now. ..." Id. at xii-xiii. "One final aspect of [Thomas] Paine's thought deserves respectful attention. Paine, and other after him...transcended any form of nationalism with the words 'My country is the world.' This was an is an astonishingly radical idea. It is the thesis that dissenters in the United States cannot be content with any interpretation of the American experience confined within national boundaries. So long as we limit ourselves to that which has occurred within the framework of single nation, we will always arrive at a place that is parochial and chauvinistic. A merely American set of values will always be Athenian in the sense that whatever equality it extends to those who are considered 'citizens,' even if that designation is extended to, say, women, people of color, and Native Americans, there will always be those not included, whom the Greeks called 'barbarians.' A society that affirms anything less than the belief that every human being on the face of the earth is equally entitled to the goods things that the earth provides will in the end find some group of enemy combatants to hate." "I conclude that the American Revolution most deserving to be remembered is not a tradition associated with any of the better-known Founding Fathers. Rather, what is most enduring from this period is the set of ideas promulgated by Paine, and by other self-taught workingmen in the succeeding 125 years." Id. at xix. "The intellectual origins of the American radical tradition were rooted in men's efforts to make a way of life at once free and communal. What held together these dissenters from the capitalist consensus was more than ideology: it was also the daily practice of libertarian and fraternal attitudes in institutions of their own making. The clubs, the unorthodox congregations, the fledgling trade-unions were the tangible means, in theological language the 'works,' by which revolutionaries kept alive their faith that men could live together in a radically different way. In times of crisis resistance turned into revolution; the underground congregation burst forth as a model for the Kingdom of God on earth, and an organ of secular 'dual power'." "The revolutionary tradition is more than words and more than isolated acts. Men create, maintain, and rediscover a tradition of struggle by the crystallization of ideas and action into organisations which they make for themselves. Parallel to Leviathan, the Kingdom is dreamed, discussed, in minuscule form established. Within the womb of the old society--it is Marx's metaphor--the new society is born." Id. at 173. American society, American business, American educational institution, etc., have become so much managed from the top down, that meaningful innovation which is not simple repackaging of the old, is nearly impossible, Yes, there are notable exception, such as Apple where ideas seem to float up to senior management. However, if we are honest, our whole educational system is pretty much designed to train students to be followers, middle-class, entertained, noncritical thinking, consumers and nothing more. The complete aim of higher education, for most, is getting a job. The country is falling apart, but this may be good. For when things get really bad, the poor and working classes will have suffered deeply and, perhaps, a new wave of American Radicalism will emerge therefrom. We need a twenty-first-century Thomas Paine. Though I suspect he or she will not be an American, but rather a citizen of the world.).

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

One of the shortcomings of legal education concerns the fact one can graduate from law school with little, if any, exposure to just how brutal the world actually is, especially for the powerless (e.g., women, minorities, children, the poor, many migrants and, yes, even nonhuman animals). This is not to say law students are not exposed to the the world's brutality outside their law school experience (for example, sexual assault, domestic violence), only that such exposure is not integrated into the law school experience. As lawyers we (you) are supposed to know how the world actually works. The ugly, gritty, cruel reality of the underside of society and life. As law students, It is your responsible to get that education. The three items listed above may serve as part, a very small part, of your studies.

Book:

Freidoune Sahebjam, The Stoning of Sorayan: A Story of Injustice in Iran, translated from the French by Richard Seaver (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1990, 18994, 2011) (From the front cover: "Over the past 25 years, more than 1,500 women have been stoned to death in Iran." From the backcover: "When he couldn't afford to marry another woman, Soraya M.'s husband plotted with four friends and a counterfeit mullah to dispose of her. Together, they accused Soraya of adultery. Her only crime was cooking for a friend's widowed husband. Exhausted by a lifetime of abuse and hardship, Soraya said nothing, and the makeshift tribunal took her silence as a confession of guilt. They sentenced her to death by stoning: a punishment prohibited by Islam but widely practiced." "Day by day---sometimes minute by minute--Sahebjam deftly recounts these horrendous events, tracing Soraya's life with searing immediacy, from her arranged marriage and the births of her children to her husband's increasing cruelty and the difficult details of her horrifying execution, where, by tradition, her father, husband, and sons hurled the first stones. A stark look at the intersection between culture and justice, this is one woman's story, but it stands for the stories of thousands of women who suffered--and continue to suffer--the same fate. It is a story that must be told.").

DVDs:

The Stoning of Soraya M. (based on the above-mentioned book).

The Invisible War (From the DVD sleeve: From ... filmmaker Kirby Dick ... comes The Invisible War, a groundbreaking investigate documentary about one of America's most shameful and best-kept secrets: the epidemic of rape within the U. S. military. The film paints a startling picture of the extent of the problem--today, a female soldier in combat zones is more likely to be raped by a fellow solider than killed by enemy fire. Twenty percent of all active-duty female servicewomen are sexually assaulted." "Profoundly moving, the film follows the stories of several idealistic young servicewomen who were raped and then betrayed by their own officers when they courageously came forward to report. Both a rallying cry for the hundreds of thousands of men and women who've been assaulted and a hopeful road map for change, The Invisible War is one of those rare films so powerful it has already helped change military policy.").

