Shhhh! Be vewwy vewwy quiet...
We're hunting... bewwshit
Here comes some of it now... That wetter with the wittle fwuffy tail? It's about to ask us something.
What is it, my pwetty?
"Q: What is the Nichiren Buddhist View of Mindfulness?"
Great question, Q. Perhaps the answer is best described by this quote from Daisaku Ikeda's self-help masterpiece, "Discussions on Youth":
"There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always -- do not forget this, Winston -- always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever."
Kiddiiing...that's a line from the classic novel "1984" -- a book that has about as much to do with real Buddhism as anything Ikeda has ever written...which is to say, not much at all, but the book does provide a lot of deep and uncanny insight into how society functions. The author, pen name George Orwell, wrote this cautionary tale as a way of clueing people in to how the most potent weapon against personal freedom is none other than the propaganda we all so happily consume.
As such, so much of the plot is wrapped up in the idea of language: the restriction and limitation thereof, as represented by the childish new age lingo everyone is forced to adopt, and also the systematic reversal of meaning as a way of messing with people's heads. You might recall the famous line -- "War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength" -- which is the very slogan of the governing "party" within the book. Or, the four famous ministries from the novel -- the Ministry of Peace creating war, the Ministry of Truth spewing propaganda, the Ministry of Love doling out torture, and the Ministry of Plenty keeping people in artificial scarcity -- each one of them actively creating the problems they are designated to address.
Names and slogans like these represent contradictions, but they're not intended, even in the context of the story, to make logical sense. The author is using these labels as devices to indicate an environment of mental slavery, wherein words and concepts mean whatever the hell "the party" says they mean. Sometimes the powers that be, as we find out rather bluntly in this tale, need us to believe that 2+2=5.
You see, actual coersion is only a part of the totalitarian picture. The rest has to do with cognitive dissonance, and the manipulation of what people think is real, or even possible. The cognitive dissonance created by these core reversals of function - government acting contrary to the interests of the people - when exacerbated by linguistic manipulation, a breakdown of reason, the actual threat of violence, and the pervasive human tendency to police oneself and others, provides enough pressure to break all but the most rebellious of people. And for the rest, there is always the Ministry of Love.
The other main feature of Orwell's totalitarian vision is that every aspect of life has come to be defined by perpetual war. There's the war on freedoms of all kinds, being waged against the citizens themselves, and also the military war being waged abroad, which is described as being more theater than reality. One way or another, war provides the ongoing justification for everything a totally totalitarian government could want, ultimately justifying the existence of the nation itself. War is the reason for privation as the basic reality of daily life, yet it also represents the driving force behind the economy itself. And as the story goes, citizens are educated to know that each of the three mega-nations on Earth has always been at war, and will continue to be at war, forever and ever, amen.
Now, I may just be a humble Galaxian zergfarmer, but in my estimation, a book like 1984 can be quite the fortuitous thing to have read, you know, in the event that someone tries to enlist you in a forever war.
Perhaps the true nature of what you've gotten yourself into won't reveal itself at first, when the whole affair consists of little more than lovebombing, sitting in circles, and going out for drinks. But eventually, the time will come when one of your comrades takes it upon herself to define a term like "human revolution" as a... never-ending war against the forces of darkness... By which we mean the darkness inside of you... But also out in the world? at the same time?
(Can this war be won, you ask...)
No. The war will never be won. As Bodhisattvas we will always "fighting" negativity because there will always be negativity. Even if we somehow manage to become happy ourselves, there is still a whole universe of less enlightened people to shepherd. As a matter of fact, you've already taken an oath, without your knowledge or consent, to follow the mentor around the galaxy acting like Cosmic Ghostbusters...but we can't be one of the cool Ghostbusters, we have to be the nerd one.
(Wait a minute, I thought Buddhahood was the goal, like to escape all this drama of rebirth?)
Yes, it is, and you can get there in this lifetime, I assure you. One day you will perceive the true nature of reality and be above suffering.
(Well then, what's the difference between Buddhahood and Bodhisattvahood, and in what way does Buddhahood represent the ideal? Because the way you guys describe it, the Bodhisattvas sound like the good guys, while Buddhahood is more like checking out of the human story, and not helping anyone anymore...)
ERROR!! ERROR!!! INPUT NOT RECOGNIZED!!! [sparks fly angrily from the top of this person's head]
(And as you stand there, watching the flames rise from the scalp of your robotic new friend, perhaps in that moment a realization starts to dawn...
Perpetual war... Where might I have heard that before? Well, I don't exactly know what war has to do with Buddhism, but I do know that it generally serves a purpose... It's like, something a government would do...
