WHO IS ON THE CROSS TODAY?

Truman Nelson, The Truman Nelson Reader, edited by William J. Shafer (Amherst: U. of Massachusetts Press, 1989) ("I've almost made up my mind to cast my lot with the Negroes. They're the ones that are living an inch at a time. They're not worried about another ten cents a day but about how to get out from under the lash. They're moving, rebelling, running away from their bondage, flaunting their misery in the faces of the smug. We call factory workers hands. The Negroes have no hands, they are in chains. Our hands can fight, carry a gun, vote even if they want to. I've got more respect for the black people. Unfortunately it is written on the iron leaf of fate that progress comes only by revolutions, not gradually, and comes only in great convulsions and not from patient plodding. If you want  a spot to stand on, to move the earth, find the man who is being crucified, who is on the cross today." Id. at vii (Theodore Parker, to George Ripley, in The Passion by the Brook). Last week the United States Supreme Court, in separate 5-4 decisions (Associate Justice Kennedy being the swing vote), struck down the (pro-racial minority) Voting Right Act and the (the anti-gay and lesbian) Defense of Marriage Act. Also, this week the United States Senate passed an Immigration reform bill which is forecasted as unlikely to get through the House of Representatives. Who is on the cross today?).

YOGA AND WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT

Why does so much of the contemporary yoga literature, especially that written by women (e.g., Ana Forrest), just sound like a women's empowerment screed? I am a supporter of women's empowerment. Not that women need my support. But is women's empowerment what much of contemporary yoga is about now? Is contemporary yoga, a least in the West where yoga has become primarily a business (e.g., all that designer yoga apparel, all that advertisement in yoga journals), exploiting women's insecurities and vulnerabilities?  It is all so superficial.  So chatty. So social.

I need to find a traditional yoga teacher, one who will help me focus on yoga--all the limbs of yoga. I need to find a yoga studio where the instructors and students get it. Where the yoga is sacred, and a search for the divine; where the studio, the yoga mat, the yoga practice, etc., are sacred places and time. A place where the substantive hard work of yoga is embraced.

Ah, if only I could find a true and honest teacher!

SHIN BUDDHISM, OR THE SHIN SCHOOL OF PURE LAND BUDDHISM

Luis O. Gomez, trans., The Land of Bliss: The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless Light: Sanskrit and Chinese Version of the Sukhavativyuha Sutras (Honolulu: U. of Hawai'i Press; & Kyoyo: Jigashi Honganji Shinshu Otani-ha, 1996).

Hiroyuki Itsuki, Tariki: Embracing Despair, Discovering Peace, translated from the Japanese by Joseph Robert (Tokyo & New York: Kodansha, 2001) ("Tariki is the Japanese word for Other Power." Id. at xvi. "Tariki stands in contrast to 'Self-Power,' or jiriki." Id. at xvi. "The fact is, life is not just a pleasurable experience. Although the present generation has come to expect that every person has some sort of inalienable right to a pleasant, healthy, happy life, I believe that this expectation is not only a delusion but a grave error." Id. at 6. "What has changed over the ages is that the human race has become a parasite on the Earth and on nature. Our numbers have increased dramatically; we have become a destructive force on the planet. The power of this force means that we no longer fear the powers of nature or the supernatural, but, with the advance of science, have come to think of ourselves as the rulers of the entire universe." Id. at 7-8. "Truly enlightened thinking is not about being lucky, or privileged, or content with one's lot in life. Truly enlightened thinking only takes place when we have stared into the bottomless possibilities of human suffering and discovered light. The only way to reach that point is to descend to the ultimate limit of negative thinking.... Hell is where we live now, hell is the prison of suffering that defines our existence." Id. at 22. "We are all travelers who, from our first wail at birth, are making a journey, one step at a time, toward death. Knowing life's end, how meaningless it is to compare oneself to others, and harboring feelings of either inferiority or superiority." "Although we know what fate awaits us, we do not succumb to despair but dare to live." "Given the circumstances, what a great and important feat that is!" Id. at 218.).

Shinran, Tannisho: A Shin Buddhist Classic, translated by Taitetsu Unno (Honolulu: Buddhist Study Center Press, 1996) ("The saying of nembutsu [i.e., "recitation of the Name as the beckoning call from Amida Buddha"] is neither a religious practice nor a good act. Since it is practiced without any calculation, it is 'non-practice.' Since it is also not a good created by my calculation, it is 'non-good.' Since it is nothing but Other Power [i.e. "The working of Amida's Primal Vow beyond the normal categories of subject and object., manifesting compassion which is the dynamic manifestation of 'sunyate (emptiness).], completely free of self-power [i.e., "The calculative mind of unenlightened beings who mistakenly believe in their ability to achieve supreme enlightenment. Relying on this delusion, the more they strive on the path, the more they sink into samsara."], it is neither a religious practice nor a good act on the part of the practicer." Id. at 11.).