I cannot say “enjoy,” as there is nothing joyful about these suggested reading and viewings. Reality is a painful experience.

A MEDITATION ON THE BHAGAVAD GITA AND ON THE LIFE ONE IS BORN TO LIVE

Stephen Cope, The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling (New York: Bantam, 2012) ("One of the greatest archetypes of the yoga tradition is the jivan mukta--the soul awake in this lifetime." Id. at xx. "The yoga tradition is ver, very interested in the idea of an inner possibility harbored within every human soul. Yogis insist that every single human being has a unique vocation. They call this dharma... For our purposes in this book it will mean primarily 'vocation,' or 'sacred duty.' It means, most of all--and in all cases--truth. Yogis believe that our greatest responsibility in life is to this inner possibility--this dharma--and they believe that every human being's duty is to utterly, fully, and completely embody his own idiosyncratic dharma." Id. at xx-xxi. "We do no suspect the ways in which doubt keeps us paralyzed. Plastered to the bottom of our various chariots. Unable to assent." Id. at 9. "It appears that we will not hit the target of dharma unless we are aiming at it." Id. at 14. "Here are the central pillars of the path of action--the path of karma yoga--as expounded by Krishna. Here are the keys to Inaction-in-Action: 1. Look to your dharma. 2. Do it full out! 3. Let go of the fruits. 4. Turn it over to God." Id. at 16. "Krishna, in his teaching to Arjuna, points to a truth that also holds true for us. You cannot be anyone you want to be." Id. at 22. "Said Krishna to Arjuna, 'It is better to fail at your own dharma than to succeed at the dharma of someone else.'" Id. at 26. "We cannot be anyone we want to be. We can only authentically be who we are. 'The attempt to live out someone else's dharma brings extreme spiritual peril,' say Krishna. Extreme spiritual peril" Id. at 34. "here is a sentence I read recently in the pages of the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas. 'If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you; if you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.'" Id. at xviii. "Having found your dharma, embrace it fully and passionately. Bring everything you've got to it. Do it full out!" Id. at 68. "In this spirit, Chinese Master Guan Yin Tzu wrote: 'Don't waste time calculating your chances of success and failure. Just fix your aim and begin.'" Id. at 69. "Cutting off options is hard work. And it is risky. But the alternative is even riskier. Those who cannot commit, those who cannot say 'no,' are doomed to everlasting conflict. They may sit for a lifetime at the crossroads, dithering." Id. at 70. "[T]hree principles of the Doctrine of Unified Action: 1. Find out who you are and do it on purpose. 2. Unify! 3. Practice deliberately." Id. at 71. "A life is built on a series of small course corrections--small choices that add up to something mammoth." Id. at 87. "[O]ur job is to make choices that create the right conditions for dharma to flourish." Id. at 88. Keats "realized that the most precious fruit of his art would be the way it allowed him access to the innermost character of a person or thing. He saw that poetry was merely a vehicle--a way to know the world. A way to know the soul of a person, a landscape, or any object of beauty. He realized that he did not need to possess any of it. He only needed to know it. And this knowing was what brought not just happiness, but bliss, rapture, and authentic fulfillment." "The question he had been asking--'Wherein lies happiness?'--now had it best answer. 'A fellowship with essence!!!' he would exclaim...." "Hard upon the heels of this discovery came another: Grasping for an object actually interferes with knowing it. The discovery that holding on too tightly disturbs the mind, and finally interferes with the mind's capacity to know. This is, of course, the very insight that Krishna teaches to Arjuna." Id. at 147-148. "The 'night sea journey' is the journey into the parts of ourselves that are split off, disavowed, unknown, unwanted, cast out, and exiled to the various subterranean worlds of consciousness. it is the night sea journey that allows us to free the energy trapped in these cast-off parts--trapped in what Marion [Woodman] would call 'the shadow.' The goal of this journey is to reunite us with ourselves. Such a homecoming can be surprisingly painful, even brutal. In order to undertake it, we must first agree to exile nothing." Id. at 168. "A moment-by-moment trust in Divine guidance is central to Krishna's teaching. He teaches: ''To know when to act and when to refrain from action, what is right action and what is wrong, what brings security and what brings insecurity, what brings freedom and what brings bondage: These are the signs of a pure mind.'" Id. at 216. Harriet Tubman's "motto was always, 'Just keep going.'" Id. at 228. "Gandhi came to believe that any power he might have to affect the world only emerged when he got himself out of the way, and let God do the work. He came to call this 'reducing yourself to zero.' 'There comes a time' he wrote in the peak of his maturity,'when an individual becomes irresistible and his action becomes all-pervasive in its effects. This comes when he reduces himself to zero.'" "Gandhi's meaning was simple: Only the human being who acts in a way that is empty of self can be the instrument of Soul Force. And it only Soul Force that can establish a harmonious world. Human beings alone are helpless to resolve conflicts without it. With it, however, Gandhi came to believe that harmony is inevitable. Because harmony, Oneness with all beings, is our true nature." Id. at 245.).

Monday, February 25, 2013

TWO BY WOODY GUTHRIE

Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory (New York: Plume, 1943, 1983) (autobiography).