And what's with this rigid organizational structure anyway?... They are very heavily focused on goals, and directives, and recruiting, and victory, and maintaining a chain of command. And they love to use words like "revolution" and "battle". And oh yeah, they did just describe human revolution as a hopeless unwinnable war against reality itself...
Could it be that maybe I've been conscripted into quasi-military service for some kind of... mimetic nation state, with it's own ends, means and messaging, completely distinct from the culture in which I live?
Hmm...this is all very surprising, but the logic does check out. Perhaps the best course of action is to leave quietly once the Fire Department gets here, and later inform these people via text that I've changed my mind about playing Bodhisattva Space Cops...)
Or maybe it wasn't even the persistent war imagery that tipped you off. Maybe you already knew a little bit about Buddhism coming into this, and it put you in a position to witness a key piece of doublespeak firsthand.
You still remember the first time you heard someone say it...it was the smiley emcee at your very own intro meeting...
"Buddhism is all about winning."
No. It isn't. That can't be right... It goes against everything you've known to be true about Buddhism right up to this very moment. Attachment to winning is a product of desire, and Buddhism isn't supposed to be about winning, attachment, or desire.
It's like saying that mathematics is best described as the act of taking out your crayons and drawing a picture of a house on a diner placemat, while you wait for your milkshake to arrive. You could say a lot of varying things about math...but not that. That would be wrong. There are limits to every concept. And Buddhism can't be about winning, yet also not about winning, at the same time. It just can't.
You couldn't quite see it at the time, but having such a thing said to you constituted a test -- a preliminary test of your loyalty. You knew it was wrong, but in that particular context, spoken by that person, and reinforced by all the wubbly-bubs around you, it somehow felt less wrong. Almost like it could be true...like anything could be true...so as long as someone really wants it to be...
And make no mistake -- that is precisely the headspace that cult influencers wish their followers to occupy: one wherein each and every concept is completely malleable, and nothing really means anything.
Perhaps you spent the subsequent chapter of your life trying to discover the true significance of this new credo, with it's associated "practice" and selfie-laden lifestyle, but you never could, because the only thing there ever was to discover with regards to the idea of Buddhism being "about winning", is that it was nothing more than propaganda in the first place. It was a "war-is-peace" moment. Ignorance is strength; slavery, freedom. It was a major point of distinction upon which your allegiance to the movement was to be established -- one of the things about which you are either "with us or against us".
And it likely caught you by surprise.
Understandably so - how could you anticipate being "1984"ed so brazenly at your first intro meeting? But the idea never did sit right with you, and despite perhaps needing more time to figure it out, more time to perceive the situation from the inside, the inevitable outcome was that one day you would make your break with the group, finally assured that neither Buddhism itself, nor whatever it is these people were engaged in, could adequately be described as "winning".
The social manipulators who tell people such a brazen lie know exactly what they are doing. They know that by insisting upon philosophical tenets which run counter to logic (not to mention any semblance of relevance or coolness), they will turn most people right off. But -- and this is a huge but -- they also know that their particular brand of nonsense will also have the effect of turning certain key people very much on. And those key people will form a fanatical nucleus, the energy and influence of which will be sufficient to attract and maintain an outer circle of less-strong-willed people, who are mainly interested in belonging to something. And that's enough.
What, did you believe them when they told you that kosen-rufu was "for everybody" or intended to reach everybody? No, that was a lie. The purpose of a cult movement is to reach certain key people, who are then used as slaves to attract other people, with the overall effect that enough people are brought into the fold.
Enough people for what, you might ask? Well, that all depends on the circumstances. In the case of the SGI, for example, the goal is to have at least enough members to maintain the semblance of a legitimate religion, so that other, less obvious things may continue to happen behind the scenes. But the key point is that cult recruitment is exactly like politics: politics is not, nor has it ever been about, getting everyone to agree; it's about getting a sufficient number of people -- even a relatively small portion of the population -- to be on board with a course of action so that it may proceed.
But politics also has very little to do with honesty. And the same could be said for cult propaganda. Thus far, the preamble I have laid out has been with the intent of establishing why, when I see that the propagandists behind "Good to Know" are about to explain to us the meaning of "mindfulness", there's a significant chance that the answer they give us will be heavily inverted.
But if I had begun this article by going straight to the obvious quip at hand -- "mindfulness? More like mindLESSness, am I right"? -- it would have appeared as if I were simply being cynical and contrarian, and trying to take the opposite position of whatever it is the SGI would have us believe. At best it would have been like, zing, Al Sharpton but the flippancy of it all would have obscured the very important point at the heart of my message here, which is that groups like the SGI thrive on reversals of logic precisely because a)they make people mentally suggestable b)they create the necessary separation from what the rest of society believes and c)without inverting the principles of Buddhism in particular -- which stand for non-attachment as opposed to greed, self-absorption and political gain -- this shitty little cult wouldn't even have a justification for existing.
