Beyond me -that article on Western Buddhi

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/surdThe article I mentioned a week or so back on western Buddhism which was in Third Way has been made available online: 
Beyond me - Philosophy and Life

One of the reasons I find it interesting (apart from flirting with Buddhism myself in the past) is that it articulates well some things I have occasionally jotted down in this blog. Here's a bit that intersects nicely with my interest in what the western interest in Buddhism may signify in terms of culture and plausibility structures:

The growing appeal of western Buddhism highlights a massive issue for contemporary Christianity, at least in the UK. Theism has stopped speaking to many people. Christianity’s symbols and voice, its understanding of the divine and what it is to be human, have not been refuted, just increasingly ignored. It’s a predicament observed by Carl Jung, who died 50 years ago this year. Human individuals are in spiritual crisis today, he wrote, because they are in search of themselves and their soul. He also noted that psychology has emerged over precisely the same timeframe as Christianity has declined, for the reason that though religion has ceased to speak to people, those same people still need a means to understand themselves. That is why western Buddhism is clever when it presents itself as a practical psychology free of beliefs.

However, there is a critique to be made. Western Buddhism offers a model of the self that is, in fact, complicit with modern individualism. Christianity, though, can claim to be radically different. Its discovery is that we are who we are in relationship, with others and with God. To be human is to be the creature for whom our own existence is too small for us. That, it seems to me, is both true and avoids the narcissism and the nihilism with which western Buddhism flirts.

I would have said that the kind of view of reincarnation that many westerners have corroborates that analysis. It does seem to me that (in the Buddhisms I've encountered) what is 'reincarnated' is a knot of  karma rather than the personality (in some way) that westerners crave (! -interesting thing to find myself writing in this context) to find.

What is important to realise is that the intuition that  if personality/personhood matters, then ultimate reality has to, in some way, encompass personhood ... if what is ultimate is not in some dimension, personal, then our intuition is a surd.

Asymmetric insight

I'm finding these things increasingly fascinating because they seem for me to connect with other things I know from other parts of my life. So, it starts with an intriguing title like this one:
Why You Can't Truly Know Other People (and What You Can Do About It), and what then catches my attention is this:

This phenomeon—what psychologists call the illusion of asymmetric insight—creates a lot of problems. For instance, it allows you to completely reject what others believe because you think you understand it, and remain convinced that they'd agree with you if only they understood your point of view. Basically, you think you can understand everyone else and nobody can understand you

Which seems to be related strongly to that crucial and basic counselling insight; active listening is important because it actually helps people get beyond the isolation that can be brought about by asymmetric insight (no-body understands me) and it also helps get past the first-foot attitude we all tend to start with; that others don't understand us. Active listening helps overcome both those related things.

Note too the importance of this insight for everyday peace-making (and remember 'blessed are the peacemakers ...'); we have to make sure that we do both learn to understand and empathise with others and also demonstrate to them that we really do and that perhaps we understand their point of view. This requires a great deal of humility: the insight that we all think we understand ourselves but no-one else does. It is also part of the 'deal' that if we start from a perspective that others would agree with us if they understood our point of view, then we can't really properly consider changing or moving from our pov until we grasp that the someone else really does understand it. After all, if it's not understood, how can we consider dropping it or modifying it in favour of someone else's unknown perspective? When we truly grasp that our pov is properly understood (in a way that we could recognise it as our own) and yet not necessarily agreed with, then it is that we can move on. This, of course, is the reason why real reconciliation and peace-building is so hard: getting people to listen and to feel heard when the situation is a clash of stereotyping, miscomprehension and dismissal.

The other thing it reminded me of, though, is the acute inner embarrassment (I can't think of a better term just now) as I catch a glimpse of how I might be perceived by others and that they may understand something about me that I hadn't really got hold of. The asymmetry doesn't grant us unique and wholly accurate insight into ourselves. How could it? We are because others are; some of who we are is 'out there' in our social world.

Re-discovering values after the English riots | openDemocracy

Worth checking out this article: Re-discovering values after the English riots | openDemocracy
I was particularly taken by this bit:

If people have learned through their close relations to have no hopes for their future, to confuse cruelty with having a laugh, or to see society as so unfair as to make any morality absurd, this can only be changed through patient relationships that can nurture alternative ways of seeing. Support services for children know that the most successful interventions are long-term ones, but these are not the most attractive options for politicians seeking eye-catching, new policy initiatives.

It helped 'name' some of the things that I've been finding important to throw into the debate but it does so in a way that I think helps capture the imagination and remember some important truths that the frames of usual public discourse tend to elide. My question however goes beyond it: if it is true that the most successful interventions are long-term, how do we build a political process that can support them? Especially when the latter sentence of the quote not only does not support them but actually undermines them by building in insecurity and early termination?

That's the real policy issue I think we need to face and it affects also the way that we politicise about the environment and even the economy. How do we feed the longer-term into the now of policy making so that it can appropriately trump the short-term?

