As the Israeli invasion of Gaza is expected to intensify, putting more innocent civilians into harms way, I am surprised that there is little to no reaction from the United States besides the Bush administration’s support and a congressional resolution offering “unwavering” support for Israel and its right to defend itself (US Senate supports Israel’s Gaza incursion). The United States, which has arguably been Israel’s closet ally since 1948, is in a unique position to push Israel to stop this violence, or at the very least, to show restraint. Instead, we, as a country, have done the opposite.

I realize that Hamas is little more than a terrorist organization that fires home-made rockets indiscriminately into Israel, but that does not justify Israel’s disproportionate response. While it is difficult to verify the information coming out of Gaza as Israel has prohibited foreign journalists from entering during these past two weeks, it is estimated that at least 400-700 people have been killed compared to 28 people killed by Hamas rocket attacks since 2001 (BBC News Q&A: Gaza conflict). Many of these are said to be innocent civilians, including women and children.

The civilians themselves are trapped between a rock and a hard place. The Gaza strip, which is smaller than Portland, Oregon, yet has twice the population, is basically a prison state with Israel controlling their airspace and territorial water, as well as the Gaza-Israel border. The only other access point is the Gaza-Egypt border, which itself is protected by concrete and steel walls. The Palestinians have nowhere to run. So, when Israel says that it has informed the residence of Gaza that they plan to escalate its military action against Hamas, where can they go to escape the violence? Israel says that Hamas deliberately stores their weapons in heavily populated areas so as to assure civilian casualties, but does that justify the bombing of homes, schools, shelters and other civilian locations?

One of the latest stories is that a UN aid truck carrying relief supplies was attacked by an Israeli tank, and as a result, the UN is ceasing aid until their safety is assured. This is bad news for almost half the population of Gaza, which the UN says is dependent on them for food since an 18 month Israeli blockade began. What is worse is that, according to the BBC, “much of the population is without electricity, about half are without running water, and food deliveries to 750,000 have been seriously disrupted” (Gaza humanitarian crisis deepens). It is a nothing short of a humanitarian crisis, and I am dismayed by the lack of sympathy coming out of Washington for the Palestinian people.

I understand that Israel has a right to defend itself, and I think that Israel should do what it can to stop the rocket attacks and protect its citizens, but not only is the suffering and misery experienced by the entire civilian population of Gaza appalling, it is, in the words of John Ging, Gaza’s director of operations for the refugee agency UNRWA, “… creating fertile ground for the extremists” (UN official says Israel’s siege of Gaza breeds extremism and human suffering).

Even though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that, “Our resolution reflects the will of the state of Israel and the will of the American people” (Few speak up for Palestinians in U.S. Congress), I want to make it clear that I neither condone or support Hamas’ rocket attacks into Israel nor do I condone or support Israel’s siege of Gaza. This insanity has to stop. As with others around the world, I hope that a short-term cease-fire can be worked out, and that, ultimately, a true lasting peace can be reached with the help of the international community.

To begin with, we should make it clear that Buddhist precepts are not equivalent to commandments in that precepts are training rules that are voluntarily undertaken rather than edicts or commands dictated by a higher power and/or authority.

In essence, these precepts are undertaken to protect oneself, as well as others, from the results of unwholesome actions. Actions are considered unwholesome when they arise out of the mental defilements of greed, hatred and delusion. Continue reading →

I do not think that faith in and of itself is a negative thing, I see it more as a motivating factor; but I do think that faith without reason can be an unskillful motivating factor when it comes to our actions, i.e., acts leading to harmful results. People who kill thousands of other innocent people out of faith is certainly one example of how I think faith can be an unskillful motivating factor.

Nevertheless, is faith, as opposed to skepticism, always going to lead to such behavior? On the issue of faith in Buddhism, for example, while there is certainly room for skepticism toward matters of faith, there is also a limit to that skepticism. The Buddha often stated that faith in a teacher is what leads one to learn from that teacher, to put their teachings to the test to see what results they will bring; and the only valid basis for faith is the instruction that, when followed, brings about the end of one’s own mental defilements (DN 11).