In the world of the SGI, we already know that the concept of "mindfulness" begins and ends with the highly dubious practice of chanting. So as conscientious objectors to the eternal Vietnam that is BOOdism, the ball is actually in our court to ask the most wonderfully relevant question of all, which is...
Does chanting represent an act of mindfulness... or mindLESSness.
I know how I might begin to answer such a question. But perhaps in this case the asking of the question itself is more important than any particular answer at which we might arrive. Because, if we're still able to ask questions like these, it means we're not actually brainwashed yet.
Oh look, here comes the Ministry of Truth to try and change that!
A?
"A: Mindfulness practices are being used more frequently—in schools, at work, as part of therapy and even in prison—to help people better recognize their thoughts and feelings as they grapple with the complex challenges of daily life."
A... what are you doing.
First of all, it's completely out of character for a writer from Shriveled Nudist Magazine to ever even suggest a discussion about something outside of the cult, so for you to refer to "mindfulness practices" as some kind of movement in itself, as if you were actually going to place the SGI within some larger context -- even though you don't -- is kind of jarring.
Then there's the problem of you not defining what a "mindfulness practice" is, in any type of way at all. For all we know, it might consist of sitting on a birthday cake and screaming "Shazam!"
And then you go on to tell us that whatever is, it's something we can associate with work, school, therapy, and prison? That doesn't sound very fun, but I guess your cult is trying to be all four four of those things at the same time, am I right?
Zing, Al Sharpton...
"Mindfulness is also incorporated in the practice of Nichiren Buddhism, which focuses on unlocking the power to master our minds and transform our negative tendencies."
Into tendencies that are somehow even more annoying!? Dayum, Nichiren, how is that even possible? You cold, dawg!
Seriously Nichiren, you too cold. Stop eating snow for dinner.
But anyway, remember my Word Salad Litmus Test®? Haven't used it in a while. The way it works is, if you can rearrange all of the key words in a sentence to create a new sentence of equal value or lack thereof, that's because the first sentence didn't have any meaning to begin with! It's like an anagram generator, except it makes you want to punch someone.
Let's try it!
"...focuses on unlocking the power to master our minds..."
Becomes...
"...unlocks the focus to master the power of our minds..."?
"...powers our minds to unlock the focus of mastery..."?
"...focuses our minds on the power of unlocking mastery..."?
"...powers the mastery of our minds to unlock focus..."?
"...masters the power of focus to unlock our minds..."?
Oh god yes, we have a positive test. It so very much makes me want to puke. How shall we proceed, doctor?
“Mindfulness” can be traced back to the Sanskrit word smrti, generally understood to mean a presence of mind, awareness or the ability to recollect. Smrti was often translated into Chinese Buddhist texts as nian (念), or nen in Japanese—a character made up of two radicals meaning now and mind."
Smrti... Sounds like the origin of the word smart? Well I guess we're coming up on the educational part of the answer, but honestly we already know where they're going with this...
You stay focus! Pay attention! You pay now! Ichinen! Three thousand moment! All at same time! What you want!? Fire truck! What color!? Red! Next! (Aaaah!)
"Since the “mind” in Nichiren Buddhism encompasses the entirety of our thoughts, emotions and intent, nen or mindfulness points to the state of our life at this present moment."
And here we go again, people. THIS IS NOT BUDDHISM! How many more ways do I have to say it?
You are not your mind, you are not your mind, you are not your mind. The thoughts in your head, they are happening to you; the experience of life, is happening through you. When you identify with those thoughts, you create attachment, and the potential for suffering. So relax, Yeah, it sounds freaky, but it's what the Buddha was trying to tell us: don't give your mind total authority over your life. You can also make decisions from your heart, your gut, your spleen, your solar plexus, and sometimes even your hey-nanner-nanner. It shouldn't always be from your head, because your head is full of delusion, whereas your body, it knows what it wants.
Relax, and enjoy the ride.
But this? This pop psychology, new-age self-help shit-on-a-cracker force-fed to you by the stern Asian father meme? This shit will make you CRAAAAAZYYY!!
Self. Obsessed. Insanity.
"Nichiren’s belief was that one’s ichinen (一念), often translated as “a single moment of life” or “single-minded determination,” possessed the key to revealing the boundless Buddha nature within life. It was his single-minded determination to lead all people to enlightenment that enabled him to exhibit the state of Buddhahood as an ordinary human being."