Woody Guthrie, House of Earth: A Novel, edited and introduced by Douglas Brinkley & Johnny Depp (New York: Harper-Infinitum Nihil, 2013) (From the bookjacket: "Though they are one with the farm and with each other, the land on which Tike and Ella May live and work is not theirs. Due to larger forces beyond their control--including ranching conglomerates and banks--their adobe house remains painfully out of reach." "A story of rural realism and progressive activism..., House of Earth is a searing portrait of hardship and hope set against a ravaged landscape. Combining the moral urgency and narrative drive of John Steinbeck with the erotic frankness D. H Lawrence, here is a powerful tale of America for one of our greatest artist.").

Saturday, February 23, 2013

MORE POWER TO THE INTROVERTS!

Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (New York: Crown, 2012) (There is a saying, "There are two types of people in the world. Those who do the work, and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first category. There is less competition." I thought of this observation and admonishment as I read Quiet. We are living in a time when people are making themselves into products, and constantly "marketing" themselves (or, as students in my Commercial Law class might appreciate, constantly "puffing" themselves). Ostensibly, on the surface, it is the world of the extrovert. Yet! "Our lives are shaped as profoundly by personality as by gender or race. And the single most important aspect of personality--the 'north and south of temperament,' as one scientist puts it--is where we fall on the introvert-extrovert spectrum. Our place on this continuum influences our choices of friends and mates, and how we make conversation, resolve differences, and show love. If affects the careers we choose and whether or not we succeed at them. It governs how likely we are toe exercise, commit adultery, function well without sleep, learn from our mistakes, place a big bet in the stock market, delay gratification, be a good leader, and 'ask 'what if.'* It's reflected in our brain pathways, neurotransmitters, and remote corners of our nervous systems. Today introversion and extroversion are two of the most exhaustively researched subject in personality psychology, arousing the curiosity of hundreds of scientists." "*Answer key: exercise: extroverts; commit adultery: extroverts; function well without sleep: introverts; learn from our mistakes; introverts; place big bets: extroverts; delay gratification: introverts; be a good leader: in some cases introverts, in other cases extroverts, depending on the type of leadership called for; ask 'what if': introverts. [] As with other complementary pairings--masculinity and femininity, East and West, liberal and conservative--humanity would be unrecognizable, and vastly diminished, without both personality styles. [] Yet today we make room for a remarkable narrow range of personality styles. We're told that to be great is to be bold [note: have you ever notices how, when lawyers or law professors tell "war stories," they always make themselves the heroes? I suspect, however, it is mainly the extrovert lawyers and law professors who tell war stories; the introverts tend not to boast.], to be happy is to be sociable. We see ourselves as a nation of extroverts--which means that we've lost sight of who we really are. Depending in which study you consult, one third to one half of Americans are introverts--in other words, one out of every two or three people you know. (Given that the United States is among the most extroverted of nations, the number must be at least as high in other parts of the world.) If you're not an introvert yourself, you are surely raising, managing, married to, or coupled with one." Id. at 3-4. "It makes sense that so many introverts hide even from themselves. We live with a value system that I call the Extrovert Ideal--the omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha, and comfortable in the spotlight. The archetypal extrovert prefers action to contemplation, risk-taking to heed-taking, certainty to doubt. He favors quick decisions, even at the risk of being wrong. She works well in teams and socializes in groups. We like to think that we value individuality, but all too often we admire one type of individual--the kind who's comfortable 'putting himself out there.' Sure we allow technologically gifted loners who launch companies in garages to have any personality they please, but they are the exceptions not the rule, and our tolerance extends mainly to those who get fabulously wealthy or hold the promise of doing so." "Introversion--along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness--is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology. Introverts living under the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man's world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are. Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we've turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform." Id. at 4. "Now that you're an adult, you might still feel a pang of guilt when you decline a dinner invitation in favor or a good book. Or maybe you like to eat alone in restaurants and could do without the pitying looks from fellow diners. Or you're told that you're 'in your head too much,' a phrase that's often deployed against the quiet and cerebral." "Of course, there's another word for such people: thinkers." Id. at 7. "It's not always so easy, it turns out, to identify your core personal projects. And it can be especially tough for introverts, who have spent so much of their lives conforming to extroverted norms that by the time they choose a career, or a calling, it feels perfectly normal to ignore their own preferences. They may be uncomfortable in law school or nursing school or in the marketing department, but no more so than they were back in middle school or summer camp." "I , too, was once in this position, I enjoyed practicing corporate law, and for a while I convinced myself that I was an attorney at heart. I badly wanted to believe it, since I had already invested years in law school and on-the-job training, and much about Wall Street was alluring. My colleague were intellectual, kind, and considerate (mostly). I made a good living, I had an office on the forty-second floor of a skyscraper with views of the Statue of Liberty. I enjoyed the idea that I could flourish in such a high-powered environment. And I was pretty good at asking the 'but' and 'what if' questions that are central to the thought processes of most lawyers." "It took me almost a decade to understand that the law was never my personal project, not even close...." Id. at 217-218.).

