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The Buddha's Amalgam Tooth Filling
I have a link to a blog entry which adds to my assertion in one of my previous posts. This link points to Zachary Burt's blog article here:- .
Hobo Monks, Essentialist Humans, and Pleasure
For years scientists have known that context shapes our appreciation of things: we feel that expensive water tastes better, even though in blind taste tests we cannot distinguish; we report that adding vinegar to beer makes it taste worse, even though if we drink it BEFORE finding out that it has vinegar, we think it tastes better. We refuse to drink soup out of a brand new hospital bedpan, even though it might be cleaner than a restaurant bowl.
Why is this? Is it because people are not rational actors?
No. It has nothing to do with rationality. Our subjective experience is shaped by memory. As we experience something, it triggers ‘hooks’ into past memories, and each memory might have an associated emotion. The hospital bedpan will trigger disgust. However, zen masters can transcend this; they have built a skill to see things for what they are, instead of letting their mind wander into associations. Consider this story from the most excellent book, Zen Flesh Zen Bones:
Tosui was a well-known Zen teacher of his time. He had lived in several temples and taught in various provinces.
The last temple he visited accumulated so many adherents that Tosui told them he was going to quit the lecture business entirely. He advised them to disperse and go wherever they desired. After that no one could find any trace of him.
Three years later one of his disciples discovered him living with some beggars under a bridge in Kyoto. He at once implored Tosui to teach him.
“If you can do as I do for even a couple days, I might,” Tosui replied.
So the former disciple dressed as a beggar and spent the day with Tosui. The following day one of the beggars died. Tosui and his pupil carried the body off at midnight and buried it on a mountainside. After that they returned to their shelter under the bridge.
Tosui slept soundly the remainder of the night, but the disciple could not sleep. When morning came Tosui said: “We do not have to beg food today. Our dead friend has left some over there.” But the disciple was unable to eat a single bite of it.
“I have said you could not do as I,” concluded Tosui. “Get out of here and do not bother me again.”
One of the tenets of many Eastern spiritual practices (as espoused by new age groups) is that often times it is not just the thing that bothers us, but our emotions about the thing. For example, we can be annoyed and stressed about a stubbed toe, instead of just experiencing the throbbing for what it is. Oppositely, we can be happy about owning a t-shirt worn by a celebrity, because our happiness derives from not only the raw value we can get from the shirt itself, but from all of these emotions we experience from the shirt.
When we feel joy about possessing Barack Obama’s used necktie, it is because we feel that the tie bears his essence. Paul Bloom’s new book, How Pleasure Works, calls this vantage point “essentialism”: we project essences onto things that we perceive, and it’s a near-universal part of being human. The world might just be a bunch of random atoms, but our minds have learned to carve our perceptions into discrete objects. In order to explain these objects, we give them essences.
Let me give an example of essentialism in action. Imagine that your favorite pet has been magically duplicated. Would you want the duplicate, or would you prefer the original? Studies predict that you would prefer the original. Why? Because the new pet doesn’t have the “essence” of the old one… somehow, it’s just not the same. There’s a logical phylogenetic (evolutionary) explanation to this one: we want to make sure that we stay bonded to creatures with whom we share genetic interests.
So maybe the advanced human can transcend essentialism. You’d definitely have a “leg up” on people less conscious of their preferences. But then again, maybe you’d end up like the monk Tosui, who lived under the bridge.
Possessing a tooth that once belonged to the Buddha does not mean that the Buddha himself is somehow present - let alone that the Buddha somehow grants kingship upon those who keep hold of his body parts.
Dead body parts do not contain any "holy essence." What "holy essence" Gautama had died with him. His teachings, however, did not die - and they are not, in themselves, holy words even if they were originally spoken by the Buddha. You can read them out loud, but they will not cause gold coins to rain down from the sky and they won't bring a dead child back to life.
What will the Buddha's words do for you?
The only way to know what good they are is to apply them to your own life. Don't have the words as a mantra and wave them in people's faces like words of the Bible or the Qur'an. Take them as instructions. Take them as perspectives. Live according to the precepts of the Fourfold Noble Truths and the Eightfold Noble Path: not because I say so, or because the Buddha once said so, or even because you're curious to see what will happen.
Follow them because they make sense to you. If the words don't make sense to you, don't follow them. Go and look for something else that makes sense for you today.
Following the Buddhist path won't turn you into a superhuman. You won't turn into Jet Li or Jackie Chan, and you won't change outwardly much at all. Well, maybe get a little thinner and a bit scruffier, and maybe a bit healthier - looking. But you won't grow a third eye in the middle of your forehead or grow six arms, and you will not be able to sit in the lotus position if you couldn't do it before.
(More to the point, you don't ever need to learn how to sit in lotus to gain enlightenment. Posture is no prerequisite to enlightenment - only to efficient meditation practice.)
Robert Pirsig said "The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there." Which should give the more astute among you a clue as to the only place where you can find the "holy essence" of Buddha in this day and age. Not in red, yellow or orange robes; not in shaved heads, or begging with a bowl on the street; not in chanting prayers out loud for the sake of it.
Live by the truths you hold dear. Don't wave the words in the air like a mantra. Just let them become part of you.