Taitetsu Unno, River of Fire, River of Water: An Introduction to The Pure Land Tradition of Shin Buddhism (New York: Doubleday, 1998) ("Conventional thinking is characterized by all kinds of duality: self and other, right and wrong, good and bad, like and dislike, beautiful and ugly, birth and death, and so on. These conceptual distinctions are necessary and useful, but they are all relative viewpoints made from a limited perspective. As long as we don't mistake these words for a concrete, unmovable reality, there is no problem. But we seem to always confuse the two, infusing words with powerful emotions and grasping them as substantial. We thus create our world of delusion, full of words and concepts, existing completely separate from reality. We then cone to accept conflict, competition, jealousy, greed, acquisitiveness, and aggression as the norm of life." Id. at 125. "In Buddhism hell does not exist as a place; it is created by each individual's thought, speech, and action. Hell is the consequence of karmic life for which each person alone is accountable. No one else should be blamed for one's past history, present circumstances, or future happenings. The law of karma is the ultimate form of personal responsibility, and its validity is to be tested through rigorous self-examination and applied to one's own existential predicament. The principle of karma should never be applied to others, as found in such thoughtless expressions as 'That's his karma,' when another person experiences misfortune." Id. at 158-159. My own karma, for which I alone am responsible, is problematic at the very least. "The goal of the Buddhist path is to awaken to the true and real life that flows within us. But this life is inseparable from the physical container. Thus, when the two are fully integrated through self-cultivation and religious practice, both mind and body become supple, pliant, and open. This is contrasted to ordinary thinking that divides mind and body, creating an imbalance between the two, resulting in a rigid mind and a tense body. The current fashion for Yoga exercise may contribute to a healthy body, but its true significance is realized only when it is pursued as part of an integrated Hindu spiritual practice." Id. at. 189. I am not sure Yoga's significance requires a integrated Hindu spiritual practice specifically. It does, I think, require some sort of integrated spiritual practice. However, the norm in American yoga studios is pretty much void of the spiritual. Instead, yoga in American is often treated as just another form of consumer good or service; that is, as an extension of American materialism. "Although I myself am incapable of truly loving another person, many people love me--many times in ways unknown to me. Although I fail to appreciate others' concern for me, they truly sustain my life. But when I live namu-amida-butsu, I am made to appreciate others and want to thank them--all this by virtue of true and real life." Id. at 194. "But, I said, there is something that we can all do today, regardless of where we come from. And that is to ask ourselves: Have I always been free of bigotry and injustice? Have I always treated others, whether individuals or groups with respect? Have I always been free of insensitivity against those who are not like us? Have I never exploited others for my own selfish gains? Have I spoken out for equal treatment of all peoples, regardless of color, creed, gender, sexual orientation, age, class?" Id. at 201.).

Taitetsu Unno, Shin Buddhism: Bits of Rubble Turn into Gold (New York: Doubleday, 2002) ("Several points are to be noted.... First, the relative nature of good and evil is contrasted to good and evil as seen from the standpoint of the Tathagata or Buddha. That is, the human perspective on good and evil is limited, incomplete, and flawed, negating any absolute notions of good and evil. Second, the statement, 'all things are empty and vain,' refers to the passing things of the world, but it also rejects our reliance on language as the final arbiter of good and evil. Words are useful but arbitrary, essential in human interaction but possibly misleading. In contrast, the nembutsu is 'true, real, and sincere,' because it enables us to see our ego-self in operation, its falsity and deceptions in the light of boundless compassion. At the same time, it endows us with humility and gratitude. Third, everything on the horizontal plane of life is critically evaluated from the vertical dimension. From this vantage point we see that the highest ethical good may contain a hidden, self-serving agenda, unknown even to the person involved. Pure good comes from an ethical act arising from living the nembutsu." Id. at 167-168.).

