Revisiting Tit-For-Tat

Tit-For-Tat as a strategy was hailed in the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma (IPD) tournament of Axelrod (see Wikipedia background) as showing that altruism can be a product of evolution (Games People Play and How Nice Guys Finish First):

"Axelrod discovered that when these encounters were repeated over a long period of time with many players, each with different strategies, greedy strategies tended to do very poorly in the long run while more altruistic strategies did better, as judged purely by self-interest. He used this to show a possible mechanism for the evolution of altruistic behavior from mechanisms that are initially purely selfish, by natural selection."

I return to this topic for two reasons.

The first is when I found the software SciLab, the closest thing to MatLab and free as in free beer. SciLab is not a clone of MatLab, but translation from MatLab is relatively easy (there is function mfile2sci in SciLab to do it). I used MatLab before, and I was glad to use open source SciLab.

So the first thing I did was translate the MatLab codes which I got from Iterated prisoner’s dilemma in MATLAB into SciLab and run the tournament.

SciLab is now, together with paper & pen and Microsoft Excel, my favourite tools for doing Mathematics. Sage and Mathematica, although very powerful, are not as handy.

The second reason is the problem of reconciling Tit-For-Tat with Buddhist views.
Tit-For-Tat is said to be nice, forgiving, non-envious, but it also retaliates. It is the last attribute retaliation which is questionable from the Buddhist standpoint.
Tit-For-Tat will never defect first, but it will punish opponent's defection.
The idea of punishment is not acceptable in Buddhism.

Closer examination makes it clear that in the IPD setup, no communication between the players is possible. Hence we can say that IPD is not a realistic model of human interaction.
If communication were possible, it would be used first to reason with the opponent, but then it would not be IPD.
Nevertheless, although IPD is not a realistic model, it does at least show the possibility of the evolution of altruism.

A similar conclusion is reached when reading the New Scientist article Religion is a product of evolution, software suggests.
While the conclusion that religion is an emergent mental artifact of our evolution is quite plausible, the model is simply too crude and unrealistic. Incidentally the software is written in SciLab: SciLab program to simulate the evolution of religion

Link: Blog entries on game theory

Against Doctrines

"Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. Buddhist systems of thought are guiding means; they are not absolute truth."

This is the first guideline of Thich Nhat Hanh's 14 guidelines of Engaged Buddhism.
I came across it in Dialogic.
The author Thivai Abhor is right that the guidelines are really guidelines and not commandments. When there is no doctrine, there is no extremism and there are no claims to absolute truth.
Buddhist systems of thoughts are guiding means. Everything else is experienced from practice. And when we don't know (e.g the answers to difficult metaphysics), we simply say we don't know, and keep our minds open. To believe then is simply to make a hypothesis, ready to be ejected if found wrong.

It is very refreshing to read Thich Nhat Hanh again, when there is so much extremism around.

Forms of Devotion

This year, I couldn't attend the Vesak (Waisak) celebrations, so I went to the Atthami Visakka Puja instead. Atthami Visakkha means the eighth day after Vesak. Vesak is mostly a morning event, Atthami Visakkha is an evening event.

After the usual rituals, there was meditation, followed by a Dhamma talk.
People sit in rooms, terraces, and gardens under the trees and under the moon.
Everyone carried a candle, an incense, and a fragrant flower (Polianthes tuberose, see wiki and image below)
The chanting together of thousands of people was especially powerful.
On this occasion, the meditation was a short Metta Bhavana (Loving Kindness meditation). It went something (abbreviated) like this: May all beings, in all directions, visible or invisible, devas and other beings, may they be free from greed and attachments, may they be free from hate and anger, may they be free from ignorance and spiritual darkness, may they be free from suffering, and may they be blessed with happiness.
(Actually we start with ourselves first and then extend to others.)

In the Dhamma talk by Sri Paññavaro Mahathera, he said that there are many forms of devotion to Buddha.
The following are my own paraphrasing and examples, not Sri Paññavaro's.

One form could be day to day mindfulness of our thoughts, actions and feelings. The source of greed and hate are often pleasure and displeasure, hence we should be particularly mindful when we feel pleasure and displeasure. We could enjoy sitting in front of the computer all day, blogging, surfing, programming or game playing, that it became an attachment.
We were upset when we heard Sharon Stone's silly remark on karma.
But mindfulness should prevent us from getting angry, and we are no longer upset. Even better, mindfulness could prevent us from getting upset in the first place.

Mindfulness can be cultivated so that it is present most of the time.

Mindfulness in Buddhism is always connected to (it includes) clear comprehension, see e.g. Debugging mind viruses: Clear Comprehension, which is a little different from non-Buddhist mindfulness.

Sri Paññavaro went on to touch on environmental issues, everybody could contribute a little by not littering, not using our private cars at least once a day in a week, not leaving the lights on when not used, not connecting to the internet when not needed, not to cut down a tree without replacing it with another tree. All these are simple little things which anyone can do, and which will have a great effect if added up.