Friday, February 22, 2013

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: CAN LOVE REALLY TRANSCEND ALL PREJUDICES?

Andrew Solomon, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity (New York: Scribner, 2012) ("All people are both the objects and the perpetrators of prejudice. Our understanding of the prejudice directed against us informs our responses to others. Universalizing from the cruelties we have known, however, has its limits, and the parents of a child with a horizontal identity often fail at empathy. My mother's issues with Judaism didn't make her much better at dealing with by being gay; my being gay wouldn't have made me a good parent to a deaf child until I'd discerned the parallels between the Deaf experience and the gay one. A lesbian couple I interviewed who has a transgendered child told me they approved of the murder of George Tiller, the abortion provider, because the Bible said that abortion was wrong, and yet they were astonished and frustrated at the intolerance they had encountered for their identity and their child's. We are overextended in the travails of our own situation, and making common cause with other groups is an exhausting prospect. Many gay people will react negatively to comparisons with the disabled, just as many African-Americans reject gay activists' use of the language of civil rights. But comparing people with disabilities to people who are gay implies no negativity about gayness or disability. Everyone is flawed and strange; most people are valiant, too. The reasonable corollary to the queer experience is that everyone has a defect, that everyone has an identity, and that they are often one and the same." Id. 18. From the bookjacket: "Solomon's startling proposition is that diversity is what unites us all. He writes about families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, multiple severe disabilities, with children who are prodigies, who are conceived in rape, who become criminals, who are transgender. While each of these characterisics is potentially isolating, the experience of difference within families is universal, as are the triumphs of love Solomon documents in every chapter." "All parenting turns on a crucial question: to what extent parents should accept their children for who they are, and to what extent they should help them becomes their best selves. Drawing on forty thousand pages of interview transcripts with more than three hundred families, Solomon mines the eloquence of ordinary people facing extreme challenges. Whether considering prenatal screening for genetic disorders, cochlear implants for the deaf, or gender reassignment surgery for transgender people, Solomon narrates a universal struggle toward compassion. Many families grow closer through caring for a challenging child; most discover supportive communities of others similarly affected; some are inspired to become advocates and activists, celebrating the very conditions they one feared. Woven into their courageous and affirming stories is Solomon's journey to accepting his own identity, which culminated in his midlife decision, influenced by this research, to become a parent." "Elegantly reported by a spectacularly original thinker, Far from the Tree explores themes of generosity, acceptance, and tolerance--all rooted in the insight that love can transcend every prejudice. This crucial and revelatory book expands our definition of what it is to be human." I really wanted to like this book, but it left me cold. I think I am simply not into identity politics, and I simply do not believe that love conquers all prejudices. The search for truth might.).

Thursday, February 21, 2013

CHIVINGTON'S MASSACRE AND THE POLITICS OF AMERICAN MEMORY

Ari Kelman, A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2013) ("Sand Creek, depicted as a massacre at the historic site, will buck the redemptive and reconciliation currents running through most national memorials, including those recalling the Civil War. The massacre emerged out of corruption and malfeasance, race hatred rather then uplift. Its history indicts characters typically cast as heroes in the American imagination--citizen soldiers, rugged pioneers, Union officials--suggesting a darker vision of the Civil War's causes, prosecution, and consequences. Westward expansion touched off the war that destroyed slavery, but also another war with the Plains Indians, a brutal conflict that lasted decades and left behind no simple lessons for federal commemorators hoping to bend public memory to nationalistic ends. With Americans still looking to the Civil War as an origin story, a way to understand who wee are, the NPS [National Park Service] and descendants must contemplate how to interpret events like Sand Creek, an irredeemable tragedy that casts doubts on the enduring notion that the United States enjoys a special destiny, that it is an exceptional nation among nations, favored by God. The question of whether visitors to the Sand Creek site are ready to broach such difficult topics, to reassess their homeland's character anf fate, remains unsettled." "For in the end, this story of memorializing Sand Creek suggests that history and memory are malleable, that even the land, despite its implied promise of permanence can change, and that the people of the United States are so various that they should not be expected to share a single take of a common past." Id. at 279. From the bookjacket: "In the early morning of November 29, 1864, with the fate of the Union still uncertain, part of the First Colorado and nearly all of the Third Colorado volunteer regiments, commanded by Colonel JOhn Chivington, surprised hundreds of Cheyenne and Arapaho people camped on the banks of Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado Territory. More than 150 Native Americans were slaughtered, the vast majority of them women, children, and the elderly, making it one of the most infamous cases of state-sponsored violence in U.S. history. A Misplace Massacre examines the ways in which generations of Americans have struggled to come to terms with the meaning of both the attack and its aftermath, most publicly at the 2007 opening of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site." One ways of reading A Misplaced Massacre is as, in part, a commentary on the ways in which misleading, if not false, assertions of public or national interests, and of what we now call "national security," are used to justify and rationalize questionable and wrongful conduct and policy on the part of the government and its officials. For example, in the heated debate as to whether to characterize Sand Creek as a "battle" or a "massacre," one cannot help but consider the heated contemporary debate as to whether certain form of interrogation do or do not constitute "torture" and whether the U.S. engages in and sanctions the use of torture. How will future generations of Americans remember--will they remember--My lai, Abu Ghraib, Gauntanamo Bay, and such? Or, for that matter, one cannot help but think about the shootings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School is being interpreted and co-opted for political (and commercial) use. The past may never really be past. Yet, history is never etched in stone.).