PAULDU CHAILLU: "A PERFECTLY FREE AND AUTONOMOUS INDIVIDUAL"

Monte Reel, Between Man and Beast: An Unlikely Explorer, the Evolution Debates, and the African Adventure that Took The Victorian World by Storm (New York: Doubleday, 2013) ("This is where Paul chose to reside: safe within a mythology of his own making..." "He could have owned up to his past.... For his entire life, he would keep afloat all the fictions that had made his identity impossible to pin down. He didn't want to be African, or French, or American, or British, or a naturalist, or a showman, or a big-game hunter, or an anthropologist, or a geographical explorer. He clearly wanted to dance between all of them without getting trapped under any one label." "He did not, by any stretch of the imagination, conform to the twenty-first-century ideal of a man who embraces his background and refuses to surrender to the unjust biases against his people; instead, he chose to live in a self-created universe where racial boundaries simply didn't apply to him. Within that mythology, the ultimate objective--the golden ring--was to become a perfectly free and autonomous individual. Freedom of that kind allowed a person to belong everywhere, which is another way of saying that he belonged nowhere in particular." Id. at 257.).

THE SUTRAS OF THE PERFECT WISDOM--PRAJNAPARAMITA

Thomas Cleary, ed. & trans., Zen and the Art of Insight (Shambhala Dragon Edition) (Boston & London: Shambhala, 1999) ("'How do you know?' What does this mean...to you? Does it mean 'How do you know?' or 'How do you know?' Or does it mean 'How do you know?'" Id. at vii. "If we take the time to ask ourselves, 'How do you know?'--as a retort, as a question, as a challenge--we may get at the pivot of our relationships with our own thoughts and feelings, with our fellow human beings, and with the world at large. Taken for what it can yield in these roles, the question contains within it a challenge to the root of all ignorance and complacency." Id. at vii. "The four points of mindfulness are a contemplative exercise for detaching fixations of attention; they consist of mindfulness of the body as impure, mindfulness of sensation as irritating, mindfulness of the inconstancy of mind, and mindfulness of phenomena as having no inherent identity." Id. at 31. "'When I search for my mind, I cannot find it.'" Id. at 83. "You can tell you're not applying insight when you think you are practicing it or when you think your thoughts are insights." Id. at 137. "A Zen proverb says, 'Even though gold dust is precious, when stuck in the eyes it obstructs vision.'" Id. at 148.).

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Understanding Heart: Commentaries on the Prajnaparmita Heart Sutra, edited by Peter Levitt (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1988) ("Penetration means to enter something, not just to stand outside it. When we want to understand something, we cannot just stand outside and observe it. We have to enter deeply into it and be one with it in order to really understand. If we want to understand a person, we have to feel their feelings, suffer their sufferings, and enjoy their joy. Penetration is an excellent word. The  word 'comprehend' is is made up of the Latin root com, which means 'together in mind,' and prehendre, which means 'to grasp it or pick it up.' To comprehend something means to pick it up and be one with it. There is no other way to understand something." Id. at 11.).

 Unknown, The Heart Sutra: The Womb of Buddhas, Translation from the Sanskrit and Commentary by Red Pine (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2004) ("... live without walls of the mind ..." Id. at 3).

WERE ONLY MORE HUMANS AS INTELLIGENT AND HUMAN AS MY PUP CHARLIE

DAININ KATAGIRI

Dainin Katagiri, Each Moment Is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time, edited by Andrea Martin (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2008) ("As long as demons exist in this world, they have their own reasons to exist. That reason is completely beyond our human speculation, but demons exists in Buddha's world. So we have to find the realm of buddhas within the realm of demons. In other words, in the realm of pain and suffering, we have to find the realm of peace and harmony. This is religious practice. You cannot find any peace by escaping from human pain and suffering; you have to find peace and harmony right in the midst of human pain. That is the purpose of the spiritual life." "The important point is: don't react quickly to pain and suffering with hatred or anger, because that is the cause of human troubles. Deal with demons immediately, but try to deal with them with a calm and peaceful mind, not with hatred or anger. If you become angry, as soon as possible make your mind calm, Be kind. Be compassionate. That is the practice of patience. If you do that, very naturally demons subdue themselves." Id. at 60-61.).