Continue reading →

In the Suttas, the arising of sensory-consciousness is said to be dependent upon the meeting of one of the six sense-organs (salayatana) and its corresponding object. The process of seeing, for example, is described as a conditional process where “dependent on eye and visible forms, eye-consciousness arises” (SN 12.43). Without the presence of the appropriate sense organ (e.g., the eye) or the corresponding object of reference (e.g., rock), sensory-consciousness (e.g., eye-consciousness) cannot arise.

Continue reading →

So I’m a Buddhist. Which means I do Buddhist things like meditating and practicing loving kindness, patience, equanimity and so on. There are a million different ways to practice this Path and lots of important things to keep in mind while doing so like impermanence, suffering and not-self. But lately I’ve caught myself doing something very unlike ‘me’, something that is helping me in a tremendous way, something I never would have thought of doing if I hadn’t started studying and practicing Buddhism. I’ve been watching my mind and reminding myself not to believe everything I think.

This may n0t seem to be a big deal to some but to me it’s monumental because over the course of my life I’ve given a great deal of trust and belief to my thoughts and feelings. I’ve always believed that my feelings and ideas were very important and meant important things. I’ve relied on my mind to tell me the truth all my life and it’s only now, at the age of forty, that I understand how big a mistake that was.

It’s a mistake to put our trust in our thoughts and feelings because our minds are very good at playing tricks on us and our minds are in the habit of reinforcing what we want to believe instead of what the truth actually is. We really are deluded beings and the more we watch our minds the more that truth becomes apparent.

So lately I’ve noticed myself automatically correcting my mind. I’ll be sitting doing some needlepoint and thinking about things and notice how my mind starts to react to the thoughts I’m thinking. For example, I’ll start thinking about something in my life that’s not going as planned and I instantly start feeling angry. At first my mind will trick me into believing that whatever thoughts I’m thinking are worthy of making me angry, of making me suffer. Then I’ll catch myself. I’ll start thinking, “These thoughts that are making me angry, and the anger itself, isn’t important in the grand scheme. They’re not worth the suffering. They’re not solving the problem, they’re only making it worse. Don’t believe your mind when it tells you these thoughts are important to think. They’re not. They’re impermanent and will come and go. They hold neither importance nor solutions, just more suffering. They’re not important enough to hold on to, so let them pass.”

I’ve never done anything like this before in my life. I’ve always been a brooder to a certain degree and believed all my thoughts and emotions had great validity. This has caused me great suffering in the past. In fact, when very bad things happened in my life I had a tendency to get lost in my thoughts about them. It felt like being caught in a loop of painful thinking and I couldn’t, or thought I couldn’t, drag myself out of it.

But that never happens anymore. I don’t nurse my anger or sadness or fear anymore. I don’t sit and saturate myself in thoughts of being hard done by or injured by someone. I still find myself starting to nurse some of these thoughts but now I’m able to nip them in the bud, before I get caught in the loop and before they escalate. I’m learning how to let go. Finally.

The thing that strikes me is that I feel like a child again. As a child I was resilient and I naturally lived in the moment. It was only as I got older that I lost my way and started imprisoning myself in my negative thoughts, living in the past, nursing sadness or anger or feelings of self pity. It feels to me that I got in my own way and once I got out of my way my mind naturally went back to its healthy way of experiencing the world. I’m learning how to get over myself and get out my way so the resilience of childhood and the natural tendency to live in the moment can resurface on its own. As it does.

I’m still at the beginning of this Path and I know there’s much more work to be done. But the simple fact that I’m catching myself when I’m putting too much faith in my thoughts is a sign of progress to me and it renews my energy and encourages me to keep going, keep practicing. I know results aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be and there’s no use in getting caught up in them. But a few signs of progress here and there go a long way and I’m grateful for them. In Buddhism it’s always a new day, another opportunity to do better, to be better and to get better. My heart is full of gratitude for the Buddhadhamma.