All the above examples are forms of devotion to the teachings of the Buddha.

Dalai Lama reiterates resignation threat over Tibet

The Buddhist Channel reported the reiteration of The Dalai Lama's threat to resign (as Dalai Lama) if violence in Tibet spiraled out of control.

He also makes it clear that he is not seeking independence for Tibet and that he supports the Olympics.

"The whole world knows the Dalai Lama is not seeking independence or separation," the Dalai Lama said. "If violence become out of control, then my only option is resign - I want to repeat that.

"If the majority of people commit violently, then I will resign."

His position is to make it clear that he is concerned with the human condition of the Tibetan people, but distancing himself from the practical politics of some groups seeking independence for Tibet, and from the radical groups of people who are willing to use violence.

Related:

• Difference between Myanmar and Tibet
• In Tibetan Monasteries, the Heavy Hand of the Party
• Locals left confused by unruly monks
• Buddhist Chief High Priest of Malaysia Venerable Reverend K. Sri Dhammaratana on Olympic torch run
• Dalai Lama: An Appeal To All Chinese Spiritual Brothers And Sisters
• Living buddha: Dalai Lama's claim of cultural genocide in Tibet untenable
• Chinese Dismayed by Tales of Tibet Violence - WSJ.com

Difference between Myanmar and Tibet

The protests in Myanmar were peaceful. In contrast the Tibetans were rioting with a lot of violence resulting in considerable damages and lost of lives.

The Tibetans may claim to be followers of the Dalai Lama, but the Dalai Lama has always preached non-violence. He has never called for Tibetan cessation from China. His concern is for the preservation of Tibetan culture and traditions.

Here is what Phallop Thaiarry, secretary-general of the World Fellowship of Buddhists has to say:
"The monks who participated in the recent Lhasa riot should go back to the monasteries and restudy the doctrines of Buddhism,"
"Buddha taught us to show respect for people, live in harmony and conduct no violence," he said. "But I learnt from the media that some people in monk gowns smashed property, hurt people and burned buildings, which is not in conformity with the Buddhist commandments."

He believed "the majority of Tibetan monks strictly followed Buddhist doctrines, and only a few misunderstood and misused their identity during the riot."

New Findings on Loving Kindness Meditation

Benefits of meditation have often been reported, see e.g. Meditation increases grey matter in right hemisphere of the brain.

Benefits range from concentration, stress reduction, to increases in the brain's grey matter.

These results have been associated mostly with Vipassana or mindfulness meditation.

For Metta Bhavana (Loving Kindness Meditation) no such study has been made until recently, a group of neuro-scientists wrote a paper " Regulation of the Neural Circuitry of Emotion by Compassion Meditation: Effects of Meditative Expertise"

They used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques to show increase activity in insula due to meditation training.

The result was also reported in the Scientific American article "Meditate on This: You Can Learn to Be More Compassionate"

It indicates that it might be possible for compassion and loving-kindness to be learned. Buddhists have always believe that we can develop our mental faculties, including compassion, like we build our muscles.

Metta Bhavana is one of the cornerstones of Buddhist meditation, in the Theravada and the Mahayana traditions. It complements Samatha and Vipassana meditation. Samatha aims at tranquility and leads to Jhanas, Vipassana leads to Insight and Purification. Metta Bhavana tenderizes the heart and develops good-will, it can be practiced separately or together with the other types of meditation. Many schools teach all three types of meditation.

Some Guided Metta meditation tapes:

• Loving-kindness Meditation - Ven. Pannyavaro: loving1.mp3 714 KB Instruction, loving2.mp3 482 KB A Guided Meditation

• Guided Meditations with Malcolm Huxter: [31,293 KB] Guided Loving-kindness Meditation
  

• Gil Fronsdal Guided Meta Meditation

• Meta Meditation by Thubten Chodron in rm format

Related: When we wish happiness for all.....

Barendregt's Cover-Up Model of the Mind

Henk Barendregt (homepage ) is widely known for his work in Lambda Calculus and Type Theory, less known is his writings on Insight Meditation.

He used reflection without interference to observe his own mind, and the Cover-Up Model is the outcome of such experience. Reflection without interference is practiced in Insight or Vipassana Meditation.

He discovered three important characteristics of the Mind confirming what others have also experienced:

1. it is constantly fluctuating
2. it is unbearable
3. it is not under our control

Buddhists recognize these as the three characteristics of all things. The first is impermanence (anicca). The second is dukkha (sometimes is translated as suffering), which Barendregt prefers to think as akin to the emptiness of extentialism or nausea. The third states that the mind is not under our control, in fact there is no central control as in the Cartesian doctrine. Since self is the illusion of such central control, the third characteristic is usually called anatta no-self.

