Inner And Outer Practice

I think that inwardly Zen is the answer whereas outwardly unorthodox Trotskyism is the answer. There are parallels between inner and outer practices. On the one hand, supreme enlightenment has not yet been realized and the working class has not yet taken complete control. On the other hand, there is always something to be done by individuals and groups here and now.

Currently, politically, we are in a race against time. We know that each of us will die some time. Spiritually, I think, the question is: how far can we progress in meditation between now and then? (That is not the right way to put it but there is no right way to put it.) Physically, we need to leave a planet for future generations whether or not those generations are going to include rebirths of our individual karmas, which I do not believe.

Causes And Mechanisms

The Buddha taught that the cause of suffering was mental grasping.

I agree that it is the psychological cause but there are also physical causes.

Darwin found that the mechanism of biological change was natural selection.

Marx found that the mechanism of historical change was class struggle.

Mental grasping and class struggle directly affect us now.

Class society is about to change the environment faster than human beings will be able to adapt to it.

Comrade Chloe

Chloe, if you have found your way to this blog, now go to its earliest post, "Zen Marxism," here.

If you want to get in touch but have any problems using the combox, which might happen, then you can email: paulshackley2017@gmail.com

Eight Syntheses

Terminology
"Yoga is control of thoughts," i.e., meditation.
Karma = action.
Ch'an/Zen = Meditation.
Tao = the Way, based on negation and interaction between opposites.
Shinto = Way of the Gods.
Dialectics = interaction between opposites.
Materialism = "Being determines consciousness."

India
Jain soul pluralist asceticism;
Carvaka materialist hedonism;
Buddhist "no soul" middle way.

Yoga;
caste duty;
karma yoga.

China and Japan
Buddhism;
Taoism;
Ch'an Buddhism;
Shinto nature mysticism;
Zen Buddhism.

Europe
Hegelian dialectics;
Feuerbachian materialism;
Marxist dialectical materialism.

Utopian socialism;
political economy;
scientific socialism.

Dialectical materialism;
scientific socialism;
Marxism.

Eurasia
Zen meditation;
Marxism;
Zen Marxism.

The Eight Syntheses
Buddhism
karma yoga
Ch'an
Zen
dialectical materialism
scientific socialism
Marxism
Zen Marxism

From India: Buddhism and karma yoga.
From China and Japan: a refinement of Buddhism.
From Europe: Marxism, synthesizing two syntheses.

Zen Marxism synthesizes Zen and Marxism and updates the two Indian syntheses.

Interface

Individual consciousness is an interface between dynamic natural and social environments and unconscious biological and psychological processes. At the interface, external events meet incomprehensible motivations. We learn about current affairs from television and about mental processes through meditation. Many groups in different ways address the problems of self and society, respectively. I happen to think that the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives and the Socialist Workers Party get it right for their respective halves of the total picture. What matters is not that others agree with me - they don't - but that everyone makes their own assessment. Let's not sleep walk into oblivion but try to understand and respond to the problems.

Some Buddhists claim not just theory or doctrine but knowledge of postmortem mental states whereas scientific knowledge of brain states entails that they cause mental states. I accept scientific knowledge but am open to learning about meditative experience.

An Apparent Contradiction

Zen monks look within, work on the self and practice acceptance whereas revolutionary socialists look without, act in society and practice resistance. These two ways of life are not only entirely dissimilar but also apparently contradictory. However, I believe that:

reality is one, therefore both "inner" and "outer";
both work on the self and action in society are necessary;
acceptance and resistance have to be two sides of a single coin.

We accept some aspects of reality but change others. Thus:

we accept that we need food but have changed the ways that we produce it;
we accept the law of gravity but have learned how to fly.

Inwardly, accept and let go of a personal past.
Politically, understand and resist current oppression.
We are Arjuna and the class struggle is the battlefield of Kurukshetra.

The Highest Synthesis

Indian Philosophy
Karma is action.

Patanjali
Yoga is meditation.

Krishna
Karma yoga synthesizes action with meditation.

The Buddha
Dhyana/Ch'an/Zen is meditation.
Buddhist "no soul" teaching is a middle way between materialism and soul pluralism.
Buddhist "emptiness" teaching is dialectical.
Buddhist precepts are a middle way between hedonism and asceticism.
Buddhist "working meditation" is karma yoga.
Ch'an Buddhism synthesizes Buddhism with Taoism.
Zen Buddhism synthesizes Ch'an Buddhism with Shinto nature mysticism.