Dainin Katagiri, Returning to Silence: Zen Practice in Daily Life, edited by Yuko Conniff & Willa Hathaway (Shambhala Dragon Edition) (Boston: Shambhala, 1988) ("Usually we only want to be near desirable people. When we see an undesirable person, we always want to keep away from him. It is natural, but, on the other hand, sometimes we have to come closer to that person. Then we really appreciate him. We cannot always keep our distance from the undesirable person and we cannot always be near the desirable person. So, is the place where have to stand up a certain place in which we can always be close to the desirable person? Is this the place to stand up in order to see the total picture in equality? No. Should we keep away from the undesirable person? This is not our place either. So, is the place where we have to stand up is the total picture where we can see many things always interchanging. Nevertheless, this place is very stable, steadfast, immovable. If you don't understand, there is a way to experience this. You must be magnanimous, generous, kind  compassionate, and you must be joy. This joy does not mean pleasure; this joy comes form the bottom of your heart naturally. If you are generous, even for a moment, joy comes yo from the bottom of your heart. Joy means appreciation, gratitude. Even though you don't see that appreciation or gratitude, if you become generous or magnanimous in whatever situation you may be, joy, appreciation and gratitude come up form the ground, just like spring water, because you are a great being, because you are buddha. That is to know, to accept and to realize. That is the meaning of to realize the truth that all being are buddhas." Id. at 70. "Buddhist percepts are difficult to understand. But it's not necessary to try to understand. Just receive them and form a habit of living them as a vow. It is important to have the guidance of Buddha's teaching, of the ancestors and of living teachers, all walking hand in hand with us, because we don't know how to practice, how to maintain the habit of a way of living based on Buddha's Way." "The main purpose of Buddhism is to form the habit of practice as a vow forever. This is just taking a journey in the universe, day by day, step by step. It is like walking in a mist. We don't know what the mist is, we don't know where we are walking or why; all we have to do is just walk. This is Buddha's practice." Id. at 94-95.).

Dainin Katagiri, You Have to Say Something: Manifesting Zen Insight, edited by Steve Hagen (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2000) ("If you take care of your life--knowing that it is both life and death and that it is backed by activity--you will see that your life is surrounded and supported by many beings.... If you take care of your life properly, as life and death, it will naturally involve all beings. Then once your life includes all being, you can live with them in peace and harmony." "We usually believe that our problems are 'out there': in society, in nature, in other people. But our problem is with us. It's ego. Consciously or unconsciously, we attempt to take care of our life by satisfying our ego's desires. We even sit zazen to satisfy our egoistic desires. But sooner or later we must ask ourselves why we're sitting zazen. Is it really to save all sentient beings? It is a beautiful idea, but I don't think that is why most people do it. Most of us sit to save ourselves. This is why we have difficulty taking care of the sangha. We are just concerned for ourselves. For most people, it is the self that comes first." Id. at 117. "You cannot understand the world just in terms of your own views. You must accept the world as a whole--that is, you must be open to what you don't understand as well as what you do understand. In this way, you will become generous and magnanimous, and you will be able to receive what the universe has to teach." Id. at 142-143.).

Dosho Port, Keep Me In Your Heart A While: The Haunting Zen of Dainin Katagiri (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2008).

IF YOU ARE GOING TO CALL SOMEONE AN "ASSHOLE" ...

then be the type of person who has the courage to call someone an "asshole" to his or her* face. Don't be the sniffling, wimpy, cowardly person who calls someone an "asshole" under his breath, or yells it from his car, for after he has distanced himself far enough from the person to negate the possibility of a physical response. Have the courage of your convictions!

True, of course, often times the assholes in our lives have some sort of social power over us. They are, for example, our employers, managers, teachers, parents, the police, our customers, some mindless bureaucrats, and so on. In that context, discretion is perhaps the better part of valor. So I suggest that one master the art of language such that one may call a person an asshole without him or her being really sure whether you have or not. Read your Shakespeare. Old William had his characters call many another an asshole, yet the recipients were often unsure and well as the readers/audiences. 

Needless to say, one should try to reduce the instances where oneself is the asshole. And sometimes, just sometimes, calling another person an asshole is itself assholely behavior. Be careful. Be selective. Be circumspect. Don't become what you hate.

* Until recently, I never thought of women as asshole material. But now as gender lines have been blurred, and women have become more masculine (and men more feminine), more and more women are behaving like asshole (as more men are acting like bitches).

MAHAYANA

Garma C. C. Chang, gen. ed., A Treasury of Mahayana Sutras: Selections form the Maharatnakuta Sutra, translated from the Chinese by The Buddhist Association of the United States (University Park & London: Penn. State U. Press, 1983).

Lobsang Gyatso, Bodhicitta: Cultivating the Compassionate Mind of Enlightenment, translated by Sherab Gyatso (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1997) ("Whatever suffering there is in the world / Arises from desire for one's own personal happiness." Id. at 63.).

Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, The Lankavatara Sutra: A Mahayana Text (Buddhist Tradition Series, Volume 40), translated from the Original Sanskirt by Daisetz Teirtaro Suzuki (Delhi: Montilal Banarsidass, 1932, 2009) (From the bookjacket: "[T]he world is like s mirage. The mind has poured out its impression of externals. To get liberated one must stop this outpouring. An advanced individual understands and comes to realize the self nature of the world which is really so.").