The Cover-Up model says that we will always try to avoid the nausea by covering it up. Cover-up can take the form of feelings and thoughts: positive thinking, pleasure seeking, distractions (talking, watching TV, eating, etc), mysticism and many others. Meditation which only makes us relaxed or happy but does not lead insight is also a form of Cover-Up.

Cover-up does not handle the nausea directly, it just makes it less visible (for a while). The nausea appears hidden when we cover-up, we become ignorant of it.
However Cover-Up does not last forever, and we will have to constantly make ourselves busy to do it.
The analogue is when we sit for a long time, and feel uncomfortable, we change our posture, until we feel uncomfortable again.
In contrast to Cover-up, the real way to cope with nausea directly is the path of purification through mindfulness. There is a nice picture of this practice in a poster by Barendregt.

The explanation of why mindfulness works leads us to the Abhidhamma model
of the ancient Buddhist tradition (Tipitaka). According to the Abhidhamma, the stream of consciousness is discrete, basically serial but with parallel sub-branches.

Barendregt claims that the Cover-up model can be translated in terms of the Abhidhamma model.

Links:

• The cover-up model of the mind (revision 2, influenced by Abhidhamma) Utrecht, 25.09.2004.
• The cover-up model of the mind (revision 1) Stirling, 11.06.2004.
• The cover-up model of the mind Based on trained experimental phenomenology
• The Abhidhamma Model of the Mind Utrecht, 30.09.2006.
• Reflection and its use: from Science to Meditation
• The Ancient Theory of Mind Lecture at Harvard (October 2001)
• Mind-Brain-Mindfulness

The Art of Making Our Lives Difficult

Does Tao mean going with the flow, while Buddhist practices often are practices of making our live difficult? We examine by comparing Taoism and Buddhism.

The Chinese are often considered incomprehensible because they have a triad of beliefs, they have three 'religions': Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. The three have a lot in common, and sometimes they complement each other, but at times they contradict each other.
How can one have beliefs which are (partially) contradictory. Either the Chinese are illogical, or they tolerate a greater amount of inconsistency than the average people. Actually everybody have inconsistencies, and it is not always bad to be inconsistent.

I am not going to go into a general discussion of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism here.
But just for a summary, Confucianism believes in order and rationality in society. Order (and discipline and some rituals) is necessary, children must learn it. But order can become outdated, and leads to conservatism. Worse, rituals are often observed just for rituals sake.

Taoism's keyword is harmony with nature. It is also order, but it believes in the natural flow of things. Order comes from spontaneous action.

Buddhism brings a new element, dukkha, which means that nature is basically chaotic, and we need to practice control of chaos.
Out of the three characteristics in Buddhism, change, no-self, and incompleteness, Taoism shares the first two but not the third. On no-self, Taoism believes that self is a product of our thinking, and like Zen, it considers thinking as a hindrance.

In analogy, the difference between Confucianism and Taoism on the one side and Buddhism on the other is like classical, non-chaotic physics and modern physics or chaotic world models. Buddhism recognizes dukkha as fundamental in nature, manifesting itself as suffering, dissatisfaction, Gödel's incompleteness in logic , Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and in mathematical chaos.

This difference between Taoism and Buddhism, the first maintaining that nature is in harmony, and the second that nature is basically chaotic, is crucial.
If nature is in harmony, we don't need to do anything except to be in harmony with nature, to know the flow and just follow it effortlessly.
Elaborate practices causing suffering are just arts of making our lives difficult.

If nature is basically chaotic, we have to exert ourselves to control the chaos through mindfulness. Buddhism believes that the mind is very (infinitely?) malleable, it can be trained e.g. in the five faculties, just like we train our muscles. (Please note the word "control" is not meant as in controlling a machine, subjecting it to our will, but control through mindfulness).
Part of the practice may involve suffering, but this is necessary because suffering is one of the three characteristics of being. Experience is all important in Buddhism, it is the way to know something, including the experience of suffering.
If one day, scientists should developed an enlightenment pill, it would not be very useful, because the process of getting there is more important than the result.
In Buddhism "mind harbors all", Taoism does not have the equivalent of mindfulness.

Finally, I am not suggesting that Confucianism and Taoism are not valuable. The Confucian values for society has played an important role in the economic development of many East Asian countries, and Taoist concept of harmony is what is needed in ecology, for example. Order is mostly good, as in Gtd.

Note: I borrowed the title "The Art of Making Our Lives Difficult" from Theo Fischer's book: "Yu wei. Die Kunst, sich das Leben schwer zu machen"
but the opinions expressed here are different from the book's.

Related:

• The Sayings of Lao Tzu by Lionel Giles
• Taoism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• I-Kuan Tao
• Samsara Divided by Zero by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (about Chaos and Buddhism)
  

Dalai Lama on Secular Ethics

In a recent interview "Ocean of wit and wisdoms", the Dalai Lama re-iterated his position about secular ethics, which are human values and positive emotions such as loving kindness and compassion, which "have got nothing to do with religious faith. I usually call these 'secular ethics.' Irrespective of whether you accept religion or not, this is according to our common sense, our common experience, and also scientific findings."