Hegel
Dialectics is interaction between opposites;
                   thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

Marx
Scientific socialism synthesizes economics with socialism.
Dialectical materialism synthesizes dialectics with materialism.
Marxism synthesizes scientific socialism with dialectical materialism.
It is neither mechanical materialism nor utopian socialism.

Zen Marxism is:
karma yoga;
a modernized middle way;
a higher philosophical synthesis than Hegelian dialectical idealism.

When Meditating

When meditating:

sit still;
accept what is;
do not add to it;
let go;
learn.

Metaphorically:

drain the inner swamp.

Be pure consciousness, not a motivated organism.

This accords with the Yoga Sutras:

Yoga is control of thoughts.
Then, man abides in his real nature.
Otherwise, he remains identified with thoughts.
They are controlled by practice and nonattachment.

NOTE: "...accept what is..." inwardly, not politically. Do not accept:

economic austerity;
public spending cuts;
racism;
immigration controls;
anti-union laws;
wars;
pollution;
poverty.

Agenda

I was brought up and educated by people who took for granted that I ought to conform, compete and succeed. I had no inclination to do any of that but it took me a long time to realize what I should have been doing instead. A better agenda would have been: change society and self. I had some idea of self-change but it was distorted by the religious indoctrination which was massively inconsistent: issues of religious belief and practice are ultimately serious but don't take them too seriously - unless you become a priest, in which case you are compartmentalized and pigeonholed for the rest of your life. We were told answers before we knew what the questions were.

Of course, in zazen, we do not act on the self to change it. We are merely aware of it. However, the transition from unawareness to awareness is itself a change. We do not try to change ourselves but do in fact change as a result of the practice. However, the change is usually gradual and not externally measurable. Merely to talk about it is to invite the reply that there is no discernible change and there is no need to deny that.

Meanwhile, acting collectively to change society is a matter of urgency. But we do this with others who agree that it is necessary. We do not argue with those who meditate that they should instead be changing society or vice versa. And it can take decades to realize this. But life was not designed for our convenience. It merely happened.

Stages Of Psychological And Social Development

Consciousness
animal
unrealized
realized

Inherited animal motivations, necessary for survival, impede realization of enlightenment unless they are understood and controlled.

Society
no surplus
a small surplus unequally distributed
a large surplus unequally distributed
a large surplus equally distributed

Inherited competitive accumulation, necessary when the surplus was small, prevents equal distribution of a now large surplus.

Both psychologically and socially, an earlier necessity becomes a later hindrance and generates an intermediate stage. Most human beings have unenlightened motivations but the potential for enlightenment. Society has continued poverty but the potential for global wealth.

The optimum state is realized individuals in an equal society.

The Purpose Of Life?

What is the purpose of life?

Life was not designed but evolved so it has no purpose.


Is survival not its purpose?

It has no purpose. Some organisms survive longer than others because they are better able to survive in their environment but survival is not their purpose. All organisms die but death is not their purpose.


Why do conscious beings have purposes?

Organisms were naturally selected for sensitivity to environmental alterations.
Therefore, sensitivity quantitatively increased until it was qualitatively transformed into sensation.
Then, sensation was selected because pleasure and pain have survival value.
Therefore, survival and pleasure are purposes of conscious organisms but not of life.

So we have purposes although we do not exist to fulfill any purpose?

Yes.

What purposes should human beings pursue?

"And it harm no one, do what thou wilt."

But what needs to be done? (Lenin: What Is To Be Done?)

Self-conscious purposive individuals exist only in social relationships so the question, "What is to be done about human life?" divides into "What is to be done about consciousness?" and "What is to be done about society?"


Well, what is to be done about them, then?

Many answers are given but I think that the most helpful are Zen for consciousness and Marxism for society. Zen is practice of immediate awareness without a future goal whereas Marxist practice is purposive and aims to make itself redundant.

I am thinking of Rev W, a Zen monk, and Comrade M, a revolutionary socialist who left the organization because of problems last year. These men seem to have nothing in common and even to be opposites in many respects but both addressed the question, "What is to be done?" The logic of changing society is to change mental states and vice versa although those who approach the question from opposite ends rarely meet.