Robert A. F. Thurman, translator, The Holy Teachings of Vimalakirti: A Mahayana Scripture (University Park: PA: Penn. State U. Press, 1976) ("[H]ow could there be a teaching in regard to such a Dharma? [E]ven the expression 'to teach the Dharma' is presumptuous, and those who listen to it listen to presumption. [W]here there are no presumptuous words, there is no teacher of the Dharma, no one to listen, and no one to understand. It is as if an illusory person were to teach the Dharma to illusory people." Id. at 25. "Renunciation is itself the very absence of virtues and benefits." Id. at 31-32. "[W]henever you attain Buddhahood, which is the perfection of enlightenment, at the same time all living beings will also attain Buddhahood. Why? Enlightenment consists of the realization of all living beings. [A[t] the moment when you attain ultimate liberation, all living beings will also attain ultimate liberation." Id. at 34. "To live by indulging the mind is proper for fools and to live in control of the mind is proper for the disciples. Therefore, the bodhisattva should live neither in control nor in indulgence of his mind. Not living in either of the two extremes is the domain of the bodhisattva." Id. at 47. "[H]e who is interested in the Dharma is not interested in recognizing suffering, abandoning its origination, realizing its cessation, or practicing the path. Why? The Dharma is ultimately without formulation and without verbalization. Who verbalizes: 'Suffering should be recognized, origination should be eliminated, cessation should be realized, the path should be practiced,' is not interested in the Dharma but is interested in verbalization." Id. at 50. "[I[f you are interested in the Dharma, you should take no interest in anything." Id. at 51. "[W]ithout going out into the great ocean, it is impossible to find precious, priceless pearls. Likewise, without going into the ocean of passion, it is impossible to obtain the mind of  omniscience.." Id. at 66.).

KATSUKI SEKIDA

Katsuki Sekida, A Guide to Zen: Lessons from a Modern Master, edited by Marc Allen (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2003) (This is a condensed edition of Zen Training: Methods and Philosophy.).

Katsuki Sekida, Zen Training: Methods and Philosophy, edited, with an introduction, by A. V Grimstone (New York Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1985) ("If you let go your hold on a cliff, you will fall down and lose your life, but in spiritual affairs you should really do this. You must once cast away what consciousness has accumulated since childhood, that is, your illusory ego. In absolute samadhi it is rather easy to let go your hold, but in the world of active life, to let go the hold on one's ego is difficult. You tell yourself not to hate others, to quench the heat of anger, to get free from temptation, to kill the desire for fame, power, vainglory, and so forth, but you cannot follow your own precepts. You cannot even take off the beard, much less eyes, nose, mouth and face itself. But a truly enlightened man has no face when he speaks, negotiates, and discusses the serious problems of life. He has nothing to hold to, in the midst of the busiest activity of consciousness. In the midst of the burning flames of life he keeps his mind as serene and shining as the lotus flower in the fire." Id. at 107.).

Katski Sekida, Two Zen Classics: Mumonkan and Hekiganroku, translated with commentaries by Katuski Sekida, edited and introduced by A. V. Grimstone (New York & Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1977) ("A prudent mind never fails to reflect upon its faults." Id. at 95. "The great emancipation. The man who is emancipated from his own passions and desires attains command of his own mind. Hakuin Zenji says, 'Young men, if you do not want to die, die now; if you die once, you will never die again.' In other words, if you want to live, die now and you will live forever. And you will enjoy true freedom of mind. This is the great emancipation." Id. at 285.).