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

FATE TWISTS US ALL CROOKED

Jorge Amado, The Violent Land, translated from Portuguese by Samuel Putnam (New York; Avon, 1943, 1988) ("It's fate, woman, that decodes what is going to happen to folks. No one is born good or bad; it' fate that twists us all crooked." Id. at 14. "Today there was more stir and bustle than usual. Every morning workers would set out for the groves to gather cacao, while others trod the vats or the dried product in the troughs; and as they laboured they would sing their mournful songs: A Negro's life is a hard one/ Hard as hard can be. Laments that the wind carried away, the moanings of those who, form morning to night, beneath the blazing sun, had to toil in the grove: This night I want to die, / Far away in some hidden place; / Lashed by the hem of your garment, / I would die for your sweet face. The workers sang their mournful songs as they went to their labours, songs of servitude and of unrequited love." Id. at 188-189.).

Monday, February 18, 2013

READING HALL IV

Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything (London: Bloomsbury, 2006, 2007) ("For the longest time, against counsel of all who cared about me, I resisted even consulting a lawyer, because I considered even that to be an act of war. I wanted to be all Gandhi about this. I wanted to be all Nelson Mandela about this. Not realizing at the time that both Gandhi and Mandela were lawyers." Id. at 18. On the meaning of 'soul mate': "Your problem is you don't understand what that word means. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. Your problem is, you just can't let this one go. It's over.... Problem is, you can't accept that this relationship had a real short shelf life...." Id. at 157-158. "'Honey--Ray Charles could see your control issues.'" Id. at 159.).

Barbara Gowdy, The White Bone: A Novel (New York: Picador, 1998) (From the backcover: "The White Bone is a magnificent feat of imagination. Told from the perspective of a young elephant named Mud, it tracks the elephant herd's quest across the dry African plains in search of the White Bone, an object of mythic power that may lead them to safety and survival.").

Sara Gruen, Ape House: A Novel (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2010).

Sara Gruen, Flying Changes: A Novel (New York: HarperTorch, 2005) ("Do they really have to put anti-theft devices on the babies? Are there people really sick enough to steal sick babies? As we pass between flat white panels that look for all the world like devices at the doors of most clothing stores, I realize there must be." Id. at 294-295.).

Sara Gruen, Riding Lessons: A Novel (New York; Harper, 2004).

Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants: A Novel (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2006) (Sometimes I think that if I had to choose between an ear of corn or making love to a woman, I'd choose the corn. Not that I wouldn't love to have a final roll in the hay--I am a man yet, and some things never die--but the thought of those sweet kernels bursting between my teeth sure set my mouth to watering. It's fantasy, I know that. Neither will happen. I just like to weigh the options, as though I were standing in front of Solomon: a final roll in the hay or an ear of corn, What a wonderful dilemma. Sometimes I substitute an apple for corn." Id. at 8.).

Cyndi Lee, May I Be Happy: A Memoir of Love, Yoga, and Changing My Mind (New York: Dutton, 2013).