Capitalism

Capitalism:

is competitive accumulation of the surplus value that is produced after labor has reproduced its value;

cannot coexist either with the earlier modes of production that it replaced or with socialism, which would be cooperative production for the satisfaction of needs and the realization of potentials;

needs armed states to enforce property laws and to defend resources, trade routes and markets;

is compatible with either political democracy or military dictatorship;

is market capitalism when companies sell commodities;

is state capitalism when states accumulate surplus value in order to compete militarily against each other;

is a mixed economy when the market is subsidized by state control of essential industries, like public transport moving workers to where they produce or consume;

involves cooperation within organizations and in society as a whole but competition between companies for profits, between workers for employment and between states for their economic and strategic interests;

revolutionizes technology through competitive reinvestment which, however, decreases profit rates, thus causing slumps;

simultaneously creates both wealth and poverty;

causes an ineradicable boom-slump cycle, monopolies, wars, waste, extreme inequality, corruption, pollution, sexual oppression and scapegoating of social minorities;

will exist until it destroys itself or is overthrown.

Living In The Present

We all live now, in the present, but we let the past divide us. An inherited economic system, national loyalties and religious traditions divide people against each other. Guilt, regret and resentment divide an individual against himself. Attachment to the past is alienation from the present.

At the moment when we wake each morning, none of us has a nationality or religion. A moment later, we remember that we have been, eg, British and Christian and therefore think that that is what we still are. If memories could be modified during sleep, then we would, after waking up, think that we were instead, eg, Egyptian and Muslim. 

Many people perceive the contradiction between the potential of the present and the legacy of the past but respond in different ways. Political activity addresses social divisions. Spiritual practice addresses psychological divisions. Political activity includes building the revolutionary party. Thus, there is an organization called "the Party" which is not yet a mass revolutionary organization but is trying to become that. Most of the time, the Party is uniquely disliked, even hated, by:

the economic rulers of society;
their managers and administrators;
public opinion - because the ruling ideas are those of the ruling class;
the bureaucratic labour movement which is incorporated into present society and therefore opposes independent working class action;
others on the left who resent any one organization claiming that it is even potentially the one that can lead social transformation;
campaigners on particular issues who resent the Party's generalization from those issues.

Thus, the Party agrees that racism, sexual oppression, war, poverty, pollution and nuclear weapons should be opposed but insists that these are aspects of a single problem that can be solved only by the revolutionary transformation of society.

Since the Party's ideas in fact reflect real conflicts, these ideas can lead social transformation when the majority seeks a genuine alternative but, most of the time, the Party engages with particular struggles and recruits a minority.

The Basic Question

The most basic inner question for every human being is variously formulated in accordance with differing worldviews:

What is our relationship to God?
Can we realise our oneness with all things?
Can we be unalienated and self-realised?
Are we happy with how things are?

These questions refer to states of consciousness. Our consciousness originated as a by-product of natural selection. (Sensitivity, selected, increased until it became sensation which was then selected because pleasure and pain have survival-value.) Thus, consciousness began as, metaphorically, a means to survival but became, literally, an end in itself. Means presuppose ends which presuppose consciousness. Therefore, consciousness cannot be a literal means.

It is not universally recognised that the conditions necessary for self-consciousness include social interaction. Thus, each Jain monk practises asceticism in order to free his discrete, pre-existent, self-sufficient soul from any further incarnations whereas an organisation of revolutionary socialists engages in collective struggles that can potentially free society from class conflict and alienation. Therefore, Jainism and Marxism are antithetical. However, the latter can be synthesised with Buddhist meditation which:

is a middle way between asceticism and hedonism;
is based on the recognition that consciousness is caused by the temporary coming together of disparate elements, not by the eternal existence of individual souls.

Three Old Questions

Questions

(i) What is the best way to organize society in the interests of all its members?

(ii) How can individuals understand and control their mental processes and respond more appropriately to each other?

(iii) How do (i) and (ii) connect?

Comments

(i) Currently, there are some irreconcilable conflicts of interest. How can society be freed from them? Re-organising society has to involve every member of society, not a programme enforced by a minority. Universal suffrage in Parliamentary elections is a first step but only one step. Collective action has to replace the individual illiteracy of writing an "X".