CULTURE IS NOT FATE: THE INDEPENDENT IN CONTRAST TO THE INTERDEPENDENT

Gish Jen, Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Interdependent Self (The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization, 2012) (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2013) ("A note about terminology: I have not used the word 'independent' as it is popularly used, to mean self-sufficient or free from outside control; neither have I used the word 'interdependent' to mean interconnected or mutually dependent. Rather I have used these words as cross-cultural psychologists do, as a way of describing two very different models of self-construal. The first--the 'independent,' individualistic self--stresses uniqueness, defines itself via inherent attribute such as its traits, abilities, values, and preferences, and tends to see things in isolation. The second--the 'interdependent,' collectivist self--stresses commonality, defines itself via its place, roles, loyalties, and duties, and tend to see things in context. Naturally, between these two very different self-construals lies a continuum along which most people are located, and along which they move, too, over the course of their lives or even over the course of a moment. Culture is not fate; it only offers templates, which individual can finally accept, reject, or modify, and do." Id. at 6-7. Unfortunately, I think, most of us do think cultural is fate. And, as a consequence, we lock ourselves into our culture or subculture, rarely exploring beyond it. We create, in the words of Doris Lessing, prison in which we choose to live. "For me, the most disconcerting of the Massey Lectures to date may well have been Lawrence Levine's Highbrow/Lowbrow, which showed the founding of such cherished institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Art in Boston to have been a reaction against the immigrant hordes. So, too it seems, was the emergence of cultural hierarchy in America--the distinction between highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow that, for all its postmodern blurring, continues a cornerstone of art-making today. The late nineteenth-century drive for political order was paralleled, Levine demonstrates, by a drive for cultural order--and this is hardly the only time artistic felicities have turned out complicities. Were we writers to take to heart the reams of theory that have in recent decades shone such a hard light on our best intentions, not to say our best lines, we writers would all have to put our computers up for sale." "That we don't is testimony, I think, to just how powerfully embedded individualism is in our culture, and how much the novel is tied into that, starting with its modus operandi--which, for all its old confronting of society is, in its own way, determinedly oblique. In keeping with the dominant Western view of 'art-art' as proudly, rightly, and essentially useless... That things--even literature--should be useful is a given for most Chinese." Id. at 93-95.).

WOMEN TAKNG THE LEAD

Sheryl Sandberg, with Nell Scovell, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (New York: Knopf, 2013) ("Less than six months after I started at Facebook, Mark and I sat down for my first formal review. One of the things he told me was that my desire to be liked by everyone would hold me back. He said that when you want to change things, you can't please everyone. If you do please everyone, you aren't making enough progress, Mark was right." Id. at 51. "Other research suggests that once a woman achieves success, particularly in a gender-biased context, her capacity to see gender discrimination is reduced." "It's heartbreaking to think about one woman holding another back. As former secretary of state Madeleine Albright once said, 'There's a special place in hell for women who don't help other women.' And the consequences extend beyond individual pain. Women's negative views of female coworkers are often seen as an objective assessment--more credible than the views of men. When women voice gender bias, they legitimize it. Obviously, a negative attitude cannot be gender based if it comes from another woman, right? Wrong. Often without realizing it, women internalize disparaging cultural attitudes and then echo them back. As a result, women are not just victims of sexism, they can also be perpetrators." Id. at 163-164.).

SOME READINGS IN HISTORY AND POLITICS OF INDIA

Assa Doron & Robin Jeffrey, The Great Indian Phone Book: How Cheap Cell Phone Changes Business, Politics, and Daily Life (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2013) ("India is both unique and exemplary. Its diversity is unmatched: its caste system has no equivalents for endurance, complexity and malleability; and its experiments with democracy, development and federal government provide unrivalled examples of the potential and the limitations of human endeavour since the industrial revolution. Hierarchy in India was more refined and more deeply embedded in daily life than anywhere else, The lower your status, the less you were entitled to know, to ask and to travel. To be sure, such strictures have changed overtime, faced intense challenge, especially over the last hundred years and were outlawed by the constitution of independent India. But they endure: India remains a caste-conscious society. Mobile phones undermine these strictures. The poor, low-status boatman on the Ganga can conceivably ring India's equivalent of Carlos Slim ["The richest man in the world was said to be Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecom tycoon, chairman of Telmex." Id. at 3.] and can certainly call his friends and contacts and even a town councillor, senior official or Member of Parliament. Those at the top are likely of course to have minions deputed to answer official cell phones. But even if the person who is officially responsible does not answer, a citizen can make other calls: to a media outlet, an opposition party representative, an NGO or an influential relative. Importantly too, 'big people' have several phones, among them their very personal one, which they themselves answer.... In the past, such connectivity was possible for only very few people, and as late as 2000, these connections would have been impossible for most Indians. By plugging a large number of previously unconnected people into a system of interactive communication, mobile phones have inaugurated a host of disruptive possibilities." Id. at 3-4. From the bookjacket: "The Great Indian Phone Book is a rigorously researched, multidimensional tale of what can happen when a powerful and readily available technology is place in the hands of a large, still predominately poor population.").

Thomas Bloom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1999) (From the backcover: "The rise of strong nationalist and religious movements in postcolonial and newly democratic countries alarms many Western observers. In The Saffron Wave, Thomas Hansen turns our attention to recent events n the world's largest democracy., India. Here he analyzes Indian receptivity to the right-wind Hindu nationalist party and its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which claims to create a polity based on ;ancient' Hindu culture. Rather than interpreting Hindu nationalism as a mainly religious phenomenon, or a strictly political movement, Hansen places the BJP within the context of the larger transformations of democratic governance in India." Hansen demonstrates that democratic transformation has enable such developments as political mobilization among the lower castes and civil protections for religious minorities. Against this backdrop, the Hindu nationalist movement has successfully articulated the anxieties and desires of the large and amorphous Indian middle class. A form of conservative populism, the movement has attracted not only privileged groups fearing encroachment on their dominant positions but also 'plebeian' and impoverished groups seeking recognition around a majoritarian rhetoric of cultural pride, order, and national strength. Combining political theory, ethnographic material, and sensitivity to colonial and postcolonial history, The Saffron Wave offer fresh insights into Indian politics and, by focusing on the links between democracy and ethnic majoritarianism, advances our understanding of democracy in the postcolonial world.").