Hitler had single-minded determination.
A dog, with a slice of cheese balanced on its snout, has single-minded determination.
What exactly was so Buddha-riffic about Nichiren anyway? Did he have powers or something? I'm going on two years of being involved with this horseshit, and I still can't begin to fathom why anybody likes this guy.
"By establishing the accessible practice of chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo to the Gohonzon, Nichiren created a most effective means for anyone to bring forth the resolve, courage, wisdom and compassion needed to tackle the challenges in front of us. Beyond a state of calm or focus, the practice of chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo to the Gohonzon enables us to transform even immutable karma."
Oh yes, it's accessible all right... for the cost of fifty dollars, and all the common sense in one's head.
And it's funny that you employ the phrasing "challenges in front of us"...when the exact "challenge" you want to place "in front of us" is a mental crutch to which we are supposed to assign god-like powers.
And which is it? Calm, or focus? What is the relationship between those two states of being, exactly? I'm asking you, because it's YOUR goddamn article about mindfulness!
And oh yeah... If you can transform it... IT'S NOT IMMUTABLE YOU FUCKING MORON!! WAR IS NOT PEACE!!! Your mind-breaking contradictions are not welcome here!
You know what, reading this stuff is only making us dumber. Let me change gears and share with you some of what Chinese Medicine actually has to say about the body, so at least we have another point of reference...
Your body is a cauldron. Within that cauldron resides your "jing", which is the raw material for life, represented by your genetic material, your hormones, and your emotional energy. There is a fire within you that cooks this jing, which is known as "qi" - a concept which encompasses heat, electricity, intelligence and activity. The result of this process is the production of steam, which represents awareness, or consciousness, also known as "shen", which rises up to the heart and the head. You can tell by the look in someone's eyes whether they have good shen, or perhaps they're emotionally disturbed, on drugs, or feeling manic from all the cult activity. "Qi", "Jing" and "Shen" are together known as the "Three Treasures".
Moreover, there are five "spirits" in the body: The "Po", or corporeal soul, resides in the lungs; the "Hun", or astral soul, resides in the liver; the "Zhi", or willpower, resides in the kidneys; the "Yi", or intellect, resides in the spleen; and the previously mentioned "Shen" resides in the heart.
Each of those five spirits corresponds to a different element -- Metal, Wood, Water, Earth and Fire, respectively.
When these people say "mind", they could really be referring to any of the five spirits, but most likely they're talking about the intellect, which is what we are using right now to string words together and to decipher those words. Yes, the intellect is only one part of you, and it should be kept in balance with the other four spirits, ideally subordinate to the leader, which is the heart. But the idea is to listen to your five spirits, and take note of when they are out of balance. If your mind is racing, and your intellect is out of control, perhaps there is something up, physically or emotionally, with your spleen; or perhaps you are naturally a splenic type of person; or maybe you had a cheddar and roast beef sandwich right before going to sleep, and all the excess mental chatter is simply a reflection of how you woke the spleen up by digesting something at the wrong time of day (the spleen is meant to be most active in the morning).
And one more concept: each of those five energies is held in balance within a cycle of generation and control, which can be diagrammed as a pentagram. Each one is responsible for generating the next one in the cycle, and controlling the one after that. That is to say, each one has a child in the cycle, and a grandchild, and is the child, and grandchild, of two others. That is how they are all interrelated. If one of them is weak, you can support it directly, or you can support its "mother", which will then feed it energy. If one of them is too strong and rebellious, you give energy to its "grandmother" element, which will naturally corral it, you could also clear blockages in its "child" element, which will allow the energy to move along the cycle. When a person is manifesting imbalance in one of the elements, it affects all of the other four to a degree, but the key to treatment is to know which of the elements is originally the problem, so you can focus your efforts on the root of the imbalance instead of the symptom.
Now hang on, everybody, this is worth it...
Let's say a person's main problem in life is an overactive intellect: mind that races, can't stop talking, smart to the point of being crazy. Well, the grandmother of the intellect is the astral soul, which is related to dreams, drugs, meditation, and generally getting in touch with your higher self (the astral soul is the "you" that is you when you are dreaming, and it is the part of you that survives death). So, it makes intuitive sense that for that type of person, some sort of "chill out" activity is in order: some sort of prayer, some sort of religion, some sort of drug perhaps, or some type of meditation. And the opposite is true: if a person's problem is a listless intellect, all of those things will make it worse.