(ii) Unless we are hermits, all of us interact with other individuals. In addition, if we address (i) with political activity, then we need to respond both to comrades and to opponents, so (ii) is relevant to (i). Personal political interactions can be lethal.

(iii) I think that everyone needs to address both (i) and (ii) and how to relate them.

Brian Aldiss and Karl Marx

Rereading a Poul Anderson novel in order to discuss it on the Poul Anderson Appreciation Blog, I found an Introduction by Brian Aldiss, to the Master SF Series edition, that is relevant here. In the novel, the IQ of every animal and human being on Earth suddenly increases.

Aldiss, discussing means of attempted self-enhancement, therapy, Eastern religions, drugs and "the State", describes Marx's prediction that the State would wither away as foolish. (1)

By quoting Marx and Engels in State and Revolution, Lenin shows that bourgeois and bureaucratic states must be overthrown by the qualitatively different workers' state which will then wither away. Familiar states are instruments of coercion by a small social minority over the vast majority. A workers' state, for the first time in history an instrument of coercion by the majority over a recently dispossessed minority, will have no reason to remain in existence when the dispossessed minority has failed to reproduce itself as a class but it would be foolish indeed to predict that "the State" as we know it will ever wither away.

Aldiss, Brian, "Introduction" IN Anderson, Poul, Brain Wave, London, 1976, AT pp. 5-8, p. 5.

Society and Psychology

A comrade addresses our social problems by speaking at a meeting and opposing economic exploitation. A Zen trainee addresses his psychological states by facing a wall and understanding mental processes. These are responses to issues that are interconnected but on different levels, "outer" and "inner." The best people that I know include Party comrades and Zen trainees.

By meditating facing a wall, I realize that I have been almost completely wrong and mistaken:

insufficiently attentive to interpersonal and social interactions;
unempathetic and uncompassionate;
accepting and defending a belief merely because I had been indoctrinated in it;
thinking that merely abstract reasoning would resolve major issues about reality, society and morality;
entirely abstract and theoretical in outlook;
responding and behaving neither honestly nor spontaneously but in accordance with an idea of what was expected;
not addressing practical issues earlier in life because accustomed to someone else, adults, controlling and dictating (as an adult, I now fundamentally disagree with their beliefs and values);
not appreciating the value of study until a very late stage of education;
attending to issues that happened to interest me but not to other issues that were equally important.

I could have wound up as a celibate priest or bachelor and absent-minded academic. Fortunately, wider reading, marriage, family life, unemployment, political activity, other kinds of work, professional retraining and meditative practice, in other words life, intervened.

We can and must disagree about the state of society but each must attend to his mental states. I was brought up to confess sins to a priest or, in the absence of a priest, to God. I now think in terms of actions and consequences, not of sins (Buddhist, not Biblical, teaching), and attend to them myself although without any quick absolution.

Social Karma

My karma is my action or behaviour. How I tend to act, have acted and still act. Karma matters because actions have consequences. I realise that my actions have been unwise and uncompassionate and accept a responsibility to "cleanse my karma" by acting in accordance with meditative insights. However, not all karma is mine. Each of us survives early childhood only because of the actions of adults. We are fed, taught and socialised. I was also indoctrinated, pressured, bullied and intimidated. Many of my actions were reactions to theirs. Thus, I tended to be solitary and resented being condemned as unsociable.

I cannot cleanse the karma of others. Bodhisattvas act for the enlightenment of all living beings but most living beings will not noticeably approach the realisation of their enlightenment in our life times. Politics addresses action collectively, not individually. We struggle to build an association for the free development of each. Thus, each will be responsible for his own actions but will not be impeded, indoctrinated or intimidated by the actions of others. This is probably as much as we can do to address the fact that many of our problems are caused by the actions of others.  

Practice of Consciousness

Thesis: Organismic sensitivity is necessary for consciousness.
Antithesis: The organismic responses of self-preservation and the pursuit of pleasure hinder the further development of consciousness.
Synthesis: The practice of consciousness, meditation, addresses hindrances to the development of consciousness.