Thomas Blom Hansen, Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2001) (From the backcover: "When Bombay changed its to Mumbai in 1995, it was the culmination of a long process that transformed India's primary symbol of modernity and cultural diversity into a site of intense ethnic conflict and violent nationalism. Wages of Violence is a startling account of how the city's atmosphere, dominated public languages, and power structures have changed since the 1960s." "The book centers on how Shiv Sena, a militant Hindu movement, has advanced a new, 'plebeian' political culture and has undermined democratic rule in India's premier city. Drawing on a large body of archival material and conversations with people from all walks of life, Thomas Blom Hansen paints a vivid picture of this dynamic and violent movement." "Challenging conventional views of recent trends in Indian politics, Hansen shows that the xenophobic public culture of today's Mumbai has deep roots in the region's history and its contested identities. We are also given reveling insights into the city's Muslim communities and the authorities' understanding and control of the ethno-religious subcultures in the city. Hansen argues cogently that Shiv Sena's success represents the violent possibilities of the 'vernacularization' of democracy in India. Unfolding at a juncture where the globalization of India's economy is having a deepening impact on the live of ordinary people, this is a story that resonates with the implications of urban growth in both India and beyond.").

Isabel Hofmeyr, Gandhi's Printing Press: Experiments in Slow Reading (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2013) ("Gandhi ... sought to slow down reading and textual production more generally. He favored hand printing and encouraged a style of reading that was patient, that paused rather than rushed ahead. He interspersed news reports with philosophical  extracts, and encouraged readers to contemplate what they read rather than to hurtle forward. In effect, he experimented with an anti-commodity, copyright-free, slow-motion newspaper." "In exploring these ideas, Gandhi worked with two obvious and everyday truths, namely, that serious reading can only be done at the pace of the human body and that each reader must read on his or her own behalf. If we are to read thoughtfully, we cannot speed up the pace at which we read and cannot outsource the activity to someone else. In a Gandhian world such slow reading became one way of pausing industrial speed, and in so doing it created small moments of intellectual Independence. Reading might happen within the world of industrialized time but did not need to be entirely driven by its logic. This focus on bodily rhythm as a way of interrupting industrial tempos became central to Gandhi's larger and world-famous critiques of modernity that questioned the equation of speed with efficiency and technology with progress." Id. at 4.).

Niraja Gopal Jayal, Citizenship and Its Discontents: An Indian History (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2013) ("It is in cosmopolitanism that we encounter not just civic belonging but a globalized moral solidarity which, drawing inspiration from Kant, exhorts every individual to see herself as a citizen of the world, as belonging to a moral community of human beings that transcends national borders. Cosmopolitan thinkers make a case for two types of cosmopolitan citizenship--cosmopolitanism about culture and cosmopolitan about justice. Cosmopolitan about culture would have citizens see themselves as constituted not by the particular cultures or communities into which they were born but forming their identities and developing their capacities to flourish by drawing upon cultural resources from almost anywhere. Cosmopolitanism of justice, similarly, encourages individuals to acknowledge that norms of justice are not restricted to their fellow members of the particular societies to which they happen to belong, but must govern the relations of all individuals to each other. Those norms 'accrue to individuals as moral and legal persons in a worldwide civil society.' This is justified at least partially by recourse to the historical phenomena of colonialism, slavery, and genocide to which the contemporary affluence of the global North and the poverty of the global South are attributed." Id. at 7-8 (citations omitted). From the bookjacket: "Breaking new ground in scholarship, Niraja Jayal write the first history of citizenship in the largest democracy in the world--India. Unlike the mature democracies of the west, India began as a true republic of equals with a complex architecture of citizenship rights that was sensitive to the many hierarchies of Indian society. In this provocative biography of the defining aspirations of modern India, Jayal shows how the progressive civic ideals embodied in the constitution have been challenged by exclusions based on social and economic inequality, and sometimes also, paradoxically, undermined by its own policies of inclusion." "Citizenship and Its Discontents explores a century of contestations over citizenship from the colonial period to the present, analyzing evolving conceptions of citizenship as legal status, as rights, and as identity. The early optimism that a new India could be fashioned out of an unequal and diverse society led to a formally inclusive legal membership, an impulse to social and economic rights, and group-differentiated citizenship. Today, these policies to create a civic community of equals are losing support in a climate of social intolerance and weak solidarity. Once seen by Western political scientists as an anomaly, India today is a site where every major theoretical debate about citizenship is being enacted in practice, and one that no global discussion of the subject can afford to ignore."  Needless to say, in reading this text one sees hints of the current tendencies toward devolution of American citizenship.).

