THE DICTATORSHIP OF SELF-CHERISHING

Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, The Door to Satisfaction: The Heart Advice of a Tibetan Buddhist Master, foreword by Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche, edited by Ailsa Cameron & Robina Courtin (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2001) ("The best way to train our mind is to expect the four undesirable objects rather than the four desirable ones. Expect to be criticized and disrespected. This practice of renunciation, which cuts off desire, is the best psychology. Having trained our mind to expect undesirable things, when something undesirable actually happens, it doesn't come as a shock to us; it doesn't hurt, because we are expecting it." "Before knowing about Dharma, before practicing meditation, you regarded discomfort, uninteresting sounds, criticism, and not acquiring things as undesirable problems. Now, if you examine well the nature of the mind that clings to material things, comfort, interesting sounds, praise, you won't find that it is happy; you will see that it too is suffering. It is not the happiness you thought it was before knowing about Dharma. It is not peaceful--it is painful." 'The mind that clings get stuck to the object of desire. When you receive praise--'You are so intelligent,' 'You speak so well,' 'You understand Dharma so well'--your mind get stuck to the praise and is no longer free. Like a body fastened with chains, the mind is fastened with attachment. The mind is tied, controlled, chained by attachment. The mind is stuck like glue to the object. Or like a moth flying into melted candle wax: its whole body, wings, and limbs become completely soaked in candle wax. Its body and libs are so fragile that it is extremely difficult to separate them from the wax. Or like a fly that gets stuck in a spider's web: its limbs get completely wrapped in the web, and it difficult to separate the form it Or like ants in honey. Attachment is the mind stuck to an object." Id. at 61-62. "Self-cherishing is a dictatorship. It is a dictatorship meant to benefit the self but one that results in only problems and failure.  It is not logical. Check, 'Why do I cherish myself? Why do I think that I'm more important than all the numberless other sentient beings? Who do I think I'm so precious? There is not one valid reason for self-cherishing. Though we can give many reasons why we should cherish others, we cannot find one reason why we should cherish our self." Id. at 118-119.).

"FASHION STARS OUT OF DOG DUNG"

Alexandra David-Neel, Magic and Mystery in Tibet, with an Introduction by A. D'Arsonval (first published in 1929 in French as Mystiques et magicien du Thibet; first English translation, 1932) (Escondido, CA: The Book Tree, 2000) (" 'Tell him I have come to ask why he mocked at the crowd seeking the benediction of the Dalai Lama.' 'Puffed up with a sense of their own importance and the importance of what they are doing, Insects fluttering in the dung,' muttered the naljorpa between his teeth. This was vague, but the kind of language one expects from such men. 'And you,' I replied, 'are you free from all defilement?' He laughed noisily. 'He who tries to get out only sinks in deeper. I roll in it like a pig. I digest it and turn it into golden dust, into a brook of pure water. To fashion stars out of dog dung, that is the Great Work!' " Id. at 7. "Sorcery loses much of its prestige when seen by broad daylight and in a crowd." Id. at 49. "I had vaguely imagined that beyond the Himalayas the country would become wild, but now I began to realize that on the contrary I was coming into touch with a truly civilized people." Id. at 83. "Learned monks belonging to poor families may earn their livelihood as teachers, as artists if they are gifted at painting religious pictures, as resident chaplains at the houses of rich lamas or laymen, or by occasionally performing religious ceremonies at householders' homes. Besides these various professions, divination, astrology, drawing horoscopes may be reckoned amongst their sources of income." The lama doctors create very favourable situations for themselves if they show their skills by curing a sufficient number of distinguished people. But even with a smaller amount of success, the medical profession is a lucrative one." "However, the profession which looks the most attractive to many is trade. The great majority of those lamaist monks who are not especially religious minded, become traders. If they lack the money needed to undertake a business of their own, they engage themselves as secretaries, accountants, or even as mere servants of a trader." Transacting business, in a more or less unostentatious way, is to a certain extent allowed in the monasteries. As for those of their members who have a really big business they obtain leave form the authorities of the monastery to ravel with their caravan and open shops or branches wherever they like." "One may think that trade does not fit in very well with religious pursuits, but we must also remember a monk has very seldom chosen his own profession. Most of them are led to the monastery as little boys, and it would be unjust to reproach them for not following a mystic avocation which has never been their own choice." Id. at 107-108. "The followers of the Zen sect in Japan, who meditate together in a common hall, appoint a kind of superintendent who is skilled in detecting when a monk is overcome by fatigue. He refreshes the fainting and revives their energy by striking them on one shoulder with a heavy stick. Those who have experienced it agree that the ensuring sensation is a most pleasant relation of the nerves." Id. at 196. Right!).