In an earlier interview, he said much the same thing:
"I call these secular ethics, secular beliefs. There’s no relationship with any particular religion. Even without religion, even as nonbelievers, we have the capacity to promote these things.......
No, these are not necessarily Buddhist teachings. These are old teachings based on human values. The way of presentation is different according to each religion."

Secular ethics are universal and independent from religions. They are probably related to the biological and social conditions of humans.

A New York Times article Is ‘Do Unto Others’ Written Into Our Genes?
discusses Jonathan Haidt book “The Happiness Hypothesis,” which is about the evolutionary view of morality.

Similarly, research on game-theoretic emergence of fairness and altruism, see e.g. "Games People Play and How Nice Guys Finish First" seems to support a non-religious foundation of morality.

Finally, research in neuroscience, see e.g. "Mirror Neurons Open New Vistas"
provides a biological basis for compassion and loving kindness through mirror neurons which are sometimes called Dalai Lama neurons.

I don't know if this is why the Dalai Lama is so interested in neuroscience, and in science in general. What is certain is that the scientific evidence of an evolutionary view of morality is growing

Other interesting topics in the interview is his statement, that the Dalai Lama institution need not necessarily be preserved, it could be replaced by a democratic process of election.

At the end, he expressed his views on theistic-religions:
"I'm Buddhist, I'm a Buddhist practitioner. So actually I think that according to nontheistic Buddhist belief, things are due to causes and conditions. No creator. So I have faith in our actions, not prayer. Action is important. Action is karma. Karma means action. That's an ancient Indian thought. In nontheistic religions, including Buddhism, the emphasis is on our actions rather than god or Buddha. So some people say that Buddhism is a kind of atheism. Some scholars say that Buddhism is not a religion — it's a science of the mind."

LifeHack2, the new meaning of LifeHack

The original meaning of LifeHack, conceived by Danny O'Brien in 2004 was for geeks, referring to productivity tricks to cut through information overload and generally to organize.
With the passage of time, LifeHack has received a wider meaning, relevant to geeks and non-geeks alike.

Witness the contents of LifeHack.org, LifeHacker.com and 43 Folders, some of the most popular LifeHacking websites.
It is no longer just about web scraping, email spam, to-do-lists, project management, or scripting, but the topics now expanded into creativity, happiness, procrastination, writing and presentation skills, negotiation, investing, relaxation, mindfulness, exercise, sleep, eating habits and many more things we (ordinary people, not geeks) encounter every day.

Can we define this new field, which we propose to call LifeHack2, more precisely?
(Note: LifeHack2 is so called in analogy with MRP - MRP II, or Web - Web2.0.)

Danny O'Brien coined the term Life Hack originally after interviewing super-productive IT figures to know their effective habits, sort of "The habits of highly productive IT people" in analogy to Covey's "The seven habits of highly effective people".
He discovered they have common habits such as handling their to-do lists, automate email, handling spam, scripting, web scraping, make backups, and other little tricks to boost productivity and cope with information overload.
They seem to dislike and distrust complex systems and complex applications, and prefer text files, simple scripting such as offered by Python or Perl.

Surprisingly, the IT people do not always rely on the most advanced technology, instead they often use manual systems like index cards, CRC cards (Ward Cunningham introduced CRC cards for object-oriented design), and paper based to-do lists. Using the simplest possible tool is another form of Occam's razor, or KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Simple systems are always more robust and transparent.

Danny O'Brien acknowledged that sooner or later the above approach of the geeks will be applied to live in general. "The other side of it is - and this is something I talked about quite a lot - is that the hacks that work for geeks end up being useful for a lot of other people who aren't in that subculture at all." This is what we call LifeHack2.

Another development was when David Allen published the book "Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity" in 2001. The abbreviation GTD (getting things done) is now everywhere. GTD can be seen as a glorified to-do-list, it includes calendars, workflow, 6 levels of focus and planning. One of the ideas of GTD is to externalize our to-do-list electronically or on paper, instead of keeping them in our heads, thus freeing the brain to do other things (less stress). Another idea is the subdivision into manageable small tasks reminiscent of extreme programming.

If you like to get a feel of GTD, it is best to just do it, for example by a paper method PocketMod or using a Tiddlywiki type of software called MonkeyGTD which needs only a browser with JavaScript.

So GTD is one of the most important LifeHacks. It is given a prominent place in LifeHack.org and 43Folders.com.
When I studied GTD, it occurred to me that GTD is an essential tool, but it tied up to general LifeHacking. For example, you can't follow GTD, if you have no energy, both in the sense of physical energy and "life energy". Avoiding energy sinkholes is an example of a related LifeHack. Relaxation in another. Mindfulness and clear comprehension are other related topics to GTD. Planning is not conceivable without clear comprehension.
Thus I came to realize that all the Buddhist notion of developing mental Faculties are related closely to GTD, and conversely, GTD help us developing the Five Faculties.