Brigid

Yesterday I attended a conference in Phoenix at Arizona State University put on by the Arizona Coalition to end the death penalty. It was quite illuminating as they had speakers who fell on both sides of the fence, from prosecutors to Quakers. Mostly it was from the legal side of the issue – how the death penalty works in Arizona, what are the legal arguments for and against the death penalty. There was very little on the moral and ethical consequences of putting people to death, which itself was very revealing.

It turns out that even if you view the death penalty in cold economic terms it makes absolutely no sense at all. In Arizona it costs on average $31 million (yes, million) to prosecute a death penalty case to completion. It also takes on average 18-19 years from arraignment to execution. However, only about 1% of death penalty eligible cases ever lead to execution. Important factors in deciding whether to pursue the death penalty in a case are race and economic status. Someone who can afford an attorney (i.e. who can afford competent representation) almost never gets the death penalty. And yet there are those – including the county attorney from Maricopa County (Phoenix) who spoke at the conference – who vociferously claim that the death penalty serves as a deterrent. However, the death penalty in the US as it is currently carried out meets none of the requirements for deterrence, such as quick punishment, certainty of punishment, and so forth. In fact, currently in Arizona, all but a scattered few death penalty cases are in Phoenix. Other municipalities and counties rarely attempt death penalty cases due to the cost and difficulty of winning such cases. Currently in Arizona all the death penalty cases are in Maricopa county except for 3 in Yavapai and one or two in Pima counties. Note that Phoenix is not the only large city in Arizona. Tucson is also over a million, yet there are few if any death penalty cases brought there. It is also questionable if someone who kills out of rage would ever think about the consequences beforehand.  So the argument for deterrence has no basis.

Someone asked the prosecutor about why it was that in the EU (and all other civilized countries on earth) where they didn’t have the death penalty, their crime rates were so low. If the death penalty was a deterrent, one would expect these countries to have soaring murder rates while the US should be virtually free of them. However, the opposite is true. The prosecutor’s response was that these countries historically had low crime rates, so it wasn’t a valid question! I wonder what his opinion would be if he understood the law of cause and effect as taught by Lord Buddha. Could it be just the opposite, that the reason these countries have low crime rates is that they don’t practice institutionalized violence in the name of their citizens?

Several members of the American Friends Service Committee presented information they had gathered on how death row inmates are treated while awaiting execution. In Arizona they are held in administrative segregation, only allowed out of their cells for an hour or two three times a week to exercise and shower. The rest of the time they are held in their cells, including eating meals. Such isolation has been proven to cause worsening of psychological problems if already present (according to DOC data, about 16.8% of inmates have significant psychological problems) or cause them if not already present. In fact, the last execution to take place in Arizona – in 2007 – occurred after a Death Row inmate dropped all his appeals and demanded to be executed because he found life on Death Row to be so much worse than the prospect of death. In fact, there are over 1600 prisoners in Arizona who are on long-term administrative segregation, meaning over 3 months but in reality meaning at least 5 years. Last year alone 750 inmates were released from DOC directly from administrative segregation. Pleasant to contemplate, isn’t it?

Of course, there is also the problem of executing innocent people. Recently a long-time resident of Death Row was exonerated when DNA evidence showed that he did not commit the crime for which he was convicted. There are numerous stories about men who were executed who were later found to be quite innocent. Ooops!

All in all, the conference showed the futility, cruelty and ineffectiveness of the death penalty as a means of punishment and deterrence. The same sort of analysis has caused other states to abandon the death penalty, states like Minnesota and New Jersey. But the bottom line is that the chances of repealing the death penalty in Arizona are virtually nil.  The good news is that executions are on hold in most states which still maintain the death penalty (36 of them) after the recent Supreme Court decision on the unconstitutionality of lethal injections.

As Buddhists we are taught not only not to take life but to do everything in our power to promote and sustain life. Yet some of us live in states where the state has the power to take life. It is a dilemma. No one is saying that the people who commit these murders are good people or that they should be just forgiven and sent on their way, but to kill them for killing another also makes no sense and should be stopped for we all share in the karma of killing when the state does it in our name.

Palzang