Starting to address hindrances is as far as some of us have got. Imagine an entire planet whose entire population comprises only individuals whose consciousness and understanding of their natural and social environments is no longer impeded by any attachments, favoured self-images, uncontrolled thought processes, exclusivist loyalties, desire for self-promotion or self-aggrandisement, indoctrination, prejudice, divisive dogmatism etc, a planet where everyone realises, "I am a transient psychophysical organism sharing this environment with every other organism. I no longer identify myself with a particular religious tradition or armed nation-state perceived as in conflict with others. I aim to learn, work, contribute and share in social wealth but not to promote my individual interests or prestige at the expense of anyone else."

I believe that this outcome is possible but not that it will be reached by persuading millions to meditate - unless, of course, every individual member of the economic ruling class were to realise that they should abdicate power and should work to replace competitive accumulation with cooperation for need. It is far more likely that the majority will have to dispossess them. 

Meditating Matter

There is no one else here. I am alone facing a wall. Does anyone watch while we meditate? Potential watchers:

named gods like Indra and Krishna are myths;
unknown gods are hypothetical and must be presumed non-existent until proved existent;
the historical Buddha was a man and died a long time ago (we know him through his teaching; he does not know us; according to the teaching, he has not been reborn);
the cosmic Buddha is a principle;
the Buddha within is a potential;
neither is a person or conscious subject;
Jesus was another man who died a long time ago;
omniscience is arguably impossible (see below).

Jesus' disciples believed that he had been resurrected but their proclamation is insufficient reason for us to believe this. Like Krishna, he is sometimes vividly imagined. Thus, he has passed not from death to immortality but from history to myth. Therefore, we are not watched by gods, Buddhas, Jesus or any omniscient deity. 

No one is omniscient. Self is known only by contrast with other. Other is recognised as such only when it has been perceived and re-perceived, then recognised as having continued to exist independently of self between perception and re-perception. The consequent distinction between present and remembered perceptions entails an unknown future. Subjects of consciousness necessarily perceive an objective realm which is mostly unknown. No omniscient deity watches us meditate. 

Did gods give humanity reason and morality? Mythically, yes. Biologically, both the ability to reason and concern for others were naturally selected. Reasoning about the environment has obvious survival value. Our earliest ancestors were social, therefore motivated by collective, not just individual, self-interest. Also, we help others either because they bear the same genes or because they might help us in return. Psychologically, we experience that motivation as moral obligation. 

Society imposes on individuals both acceptable behaviour and linguistic usage. Sexual taboos prevented in-breeding, then patriarchal monogamy preserved property. Individuals internalise shame as guilt and speech as thought. Thus, we are variously motivated by reason, collective and individual self-interest, social pressure, shame, guilt and moral obligation. Morality is conceptualised and even experienced as divine commands. However, biological motivation preceded religious imagination. Socialised language-users personified and addressed their environment. Because human beings become self-conscious persons only in interpersonal interactions, they projected personal relationships onto the heavens.

    

Socially, we are both subjects and objects of consciousness. Immature subjects are conscious of being objects. Immature behaviour is for an audience or a camera. Mature subjects are simply conscious. Meditation is pure subjectivity or spirituality, without shame or deliberate thought. We neither perform for an audience nor address a deity. Thus, we begin to observe self dispassionately. I am accountable for my actions but not to anyone watching me meditate. I must address my states of consciousness. Painful memories are consequences of past actions, karma. The consequences are present but the bad karma can remain past. There is guilt only as consciousness of consequences. The Western Paradise may be Earth seen differently. Samsara is Nirvana. To use theistic language metaphorically, the Kingdom is within. We are not going anywhere. We are here. 

In purely secular terms, we are not there yet but have a long way to go. However, the potential for socialised production and distribution of abundant wealth is present. Rosa Luxemburg wrote:

"Being human means throwing your whole life on the scales of destiny when need be, all the while rejoicing in every sunny day and every beautiful cloud."

Trotsky, contemplating green grass and blue sky, wrote:

"Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, violence and oppression and enjoy it to the full." 

The present is the now of individual awareness and the time for collective action, a cross-roads and meeting place between meditation and revolution. (The Christian cross symbolises an eternal-temporal intersection but also a barbaric blood sacrifice. We can incorporate some though not all aspects of Christian mythology into a coherent world view with more effective symbols: 

(the seated Buddha;
yin-yang;
Thor's hammer;
the fish;
the clenched fist...)