Sunday, February 17, 2013

BUDDHIST TANTRISM

Herbert V. Guenther, The Tantric View of Life (Boulder & London: Shambhala, 1976) ("It is my conviction that Tantrism in its Buddhist form is of the utmost importance for the inner life of man and so for the future of mankind. If the life of the spirit is to be invigorated, there must be a new vision and understanding, and there is hardly anything of such value as the study of the experiences and the teaching of the Buddhist Tantrics. For Tantrism is founded on practice and on an intimate personal experience of reality, of which traditional religions and philosophies have given merely an emotional or intellectual description, and for Tantrism reality is the ever[present task of man to be." Id at ix. "The fact that in the Western world the word Tantra is almost exclusively used with reference to a power- and sex-inflated esoteric teaching and not at all in its broader connotation of 'expanded treatise', is highly illuminating as far as Western thinking is concerned, but it does not throw any light on what Tantra means in itself." Id. at 1-2. "Buddhist Tantrism aims at developing man's cognitive capacities so that he may be, here and now, and may enact the harmony of sensuousness and spirituality ." Id at 2. "In Buddhism, Tantra means both 'integration' and 'continuity', as stated in the Guhyasamjatantra: ' "Tantra' is continuity, and this is three-fold: Ground, Actuality, and Inalienableness.'" Id. at 2. "It is in tune with the practical nature of Tantrism that it is centred on man, though not in the sense that 'man is everything', which is to depersonalize and to depreciate him as much as to subordinate him to a transcendental deity. The problem is not man's essence or nature, but what man can make of his life in this world so as to realize the supreme values that life affords. If there is any principle that dominates Trantric thought, it is so thoroughly a reality principle that nothing of subjectivism in contrast to an 'objective' reality remains. In the pursuit of Being there is a joyousness and directness which appears elsewhere to be found only in Zen, that is, the culmination of Sino-Japanese Buddhism, not the dilettantism of the retarded adolescents of the West, which in certain quarters at least is already on the way out. By way of comparison, Tantrism can be said to be the culmination of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism." Id. at 4-5. "There is of course a connection between what we may call aesthetic and moral awareness in Tantrism. The point is first to see the other in his or her Being, not through the distorting opinions that are the loss of Being-awareness, be this of oneself or of others. Thus again it is insight and knowledge that is of primary importance, and whether we like it or not because of vested interests, morality is still grounded in knowledge. I am morally responsible only for having done what I know I ought not to have done and for not having doing what I know I ought not have done. Just as opinion is the travesty of knowledge, so morality based on opinions with its dogmatism is a travesty of morality. Man not only is, he also acts, and in order to act according to his Being he has to attend to it...." Id at 31-32. "The alienated man is controlled by his emotions (klesa), the compulsive activity (karma) initiated by them, and the accompanying sense of frustration (duhkha) because whatever he does falls short of what he expects to be the outcome." Id. at 46. "The attempt to resolve the tension that exists between the feeling of frustration and the sense of fulfilment, between the fictions about man's being and the awareness of is Being, is termed 'the Way'. It is not an inert rod lying between two points, nor is it the favouring of one side in the dilemma that constitutes the human situation, but grounded in Being it is an exercise of regaining and staying with Being. In other words, it is the actualization of intrinsic awareness. Mind-as-such (semsnyid), together with or inseparable from value-being (chos-kyi-sku). Id.a t 57. "The less an individual is aware of his Being and the more he is concerned with what he believes himself to be, the more he comes under the spell of the fictions of his own making, and the more he becomes entangled in the so-called 'objective' world, where he believes that he can find what he wants and needs, the farther he is led away from himself. The dependence on the object, the woman, will not appear to him as dependence. By having intercourse with the woman and by becoming absorbed in the spell of the sex drive he may have the feeling that his insularity has been abolished and that he has been reunited with what was wanting in him. However, only an extremely fragile solution has been found. Plagued by frustration and haunted by anxiety, he is tempted into the vicious circle of seeking all the more in the objective world around him in order to quench the burning thirst and to still the gnawing hunger for total satisfaction." Id. at 68. "Since Tantrism aims at bringing man closer to his Being, it employs many methods of which the sex experience is only one. Because of this fact Tantrism is not a philosophy of sex. However due to the fact that it recognizes sex as a powerful means of bringing about a change in perspective, much misunderstanding has resulted. It is true that the sexual organs are a natural focus of both sensation and interest in erotic experience, but it is not so much the physiological aspect with which Tantrism is concerned, but the experience itself and the effect it has on the individual. Somehow, in the course of history, Western man has been led astray by his economic and biological model so that he can hardly think of sex as anything else by the gratification of a physiological need. Consequently the subtler distinction that Tantrism makes between the physiological side and its 'symbolical' meaning is overlooked and reduced to the 'nothing but'." Id. at 78. "The goal of Tantrism is to be, and the way to it may be called a process of self-actualization. However, it is extremely important not to be mistaken about the term 'self', which in a subjectivistic context is the excuse for any oddity that might pop into one's head. The self is never an idiosyncrasy, it in not even an entity, but a convention to point to the subject character of man as man, but not of man as this or that particular individual with these or those particular traits. If the goal is to be, and if we let 'self' stand for the way it feels to be, there is a hidden premise in this: the determining self (which makes us feel to be a self) must be a possible self. It must represent a set of authentic potentialities of the individual and must be a self whose realization lies within the realm of genuine possibility. This fact has constantly been forgotten in the course of the history of philosophy, and the solution of the problem of man's Being has been attempted by either belittling or aggrandizing man.... The godlike self is an image that man forms of himself as an 'idealized person' which is then identified with man's 'real self' and so becomes the perspective from which he views himself and discovers that his everyday life self, his phenomenal self, falls remarkably short of the imaginary and postulated qualities of the supposedly real self.... The impossible attempt to identify oneself with an impossibility only leads to self-deception, which immerses man deeper and deeper in his own fiction...." Id. at118-119.).

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Friday, February 15, 2013

THE ESSENCE OF (TIBETAN) BUDDHIST THOUGHT

Geshe Tashi Tsering, The Foundation of Buddhist Thought, Volume 1: The Four Noble Truths, edited by Gordon McDougall, and with a foreword by Lama Zopa Rinpoche (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2005) (The four noble truths are: "The noble truth of suffering"; "The noble truth of the origin of suffering"; "The noble truth of the cessation of suffering and the origin of suffering"; and "The noble truth of the path that leads to the cessation of suffering and the origin of suffering". Id. at 8. There can be no ethics--no sense of right or wrong--without taking others' feelings into account. Right from the beginning we should try to see that the feelings and rights of others are important and work toward serving not only our own welfare but also the welfare of all others." Id. at 26-27. "Our lives are subject to three polarities: [1] satisfaction and dissatisfaction [; 2] attraction and aversion [; and 3] freedom and lack of freedom." "It is important to remember that where there is attraction, there is also aversion; that dissatisfaction goes along with satisfaction; and that if we have freedom we also lack freedom.... The point is that everything within samsara ['samsara' (Skt.): cyclic existence, the state of constantly taking rebirth due to delusions and karma] also carries with it the basis for its opposite.... In or daily activities we are constantly trying to attain one of these goals and avoid its opposite, but this is a fundamentally impossible quest. By analyzing this situation, we will realize the suffering of change." Id. at 54-55. "You can't cheat the law of karma like you can a human law." Id. at 76. "The experience of pleasant or unpleasant things is not karma. Karma is the action that caused the experience. The imprint or propensity ... left on our mindstreams by that action has ripened due to causes and conditions coming together." Id at 77.).