It becomes clear that the original LifeHack has slowly transform into LifeHack2.
This is illustrated by the popular articles in LifeHack.org: teaching kids charity, using compliments in communication, how to quit bad habits, how to boost creativity, how to set appointment with yourself, How to improve writing, how to restart the exercise habit, etc.

We will now try to describe what is and what is not LifeHack2.
LifeHack2 is about practical day to day matters, it is not about high brow philosophies or religions dealing with metaphysical and supernatural entities.
It is about building mental muscles, which must be practiced continuously at all times. It is developing good habits and eliminating bad habits and mind viruses.
It is not about domain-specific problems, such as hacking automobiles. However general attitudes in motorcycle maintenance, as in "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" can be considered as LifeHack2.
O'Reilly has a series of Hacks books, e.g. Excel Hacks, Google Hacks, Perl Hacks, Blackberry Hacks, FireFox Hacks. All of these are not LifeHack2, because they are domain specific.


Links:

• Interview: father of "life hacks"
  

• Danny O'BrienLife Hacks: Tech Secrets of Over prolific Alpha Geeks,Summary ,Video

• LifeHack.org

• 43Folders

• LifeHacker.com

• Guardian on David Allen "Meet the man who can bring order to your universe"

• Wired Magazine "Getting Things Done Guru David Allen and His Cult of Hyperefficiency"

• Wikipedia on GTD

• Wikipedia on GTD Software

Thanissaro Bhikkhu: No-self or Not-self?

The meaning of Anatta (No-self) is very difficult to grasp, for Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike. Very often it is misinterpreted as No-soul or non-ego.

The following might help us understand Anatta, it is a full reproduction of an article by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

Copyright © 1996 Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Access to Insight edition © 1996

For free distribution. This work may be republished, reformatted, reprinted, and redistributed in any medium. It is the author's wish, however, that any such republication and redistribution be made available to the public on a free and unrestricted basis and that translations and other derivative works be clearly marked as such.

One of the first stumbling blocks that Westerners often encounter when they learn about Buddhism is the teaching on anatta, often translated as no-self. This teaching is a stumbling block for two reasons. First, the idea of there being no self doesn't fit well with other Buddhist teachings, such as the doctrine of kamma and rebirth: If there's no self, what experiences the results of kamma and takes rebirth? Second, it doesn't fit well with our own Judeo-Christian background, which assumes the existence of an eternal soul or self as a basic presupposition: If there's no self, what's the purpose of a spiritual life? Many books try to answer these questions, but if you look at the Pali canon — the earliest extant record of the Buddha's teachings — you won't find them addressed at all. In fact, the one place where the Buddha was asked point-blank whether or not there was a self, he refused to answer. When later asked why, he said that to hold either that there is a self or that there is no self is to fall into extreme forms of wrong view that make the path of Buddhist practice impossible. Thus the question should be put aside. To understand what his silence on this question says about the meaning of anatta, we first have to look at his teachings on how questions should be asked and answered, and how to interpret his answers.

The Buddha divided all questions into four classes: those that deserve a categorical (straight yes or no) answer; those that deserve an analytical answer, defining and qualifying the terms of the question; those that deserve a counter-question, putting the ball back in the questioner's court; and those that deserve to be put aside. The last class of question consists of those that don't lead to the end of suffering and stress. The first duty of a teacher, when asked a question, is to figure out which class the question belongs to, and then to respond in the appropriate way. You don't, for example, say yes or no to a question that should be put aside. If you are the person asking the question and you get an answer, you should then determine how far the answer should be interpreted. The Buddha said that there are two types of people who misrepresent him: those who draw inferences from statements that shouldn't have inferences drawn from them, and those who don't draw inferences from those that should.

These are the basic ground rules for interpreting the Buddha's teachings, but if we look at the way most writers treat the anatta doctrine, we find these ground rules ignored. Some writers try to qualify the no-self interpretation by saying that the Buddha denied the existence of an eternal self or a separate self, but this is to give an analytical answer to a question that the Buddha showed should be put aside. Others try to draw inferences from the few statements in the discourse that seem to imply that there is no self, but it seems safe to assume that if one forces those statements to give an answer to a question that should be put aside, one is drawing inferences where they shouldn't be drawn.

So, instead of answering "no" to the question of whether or not there is a self — interconnected or separate, eternal or not — the Buddha felt that the question was misguided to begin with. Why? No matter how you define the line between "self" and "other," the notion of self involves an element of self-identification and clinging, and thus suffering and stress. This holds as much for an interconnected self, which recognizes no "other," as it does for a separate self. If one identifies with all of nature, one is pained by every felled tree. It also holds for an entirely "other" universe, in which the sense of alienation and futility would become so debilitating as to make the quest for happiness — one's own or that of others — impossible. For these reasons, the Buddha advised paying no attention to such questions as "Do I exist?" or "Don't I exist?" for however you answer them, they lead to suffering and stress.