It's all really as simple as that. Why do people try to make things more complicated?
Hobo Monks, Essentialist Humans, and Pleasure
For years scientists have known that context shapes our appreciation of things: we feel that expensive water tastes better, even though in blind taste tests we cannot distinguish; we report that adding vinegar to beer makes it taste worse, even though if we drink it BEFORE finding out that it has vinegar, we think it tastes better. We refuse to drink soup out of a brand new hospital bedpan, even though it might be cleaner than a restaurant bowl.
Why is this? Is it because people are not rational actors?
No. It has nothing to do with rationality. Our subjective experience is shaped by memory. As we experience something, it triggers ‘hooks’ into past memories, and each memory might have an associated emotion. The hospital bedpan will trigger disgust. However, zen masters can transcend this; they have built a skill to see things for what they are, instead of letting their mind wander into associations. Consider this story from the most excellent book, Zen Flesh Zen Bones:
Tosui was a well-known Zen teacher of his time. He had lived in several temples and taught in various provinces.
The last temple he visited accumulated so many adherents that Tosui told them he was going to quit the lecture business entirely. He advised them to disperse and go wherever they desired. After that no one could find any trace of him.
Three years later one of his disciples discovered him living with some beggars under a bridge in Kyoto. He at once implored Tosui to teach him.
“If you can do as I do for even a couple days, I might,” Tosui replied.
So the former disciple dressed as a beggar and spent the day with Tosui. The following day one of the beggars died. Tosui and his pupil carried the body off at midnight and buried it on a mountainside. After that they returned to their shelter under the bridge.
Tosui slept soundly the remainder of the night, but the disciple could not sleep. When morning came Tosui said: “We do not have to beg food today. Our dead friend has left some over there.” But the disciple was unable to eat a single bite of it.
“I have said you could not do as I,” concluded Tosui. “Get out of here and do not bother me again.”
One of the tenets of many Eastern spiritual practices (as espoused by new age groups) is that often times it is not just the thing that bothers us, but our emotions about the thing. For example, we can be annoyed and stressed about a stubbed toe, instead of just experiencing the throbbing for what it is. Oppositely, we can be happy about owning a t-shirt worn by a celebrity, because our happiness derives from not only the raw value we can get from the shirt itself, but from all of these emotions we experience from the shirt.
When we feel joy about possessing Barack Obama’s used necktie, it is because we feel that the tie bears his essence. Paul Bloom’s new book, How Pleasure Works, calls this vantage point “essentialism”: we project essences onto things that we perceive, and it’s a near-universal part of being human. The world might just be a bunch of random atoms, but our minds have learned to carve our perceptions into discrete objects. In order to explain these objects, we give them essences.
Let me give an example of essentialism in action. Imagine that your favorite pet has been magically duplicated. Would you want the duplicate, or would you prefer the original? Studies predict that you would prefer the original. Why? Because the new pet doesn’t have the “essence” of the old one… somehow, it’s just not the same. There’s a logical phylogenetic (evolutionary) explanation to this one: we want to make sure that we stay bonded to creatures with whom we share genetic interests.
So maybe the advanced human can transcend essentialism. You’d definitely have a “leg up” on people less conscious of their preferences. But then again, maybe you’d end up like the monk Tosui, who lived under the bridge.
Possessing a tooth that once belonged to the Buddha does not mean that the Buddha himself is somehow present - let alone that the Buddha somehow grants kingship upon those who keep hold of his body parts.
Dead body parts do not contain any "holy essence." What "holy essence" Gautama had died with him. His teachings, however, did not die - and they are not, in themselves, holy words even if they were originally spoken by the Buddha. You can read them out loud, but they will not cause gold coins to rain down from the sky and they won't bring a dead child back to life.
What will the Buddha's words do for you?
The only way to know what good they are is to apply them to your own life. Don't have the words as a mantra and wave them in people's faces like words of the Bible or the Qur'an. Take them as instructions. Take them as perspectives. Live according to the precepts of the Fourfold Noble Truths and the Eightfold Noble Path: not because I say so, or because the Buddha once said so, or even because you're curious to see what will happen.
Follow them because they make sense to you. If the words don't make sense to you, don't follow them. Go and look for something else that makes sense for you today.
Following the Buddhist path won't turn you into a superhuman. You won't turn into Jet Li or Jackie Chan, and you won't change outwardly much at all. Well, maybe get a little thinner and a bit scruffier, and maybe a bit healthier - looking. But you won't grow a third eye in the middle of your forehead or grow six arms, and you will not be able to sit in the lotus position if you couldn't do it before.
(More to the point, you don't ever need to learn how to sit in lotus to gain enlightenment. Posture is no prerequisite to enlightenment - only to efficient meditation practice.)
Robert Pirsig said "The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there." Which should give the more astute among you a clue as to the only place where you can find the "holy essence" of Buddha in this day and age. Not in red, yellow or orange robes; not in shaved heads, or begging with a bowl on the street; not in chanting prayers out loud for the sake of it.
Live by the truths you hold dear. Don't wave the words in the air like a mantra. Just let them become part of you.
It's all really as simple as that. Why do people try to make things more complicated?