Geshe Tashi Tsering, The Foundation of Buddhist Thought, Volume 2: Relative Truth, Ultimate Truth, edited by Gordon McDougall, and with a foreword by Lama Zopa Rinpoche (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2008) ("[S]tudy for the sake of knowledge alone is relatively meaningless. Knowledge per se is just facts accumulated in the way that we accumulate money or CDs. It's what we do with that knowledge that is the important thing. Furthermore, knowledge without either a spiritual or a therapeutic motivation can so easily lead to ego enhancement. There are wonderful, knowledgeable people in the world, but there are also many puffed-up ego-driven 'experts,' who tend to dictate and advise without a shred of compassion." Id. at 146.).

Geshe Tashi Tsering, The Foundation of Buddhist Thought, Volume 3: Buddhist Psychology, edited by Gordon McDougall, and with a foreword by Lama Zopa Rinpoche (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2006) ("Our world is is crisis now, a crisis caused largely by an ignorance of the real path to happiness. Look about and see if this isn't so, in your own life, in the lives of the people you know, and in the way the cultures of the world are developing. More and more, the spiritual is being set aside for the material pleasure; deep, lasting contentment for the quick buzz. This is due to an ignorance of the role the mind plays in creating happiness and suffering." "In our greed for possessions, we are eating the world we live in. Gandhi said that the world has enough for human need but not for human greed, and it is greed that we see manifesting so strongly in our lives today. Possibly there is no more greed today than in previous times, but with the increase in population and advances in technology, we now have the ability to destroy the delicate infrastructure of this planet. Wisdom has always been needed, but never more so than at this moment." "We have all the tools necessary for a great transformation, of our ourselves and of the world we live in. All we need is an enquiring and persevering mind. Mind is complex, but not unknowable. The subjects covered in this book deal with understanding the mind and using that understanding to transform it. As with any tool, whether you use it is entirely up to you." Id. at 136.).

Geshe Tashi Tsering, The Foundation of Buddhist Thought, Volume 4: The Awakening Mind, edited by Gordon McDougall, and with a foreword by Lama Zopa Rinpoche (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2008) ("Bodhichitta is the essence of all Buddhist practice. The word bodhichitta itself explains so much: bodhi is Sanskirt for 'awake' or 'awakening,' and chitta for 'mind.' As enlightenment is the state of being fully awakened, this precious mind of bodhichitta is the mind that is starting to become completely awakened in order to benefit all other beings. There are two aspects to this mind: the aspiration to benefit others and the wish to attain complete enlightenment in order to do that most skillfully." Id. at 1. "At every moment we are faced with choices, and we can choose to be selfish or selfless. In a tiny way we are imitating what the Buddha did when he was working toward his own enlightenment.... Our outlook is still too narrow to appreciate how vast the benefits of such a mind are, but what we have here and now is the opportunity to interact with other people either relatively selfishly or relatively selflessly. I'm sure that if you were to try this, your 'selfish' week would be one of misery and complications,, whereas your 'selfless' week would be full of happiness and spontaneous joy. If that is so, why don't we all start right now to turn our attitude around slowly? ..." Id. at 66.).

Geshe Tashi Tsering, The Foundation of Buddhist Thought, Volume 5: Emptiness, edited by Gordon McDougall, and with a foreword by Lama Zopa Rinpoche (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2009) ("There is one area, however, where the Buddha diverted drastically from the established thinking and was a true revolutionary. Even today to hold such a view is to be truly radical. That view is selflessness." Id. at 1. "All philosophies concern themselves with who we are. For the other Indian philosophies, this was atman, the soul or self, but the Buddha declared that the reality of the self was anatman, no-self. This concept of selflessness has been a key point of Buddhist philosophy since then, whether it is called anatman, no-self, selflessness, or emptiness." Id. at 2. "We currently perceive things as having intrinsic existence, where in fact they lack it. We see a chair and that seems to be that. It exists in and of itself, completely independent of causes and other factors, completely separate from the world in which it exists and the mind that apprehends it. This fundamental misreading of the nature of things and events is the cause of our suffering, because by means of this ignorance we are likely to develop attachment and aversion. As long as there is the slightest sense that things--especially our own sense of 'I'--exist independent and concretely, we will cling to that separateness. When something strengthens this sense of a real 'I,' we development attachment for it, and conversely, when something threatens it, we develop aversion to it. This is why a clear and deep understanding of emptiness is crucial if we are seriously seeking the complete elimination of all our suffering." Id. at 4. From the backcover: "Emptiness does not imply a nihilistic worldview, but rather the idea that a permanent entity does not exist in any single phenomenon or being. Everything exists interdependently within an immeasurable quantity of causes and conditions. An understanding of emptiness allows us to see the world as a realm of infinite possibility instead of a static system. Just like a table consists of wooden parts, and the wood is from a tree, and the tree depends on air, water, and soil, so is the world filled with a wondrous interdependence that extends to our own mind and awareness.").