To avoid the suffering implicit in questions of "self" and "other," he offered an alternative way of dividing up experience: the four Noble Truths of stress, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation. Rather than viewing these truths as pertaining to self or other, he said, one should recognize them simply for what they are, in and of themselves, as they are directly experienced, and then perform the duty appropriate to each. Stress should be comprehended, its cause abandoned, its cessation realized, and the path to its cessation developed. These duties form the context in which the anatta doctrine is best understood. If you develop the path of virtue, concentration, and discernment to a state of calm well-being and use that calm state to look at experience in terms of the Noble Truths, the questions that occur to the mind are not "Is there a self? What is my self?" but rather "Am I suffering stress because I'm holding onto this particular phenomenon? Is it really me, myself, or mine? If it's stressful but not really me or mine, why hold on?" These last questions merit straightforward answers, as they then help you to comprehend stress and to chip away at the attachment and clinging — the residual sense of self-identification — that cause it, until ultimately all traces of self-identification are gone and all that's left is limitless freedom.

In this sense, the anatta teaching is not a doctrine of no-self, but a not-self strategy for shedding suffering by letting go of its cause, leading to the highest, undying happiness. At that point, questions of self, no-self, and not-self fall aside. Once there's the experience of such total freedom, where would there be any concern about what's experiencing it, or whether or not it's a self?

Related:

• The Not-self Strategy by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
• Meditating on No-self by Khema
• I caught myself Selfing

An Appeal to all Bhikkhu Sangha by Karen Monk Union

Here is statement from the Karen Monk Union, reproduced in full from BuddhistChannel.tv:

The most venerable all Bhikkhu Sangha of all sects of Union of Myanmar.
The Pattanikujjhana Sangha kamma done by you is in accordance with Vinaya Pitaka. All Bhikkhu Sangha of the seven States (all ethnic minority Sangha) also support you very strongly. All you have to do is to go ahead only.

At present, as the army has also started to divide among themselves, the divisional army chief of middle region division, General Ko Ko (Bogyut Ko Ko) has expressed on 25/9/07 that the father of the army is not Cr. Gen Than Shwe, but Late. Bogyut Aung San only. Therefore, he has requested the army not to follow the command given by Cr. Gen. Than Shwe.

1,037 Bhikkhu Sangha and over 8000 people from Kyondoe town, 578 Bhikkhu Sangha and over 1000 people from Kyaikdon region and 758 Bhikkhu Sangha and over 1000 people from Phah-pya region in Karen state have also been staging on the street in support to your righteous struggle.

It is sure to succeed if we, all monks of 9 sects of Myanmar Bhikkhu Sangha, are united and have four dominating factors ( Sandadhipati - will, Viriyadhipati - Effort, Cittadhipati - consciousness and Vimansadhipati - Wisdom).

From truth to success.
Karen Monk Union

Earlier: Myanmar crackdown on protesting monks

Myanmar crackdown on protesting monks

The peaceful protest march of Buddhist monks and nuns in Myanmar, which has been going on for nine days, today was met with a crackdown by the government.

At one time, the protest was reported to be joined by 100,000 people, including monks and lay people.

In the meantime, the government has been preparing a crackdown of the protests.
The opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was taken from her home to a prison.

Soldiers have been surrounding the pagodas. All gatherings of more than 5 people are forbidden.

News blackout is in place. Previously people around the world could receive pictures by cell phones, and web sites used for communication. Now providers of cell phones and internet have been limited in their operations.

The latest news report beating of monks and nuns, shots fired to disperse gatherings
, and arrests have been made.

Related:

• Crackdown on Angry Monks Turns Bloody
• Norwegian site: Democratic Voice of Burma
• Photos
  
• Inside the saffron revolution
• Voices from cyberspace: how Burma's bloggers are bearing witness to the unfolding revolution
• China makes contingency plans for junta's fall
• NYT Pictures of the day
  

Higher Order Negativities

The term "Negative Negativities" was, according to Pema Chödrön, used by her spiritual teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, in an article "Working with Negativities" (a chapter of the book The Myth of Freedom). In her interview "Good Medicine for This World", Pema Chödrön told us how reading the article had an important impact on her life.

I have not read Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, so the following is my own interpretation of what I understand from Pema Chödrön.

Negativity in Buddhism is not the same as negative thinking (see e.g. Is positive thinking positive or negative? ). It refers to dukkha (suffering or dissatisfaction) situations, when we are angry, hateful, revengeful, envious, fearful, desirous, lustful, doubtful, in pain, in sorrow, in despair, etc.

For example, you returned to your parked car, and found your favorite new car scratched. You got upset, and that is negativity.

First order and higher order negativities.

If you only got upset, that is first order negativity. But when you start blaming the parking management, or people for not being responsible, or yourself for not being more careful, and so on, then you have higher order negativities.