Pankaj Mishra, ed. & intro., India in Mind (New York: Vintage Departures/Vintage Books, 2005) (From Robyn Davidson, Desert Places: "The world is divided between those cultures which touch their own feces and those which don't. And it seems to me that those which do have a greater understanding of humankind's relationship to earth, our alpha and omega." Id. at 48, 53. From Andre Malraux, Anti-Memoirs: "Man can experience the presence of universal Being in all beings, and of all beings in universal Being; he discovers then the identity of all appearances, wether they be pleasure and pain, life and death, outside himself and within Being; he can reach that essence in himself which transcends his transmigrated souls, and experience its identity with the essence of a world of endless returning, which he escapes through his ineffable communion with it. But there is something at once bewitching and bewitched in Indian thought, which as to do with the feeling it gives us of climbing a sacred mountain whose summit constantly recedes; of going forward in darkness by the light of the torch which it carries. We know this feeling through some of our saints and philosophers; but it is in India alone that Being, conquered from universal appearance and metamorphosis, does not part company with them, but often becomes inseparable from them 'like the two sides of a medal,' to point the way to an inexhaustible Absolute which transcends even Being itself." Id. at 163, 173.).

Patrick Olivelle, trans., The Law Code of Manu (Oxford World's Classics) (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2004) ("The Law Code of Manu or Manava Dharmasastra (MDh) is undoutbtedly the most celebrated and best known legal text from ancient India." Id. at xvi. "Fame invite controversy, and in India itself during the twentieth century Manu became a lightening rod for both the conservative elements of the Hindu tradition and the liberal movements intent on alleviating the plight of women and low-caste and outcaste individuals. For the latter, Manu became the symbol of oppression. His verses were cited as the source of legitimation for such oppression, even though the same or similar passages are found in other and older documents." Id. at xvii. "A man who wishes to promote the Law should instruct creatures about what is best without hurting them, employing pleasant and gentle words. Only a man whose mind and speech have been purified and are always well-guarded acquires the entire fruit of reaching the end of the Veda. Though deeply hurt, let him never use cutting words, show hostility to others in thought or deed, or use aberrant language that would alarm people." "Let a Brahmin always shrink from praise, as he would from poison; let him ever yearn for scorn, as he would for ambrosia--for, a man who is scorned sleeps at ease, wakes up at ease, goes about in the world at ease; but the man who scorned him perishes." Id. at 35. "A man who is unrighteous, who has gained his wealth dishonestly, and who always takes delight in causing injury will never achieve happiness in this world. Even when he has been bought low as a result of his righteous conduct, let him never turn to unrighteous ways, seeing how quickly the fortunes of unrighteous and evil men are reversed." Id. at 77.).

Aman Sethi, A Free Man: A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi (New York & London: Norton, 2012).

Ananya Vajpeyi, Righteous Republic; The Political Foundations of Modern India (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2012) (From the bookjacket: "What India's founders derived from Western political traditions as they struggled to free their country from colonial rule is widely understood. Less well known is how India's own rich knowledge traditions of two and a half thousand years influenced these men as they set about constructing a nation in the wake of the Raj. In Righteous Republic, Ananya Vajpeyi furnishes this missing account, a groundbreaking assessment of modern Indian political thought." "Taking five of the most important founding figures--Mohandas Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru, and B. R. Ambedkar--Vajpeyi looks at how each of them turned to classical texts in order to fashion an original sense of Indian selfhood. The diverse sources i which these leaders and thinkers immersed themselves included Buddhist literature, the Bhagavad Gita, Sanskrit poetry, the edicts of Emperor Ashola, and the artistic and architectural achievements of the Mughal Empire. India's founders went to these sources not to recuperate old philosophical frameworks but to invent new ones. In righteous Republic, a portrait emerges of a group of innovative, synthetic, and cosmopolitan thinkers who succeeded in braiding together two Indian knowledge traditions, the one political and concerned with social questions, the other religious and oriented toward transcendence.").