Geshe Tashi Tsering, The Foundation of Buddhist Thought, Volume 6: Tantra, edited by Gordon McDougall, and with a foreword by Lama Zopa Rinpoche (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2012) ("Tibetan Buddhism is generally divided into three vehicles, or yanas: the individual liberation vehicle, the Hinayana; the universal liberation vehicle, the Mahayana; and the tantric vehicle, the Vajrayana. The practices and teaching of the first two vehicles, the Hinayana and Mahayana, are the foundation of Vajrayana practice. The main teachings of the Hinayana are the four noble truths, the thirty-seven aspects of enlightenment, and the twelve links of dependent origination. In the Mahayana, the main teachings are the practices of the altruistic awakened mind (bodhichtta) and the training of the bodhisattva, such as the six perceptions. It is crucial that anybody interested in practicing tantra prepares by first thoroughly practicing the path laid out in the other two vehicles." Id. at 1. "To attempt tantric practice without the foundation of the four noble truths or a well-developed sense of altruism would be at best futile and at worst disastrous. It is important to see how Vajrayana fits into the whole of Buddhism so you don;t make the mistake of seeing it as a separate and unconnected practice...." Id at 2. "Furthermore, it is important to note that Buddhist Vajrayana tantra is quite different from the tantra practiced in non-Buddhist Indian traditions. On the surface there are many similarities, but as you will see, Buddhist tantric practices are imbued with the realizations of the other two vehicles, making it quite distinct." Id. at 2.).

Thursday, February 14, 2013

PRACTICE THE PHILOSOPHY OF KINDESS

Fred Eppsteiner, ed., The Path of Compassion: Writings on Socially Engaged Buddhism (A Buddhist Peace Fellowship Book), rev'd 2d. ed. (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1985, 1988) (Fred Eppsteiner: "Increasingly over the past three decades, Americans have shown an interest in Buddhism. [] The practice of meditation , which, seemed quite mysterious just 25 years ago, is now widely accepted as a legitimate means to harmonious living." "Yet, despite this maturation and the acceptance of Buddhism and meditation even in the mainstream of society, our understanding of 'the Way' is still incomplete. No one would disagree that the 'inner' teachings and practices which lead to self-transformation and emancipation are at the core of Buddhism. But if the insights and awareness these practices help develop are not applied throughout daily life--to our work, our relationships, and our responses to crises near at hand and around the globe--then 'selflessnes' is a euphemism for selfishness, and detachment an excuse for indifference." Id. at ix. Kenneth Kraft: "The term 'engaged Buddhism' refers to [the] of active involvement by Buddhists in society and its problems." Id. at xii. "'Compassion' is a pleasant-sounding word, newly fashionable in, American campaign rhetoric. As a political buzzword, it implies a rejection of attitudes or policies associated with recent constraints on social services. The compassion valued by Buddhists is something different--a deep sense of oneness with all beings, a spontaneous impulse born of suffering. [] In simple terms, 'The philosophy of kindness'" Id. at xvii-xviii. Tenzin Gyatso, The XIVth Dala Lama: "[A]lthough attempting to bring about peace through internal transformation is difficult, it is the only way to achieve a lasting world peace." Id. at 7. "If you try to subdue your selfish motives--anger, and so forth--and develop more kindness, more compassion for others, ultimately you will benefit more than you would otherwise, So sometimes I say that the wise selfish person should practice this way. Foolish selfish persons always think of themselves, and the result are negative. But a wise, selfish person thinks of others, helps others as much as he or she can, and receives good results." "This is my religion. There is no need for complicated philosophies, not even for temples. Our brain, our own heart is our temple. The philosophy of kindness." Id. at 8. Jack Kornfield: "The forces of injustice in the world loom so huge, and sometimes we feel so tiny. How are we to have an impact? I will leave you with the words of don Jose in Castaneda's Tales of Power: 'Only if one loves this earth with unbending passion can one release one's sadness. A warrior is always joyful because his love is unalterable and his beloved, the earth, bestows upon him inconceivable gifts....Only the love for this splendorous being can give freedom to a warrior's spirit; and freedom is joy., efficiency, and abandon in the face of any odds.'" Walpola Rahula: "Buddhism aims at creating a society where the ruinous struggle for power is renounced; where calm and peace prevail away from conquest and defeat; where the persecution of the innocent is vehemently denounced; where one who conquers oneself is more respected than those who conquer millions by military and economic warfare; where hated is conquered by kindness, and evil by goodness; where enmity, jealously, ill-will and greed do not infect men's minds; where compassion is the driving for of action; where all, including the least of living things, are treated with fairness, consideration and love; where life in peace and harmony, in a world of material contentment is directed towards the highest and noblest aim, the realization of the Ultimate Truth, Nirvana." Id. at 109.).