The Buddha once asked, if you are hit by an arrow, which hurts more, the arrow or your mind?

For most people, the escalation of negativities in their minds is what really hurts.

In modern times, one use the term "damage control", the first order damage is limited, but the higher order damage is limitless.

Negativity as poison used in medicine.

What Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche is saying is that it is alright to have first order negativity, but not alright with negative negativities.

Dukkha is in the nature of all things. Shunryu Suzuki said that it is OK to suffer is.

Instead of developing negative negativities, the original negativity should be look upon as poison used in medicine, it will then be a source of creative energy.

The Night Travelers.

How can we turn negativities to healing? Pema Chödrön's answer is compassion. Start with compassion to oneself, stop blaming oneself, accept oneself unconditionally. Then realize that others are suffering in the same way.

Extend compassion to them, and to all.

Rumi wrote a poem called "Night Travelers," It's about how all the darkness of human beings is a shared thing from the beginning of time, and how understanding that opens up your heart and opens up your world. You begin to think bigger. Rather than depressing you, it makes you feel part of the whole.

Finally practice Tonglen, the art of absorbing other's pain and sending out help and compassion.

A lifelong practice.

Knowing and understanding that negative negativities is bad, is not enough. It must be practiced over and over again with mindfulness. No matter how long we have practiced, we will fail again and again. It is as if we have to be kept honest and humble. Each failure should be seen as a wake-up call. When we meditate on an object such as our breath, we will time and again be distracted by sound, thoughts, feelings, and so on, but is alright as long as we return to the object of meditation as soon as realize the distraction.

Abandon all hopes of fruition.

This may seem strange to most, but if we are really committed to "here and now", we can't allow the future to distract us.

This is consistent with other Eastern wisdom, found in the Bhagavad Gita ( "Since I have no cravings for the fruit of actions, actions do not contaminate Me.") and in the Wu Wei of Taoism.

Related:

• CG Jung and Pema Chödrön
• Solving and outgrowing problems
• Tonglen
• Bhagavad Gita

CG Jung and Pema Chödrön

Earlier posts talked about CG Jung (CGJ): "Solving and Outgrowing Problems", and Pema Chödrön (PC): "Tonglen Practice When Things Fall Apart", but I failed to connect the two, until a relative of mine sent me an email with a quote from PC (see recent comments).
This post try to address the similarities and differences between CGJ and PC, or between psychoanalysis and Buddhism in general.

CGJ stated that the fundamental problems in life are insoluble because they express the necessary polarity of self regulating systems.
PC said things fall apart and they come together again, only to fall apart again, and so on; there is no solution, we think that it is about solving problems, but in reality there is no solution.

Often, we think we have solved a problem, but after a short time, the problem reappears or a new problem is created by the very act of solving the first problem.

Both CGJ and PC underlined the importance of accepting change and seeing change as the natural order of all things.

CGJ mentioned Wu-Wei, letting things happen, as part of our liberation.
PC said healing is to give space for everything, space for anger, for joy, for desire, for hate, for grief, for misery, and for not-knowing.
To give space is not quite the same as just acknowledging and accepting, it is more like a meditative mindfulness of sensations, perceptions, feelings, and thoughts. That is why the goal of meditation is to be as spacious as possible. When we are spacious, we are mindful of the arising of anger ("there is anger arising in me") without getting really angry.
A spacious person would "contain" even his enemies, they are there, but he would not hate them.

But where is this space? It is in the mind. The mind is not just in the brain, most importantly, it is in the heart.
A very spacious person is called a man/woman with a big heart. The Dalai Lama is said to have a very big heart.

CGJ said, when we let things happen, we let loose the forces of the unconscious and the collective unconscious.
In normal life, we are often one-sided and imbalanced. When we let go, we let both sides of the polarities or Yin and Yang, to have free expression.
It is very powerful, but can be dangerous: "One of the illustrations accompanying the book [Hui Ming Ching], shows a sage sunk in contemplation, his head surrounded by tongues of fire, out of which five human figures emerge; these five split up again into twenty-five smaller figures. This would be a schizophrenic process if it were a permanent state. Therefore the instructions, as though warning the adept, say: 'The shapes formed by spirit-fire are only empty colors and forms' ".
CGJ pointed that "empty colors and forms" runs through the whole of Buddhism, in the "Tibetan Book of the Dead", it is stated that all favorable as well as are unfavorable gods are illusions.
All the notions of good and bad, powerful and powerless, beauty and ugly, wise and unwise, etc are polarities, and CGJ mentioned that these attributes tend to be personified as gods and goddesses (e.g. Aphrodite, Zeus, Athena, Ares, etc). They are all illusions.

Here we see similarities but also differences between psychoanalysis and Buddhism. The closest equivalents of the unconscious and the collective unconsciousness levels are the seventh and the eighth levels of consciousness described in "What is the consciousness before you were born?"