ARE WESTERNERS PRISONERS OF THEIR MYTHS CONCERNING TIBET AND TIBETAN BUDDHISM AS SHANGRI-LA?

Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 1998) ("The creation myth of this book began when I attended a conference on Tibet some years ago. The keynote speaker gave a public lecture that romanticized Tibetan history and demonized the Chinese. At the conclusion of the speech the audience rose as one in a standing ovation. It seemed clear that several hundred people had been converted to the cause of Tibetan independence. The question that the lecture raised for me was whether it was possible to make the case for Tibetan independence, which, one assumes, all people of good will (when presented with the facts) would support, without invoking the romantic view of Tibet as Shangri-La. Invoking the myth seems at times almost irresistible; without it the Chinese occupation and colonization of Tibet seems just one of many human rights violations that demand our attention. What sets the plight of Tibet apart from that of Palestine, Rwanda, Burma, Northern Ireland, East Timor, or Bosnia is the picture of Tibetans as a happy, peaceful people devoted to the practice of Buddhism, whose remote and ecologically enlightened land, ruled by a god-king, was invaded by the forces of evil. This is a compelling story, an enticing blends of the exotic, the spiritual, and the political. But I have become convinced that the continued idealization of Tibet--its history and its religion--may ultimately harm the cause of Tibetan independence. I set out to investigate some of the factors that have contributed to the formation and persistence of the romance of Tibet. This book is the result of those investigations." Id. at 11.).

ROMANCING THE BOOK OF THE DEAD

Donald S. Lopez, Jr., The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Biography (Lives of Great Religious Books) (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2011) ("This book tells the strange story of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. It argues that the persistence of its popularity drives from three factors.... The first is the human obsession with death. The second is the Western romance with Tibet. The third is Evans-Wentz's way of making the Tibetan text into something that is somehow American." "T]he work by Walter Evans-Wentz entitled The Tibetan Book of the Dead is not really Tibetan, it is not really a book, and it is not really about death. It is about rebirth: the rebirth of souls and the resurrection of texts. Evan-Wentz's classic is not so much Tibetan as it is American, a product of American Spiritualism. Indeed, it might be counted among its classics.... The Tibetan Book of the Dead is a remarkable case of what can happen when American Spiritualism goes abroad." Id. at 11. "It seems, then, that Evans-Wentz knew what he would find in the Tibetan text before a single word was translated for him. it almost seems that Evans-Wentz's spiritual vacation could have taken him to any Asian country and that he would have produced some version of the book published in 1927. But he chose Tibet, and so the book is The Tibetan Book of the Dead." Id. at 118.).

COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF GOING TO LAW SCHOOL

The most recent number of the Journal of Legal Education (November 2013) contains several articles from a “SYMPOSIUM: IS LAW SCHOOL WORTH IT?”  Good question. No doubt. However, it reminds me of the question “Are children worth it?  For the overwhelming majority of late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century prospective parents the answer is resounding no? A few decades ago. Yale Law School’s John Langbein wrote an article convincingly demonstrating that parents who lose a child (in a wrongful death situation) are, from a strictly economic perspective, better off. It is very, very expensive to raise a child. Children constitute a huge opportunity cost. There are tremendous savings in not needing to spend on a child. But the point, for most who think about it, is that it is not economic loss that the parents’ suffer, it is something else that cannot be measured in dollars and cents, something that defies cost-benefit  economic analysis. I will leave it  to you to define what that something else is. Not to compare a foregone legal education to the loss of a child, but perhaps, just perhaps, the important value of a legal education is something more than a job and earning capacity. It is a sad state of affairs when men and women are reduced to being simply economic man and economic woman. It is a sad state of legal education when what were students are no longer free to explore different intellectual paths because it is all about get a job, get a salary. Sad, pathetic and boring. But worse yet, not in the best interest of the legal profession. Not in the best interest of society. Shakespeare scribbled, “First we kill all the lawyers.” Well, the lawyers are not being killed off. But they are being made into intellectual zombies. The living, but intellectual dead.

ELITE WOMAN ARE DIFFERENT FFROM OTHER WOMEN

Alison Wolf, THE XX Factor: How the Rise of Working Women Has Created a Far Less Equal World (New York: Crown Publishing, 2013) (What is unfortunate about the book's subtitle is that many people will read into it an implied "causal" or "blame" link between women and inequality. Wolf is not arguing or suggesting that woman are the cause of, or to be blame for, the inequality. Rather, the book is about the unintended consequences of the quite reasonable decisions that elite women and men have made. From the book jacket: The gender gap is closing. Today, for the first time in history, tens of millions of women are spending more time at the boardroom table than at the kitchen table. These professional women are highly ambitious and highly educated, enjoying the same lifestyle prerogatives as their male counterparts. They are working longer and marrying later--if they marry at all. They are heading Fortune 500 companies and appearing on the covers of Forbes and Businessweek. They represent a special type of working woman--the kind who don't just punch a clock for a paycheck, but derives self-worth and pleasure from wielding professional power." "At the same time that the gender gap is narrowing, the gulf is widening among women themselves. While blockbuster books such as Lean In focus on women in high-pressure jobs, in reality there are four women in traditionally female roles for every Sheryl Sandberg. In this revealing and deeply intelligent book, Alison Wolf examines why more educated women work longer hours, why having children early is a good idea, and how feminism created a less equal world. Her idea are sure to provoke and surprise as she challenges much of what the liberal and conservative media consider to be women's best interest.").

BETTING ON CLIMATE CHANGE: A BET WE BETTER NOT LOSE

Paul Sabin, The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble over Earth's Future (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2013) ("Climate change, to the best of our scientific knowledge, is happening, and much of the recent global warming that we have seen appears caused by human actions. And climate change is a significant problem that threatens heavy economic and social costs. The world that humans are creating--with an increased likelihood of more intense storms, prolonged droughts, and profound changes to ecological systems--is not likely to being changes that people will want These are some of the vital insights of environmental scientists like Paul Ehrlich. At the same time, predictions that 'billions of us will die' by the end of the century as a result of climate change or that civilization will collapse reenact the least helpful elements of Ehrlich-style environmentalism." "What often gets lost in the climate debate are the lessons of the clash between Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon. There is a serious and significant discussion to be had over what policy actions to take, and when. How much will the impacts of climate change cost, and how urgent is the need for immediate action? There are two dramatically different versions of the future. Should we count on technological innovation and economic growth to help societies meet this new challenge and adapt to change? Or must we cut emissions immediately and transform our societies in a dramatic way? The competing viewpoints echo positions held by Ehrlich and Simon. Both tend to exaggerate the consequences of their oppoents' position: how expensive and disruptive it would be to shift away from fossil fuels, on the one hand, and whether it would be possible for humanity to adapt to a warmer world."  Id. at 225-226. YET! "Neither biology nor economics can substitute for the deeper ethical question: What kind of world do we desire?" Id. at 227.).