Which brings us back to chanting. Yes, I'll say it: chanting a mantra to a piece of paper, is actually safer and less destructive than sticking a heroin needle in your arm. But it's not as productive as other forms of spiritual activity -- Qi Gong, for example -- which might actually get you better in touch with your inner world. If chanting were a drug, it would be weed: it's not fair to demonize it, and say it's the worst thing in the world, people shouldn't go to jail for it, and although it's not all that mystical or deep to smoke some Kush and rot there on the couch, for some people it might actually be a good short term solution to being crazypants in the head. BUT, it's also not right to suggest that everybody can or should be high all the time, because that would screw society up rather royally.
Hypothetically, if we were to subscribe to the idea of the five spirits, which could be over-or-under active, and we were also to take as a given that each person has a type -- in terms of which of their five spirits best defines them, and also in terms of whether they are the sort of person to be habitually overactive/reactive as opposed to underactive/repressive -- AND we were to assume that these types are equally distributed throughout the human population (which, from my experience, I see no reason not to believe), that would leave us with roughly ten percent of the population -- those intellect types of the overactive variety -- for whom their defining struggle in life is the need to still the mind. Those are the people who stand to gain the most from even the most mind-numbing forms of mediation.
But don't get it twisted -- chanting is still a waste of time.
That last part is just a theory of mine, subject to criticism like any other, but the real point here is that the more you know about how the body-mind really works -- from any angle -- the stronger your appreciation of the human experience becomes. You start to see that all the energies inside of you, even the uncomfortable ones, are to cared for and put back in their proper place.
It's NOT A WAR against inner demons, or outer demons, or the forces of darkness, or anything else. It's more like a balancing act.
But then you look at this stupid little philosophy, printed in these stupid publications, on behalf of some stupid cult leader, and what is it teaching any of us? Anything useful? I dunno, A, what were you trying to say, before I so rudely interrupted?
"SGI President Ikeda elaborates on the concept of ichinen, or single-minded determination:
When your determination changes, everything else will begin to move in the direction you desire. The moment you resolve to be victorious, every nerve and fiber in your being will immediately orient itself toward your success. On the other hand, if you think, “This is never going to work out,” then, at that instant, every cell in your being will be deflated and give up the fight, and everything then really will move in the direction of failure . . .
Oh NO! Your cells are going to deflate! You'll be totally ruined! Is that what happened to you, Sensei? Or did somebody slip you a mickey and you ended up as the man on the couch? (She cahn't ahnswer you. She cahn't even talk...)
But it's okay, I think. All you have to do is "resolve" to be successful and every fiber of your being will start pooping out success like a champion! If you aren't having any success, resolve HARDER!
As any tennis pro will tell you, when you're falling behind in a game, the secret is to become very tense and grip your racket even harder. Did you know that Sensei was once a top-ranked tennis player? Yeah, he played doubles with Kim Jong-Il, who was himself one of the world's best golfers. Now you know.
"How you orient your mind, the kind of attitude you take, greatly influences both yourself and your environment . . . Through the power of strong inner resolve, we can transform ourselves, those around us and the land in which we live. Each of you is in possession of this “tool,” this “secret weapon.” There is no greater treasure.
July 11, 1997, World Tribune, p. 14"
Ya see? Ya see how all these concepts are borrowed from ancient Chinese wisdom -- the intellect, the will, even the use of the word "treasure" to describe consciousness -- as if Ikeda were some great sage himself? The only difference being that we end up actually dumber for reading his crap, because almost all of the concepts are misapplied, taken out of context, and heavily laden with agenda. There's a big difference between trying to educate someone as opposed to convince them of something.
Don't look now, but real Buddhism is actually hella-fricking-PhD-level complicated, in terms of what it has to say about psychology and phenomenology. This is because learning the truth does in fact set the mind free. It's a far cry from this bullshit, I'll tell you that much. But it's also very simple, in that it can be reduced to the act of self-surrender. Therein lies the paradox -- both inquiry and surrender will get you up the mountain, so to speak. And that's what makes mindfulness so tricky to talk about. Are we supposed to have a mind full, or a mind empty? Do we focus, or let go?
Because of this paradox, its easy for charlatans like King Meltburger to slip into your thought stream and start feeding you straight-up lies and contradictions, to the tune of ignorance is strength, conformity is wisdom, and self-obsession is the same thing as mindfulness. But the happy medium is this: what so ever you happen to do in this life, so long as you truly learn something from it, and continue to pay attention to your causes and their effects, it wasn't a wasted experience. That's what mindfulness is, and that's why the truly mindful people, sooner or later, lose patience with cults that promise different results from doing the exact same thing.
Thanks for reading, everybody.
Bye for now!
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