The ninth level of consciousness, the amala consciousness, has no correspondence in psychoanalysis.
It is a level beyond good-and-evil, beyond cause and effect of Karma.
Without this ninth level, psychoanalysis, will try to restrict the letting go process and interprets symbolic events from the unconscious, with the help of an analyst if necessary, back to the conscious level, so that it becomes balanced again.
In Buddhism, we learn to be mindful of the polarities (without the symbolic interpretations), and go through them to reach the ninth level. And we need to do this all the time in our every day lives.

Note:
The ninth level of consciousness is not mentioned in PC, many Buddhists regard the eighth alaya consciousness as the highest, but if we study closely, they include both alaya and the amala in this level, so the difference could be just the terminology, to call this a ninth level or eighth B. The alaya is the repository of Karma, the amala is the primordial consciousness, also called Buddha-Nature.

The True Test of The New Economies

The discussion on Buddhist Economics has lead to various similar concepts with different labels. There is Namaste, Mindful, Green, Holistic, Gaian, Sustainable etc. I am not going to go into their similarities and differences here. In the following, let us assume, they are all the same, and call them tentatively, the G-Economics.

I want to address the important question, whether G-Economy is at all feasible and practicable. Of course the real test of the pudding is its realization in the real world.
If that is not yet possible at the moment, the second best test would be a computer simulation of how different Economies battle each other, and which will survive at the end.
This is the same idea as put forward in my last post Econophysics And The Theory Of Games , where a population of agents are let loose, where the agents each have (identical or different) game theoretic strategies.

I am sure you know where I am getting at, I am trying to emulate the tournament for the famous Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma or IPD ( see Wikipedia , Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Robert Axelrod's book The Evolution of Cooperation (1984)).
Axelrod invited people from all over the world to submit computer strategies for the agents to use in the IPD game.

Examples of such strategies are suckers (taken advantage of), exploiters (taking advantage from others), and TFT (Tit-For-Tit). To cut the story short, in most cases, TFT is the winner, and TFT is generous, forgiving, and never attacks first.
Hence the conclusion "nice guys finish first", contrary to the common saying "nice guys finish last". The result is also enlightening, showing how altruism could arise as an emergent property in a situation where everybody was actually looking after its own interests ("selfishly").
TFT is also a robust and stable strategy, a community of TFT's is immune against invasion by exploiters and other strategies.

Applying the above to various Economies, we need to define certain rules for this tournament.

• The role of the government must be neutral, hence for this tournament, socialism cannot participate. Our main interest, is whether G-Economy can fare well against capitalism.

• Agents can form communities, because it is the nature of Economies to work in communities.

• Resources are limited, there are limits to growth.

• Agents can die and be borne. We assume better prosperity induces less death and more births.

• Agents may evolve their strategies, as there are many variations of capitalism and G-Economies. Capitalists may for example introduce environmental taxes.

• Conversion of agents from capitalist to E-economist and vice versa is excluded for simplicity.

• Non-economic factors such as education and morality must be taken into account.

These are some of the rules, we will have more once we start programming. It is a big task because the specifications are still very vague.
Does anyone know how to program such a tournament?

What possible results can be expected?
It would appear that at first capitalists would gain the upper hand, since they maximize material profit, has little regard of the limited resources. At the beginning the limitedness of the resources will not be felt, but will get more serious as environmental problems get worse. Capitalists will get rich quickly and draw people to emulate them.

The G-Economists will have advantage in trusting relations between consumers and producers, and less friction. One way the G-Economists will "punish" people looking for excessive profits, is simply not trusting them anymore, and hence will not trade with them. When educational and moral levels increase, G-Economists will get stronger.

The results will depend on the initial configuration of the population.

If G-Economists is wiped out by capitalists, i.e. it is not robust, then we cannot consider it any more, we can however modify it, and rerun the tournament.
If capitalists are wiped out, then it would be a very persuasive way for people to abandon it.
It is also possible that the whole population is wiped out because the resources are all used up.
The result can be also be inconclusive, depending on too many parameters or the assumptions are not realistic.

That is all just speculation now, we need the computer software to experiment and get firm results.

Namaste and Buddhist Economics, a common ground

I came across Namaste Economics earlier today, and was pleasantly surprised that it has a lot in common with Buddhist Economics (see my posts Buddhist Economy in Practice and The traits of Buddhist Economy ).

Like Buddhist Economics, Namaste Economics is based on principles of ethics/integrity, mindfulness, holistic awareness of systemic connections to the social and physical environment, and importance of values beyond monetary quantities. Sellers are supposed to have sufficient integrity to genuinely care for the customer, sell what is really of value to the customers, and not manipulate customers to become addicted to consumerism.

Namaste Economics is an excellent business opportunity in view of the already large and growing large marketplace, called LOHAS (Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability ) which consists of (market size estimates in brackets):

• Sustainable Economy ($