Forest Fringe

Wish I'd come across this set-up before we went to Edinburgh. It's the kind of thing I'd have been interested in in general anyway. So here's hoping I'll remember next year. Here's what they're about.
Forest Fringe: "Now heading in fifth year, we’re an artist-led organisation making space for risk and experimentation at the Edinburgh Festival and beyond. We’ve worked with artists from a range of different backgrounds and contexts to help them develop new and exciting work, from one-on-one encounters to epic folk operas, from posters for imaginary events to a whole travelling library of intimate audio experiences. More than anything else we want to try and make a home for artists and for projects that couldn’t find one elsewhere. We want to be where people go when they’ve had an incredible idea they don’t know what to do with. We’ll help try and find somewhere for that idea to exist, and an audience to encounter it."

A favourite album: Graceland

I had a sense of happy congruence when I saw this article. My favourite album: Graceland by Paul Simon | Music | guardian.co.uk. I find that there are probably only a handful of albums that I keep coming back to. One of them is Pink Floyd's Dark side of the Moon and another is their Wish you were Here. However, one of the other front runners for my all-time best is Graceland and for reasons pretty similar to this writer's, for example: "First those indelible, idiosyncratic lyrics that you just can't help singing along to. Have you heard a finer insult than 'roly-poly little bat-faced girl'? Was there ever a more brilliant union of west coast vibes with east coast urbanity than in the rhyming of 'sunlight' with 'Fulbright'? For some reason the tongue-tripping 'incidents and accidents, hints and allegations' always makes me think, rhythmically at least, of TS Eliot's 'decisions and revisions/ That a minute will reverse', only Simon's words, of course, are a lot more fun to sing."
Like her, the eclectic blend of Western folk and rock with Township Jive produces a sound that really, to my ears, does not age. It's a very clever album lyrically and musically with a real joie de vivre. If you have never listened to it, give it a go.

With 'friends' like this, who needs other faiths?

I got this email recently. Interestingly it was picked up as spam (rightly) -but as it's not everyday I get faith-based spam, I thought I'd look it over. I wonder whether someone has a list of CofE related contacts especially for this kind of thing?

I was just taken by the tone of it: it is so unwinsome and so unloving. It does not commend itself even at the simple level of creating rapport with the reader. It couldn't possibly persuade or create an opening to try to win hearts or minds. It merely 'shouts' frustration and rage. Question; would I really want to to join a set up who are so enraged and whose writing seems so distant from Christ's spirit?

On another point: it accuses the CofE of "preaching a different gospel". This is clearly untrue: since when has a moral issue been gospel? To suggest that it is, seems more like salvation by works -and that really is a different gospel in Paul's terms.

Next question: how often do we come over like this?

To Representatives and
Believers
                                               of the Church of England

                           God’s anathema upon the Church of England

General Synod of Your Church resolved that “homosexual orientation in itself is no bar to a faithful Christian life or to full participation in
lay and ordained ministry in the Church”.

You have rejected God’s laws and the authority of God the Creator and Supreme Lawgiver. You no longer call evil evil, a sin a sin, an
abomination an abomination. You exchanged the truth for a lie and turned the Church of God into a synagogue of Satan (Rev 2:9).

The fruit of perversion is no blessing but a curse and self-destruction.
The apostatical Church of England has ceased to be a blessing for the
nation and brings down a curse upon it as well as upon all Europe.

The Byzantine Catholic Patriarchate, by authority of the apostolic and
prophetic office before God and before the Mystical Body of Christ, which
is the true Church of Christ, hereby declares before all Christians of the world (Mt 18:18): The anti-Church of England is no longer the Church of Christ but spiritual Babylon and the harlot of antichrist (Rev 17:1-6). We hereby call upon every member of this Church to be converted, to repent and to go out from that spiritual Babylon (Isa 52:11). The spirit of antichrist cast the Spirit of God out of this Church. All who want to be saved must separate from this anti-Church because it leads the deceived souls to eternal damnation in hell. This anti-Church has become a synagogue of Satan (see Rev 3:9; Rev 2:20-24) and preaches a different gospel. “Even if an angel from heaven should preach any other gospel to you, let him be accursed.” (Gal 1:8-9) By reason of apostasy from the Gospel of God, God has cast this curse upon the anti-Church of England.

On behalf of the Byzantine Catholic Patriarchate

                                              + Elijah
                                              Patriarch

                  + Methodius OSBMr               + Timothy OSBMr
                                     Secretaries of the BCP

                                                    Lvov (Ukraine), 12
July 2011

Copies to:
- Queen Elizabeth II and Government of Great Britain
- Presidents of EU member states and MEPs
- All Churches of Great Britain and Christian Churches of the world
- Mass media of Great Britain and the EU

Dear publishers: a word about Kindle Pricing

Dear publishers, (and ps to my other readers: if you agree with this, re-tweet, blog, like or otherwise pass on so that it might stand a better chance of getting to the eyes of the people who commission the pricing software).
I think that you may be wise to consider what many of you seem to be doing with your pricing of Kindle format books.
You see, we, the Kindle-buyers, know that you have no costs associated with producing an electronic book analogous to raw materials, paper, printing, shipping and only low overheads for cover design. So it is a puzzle why a situation like this, taken from a recent Amazon listing, should exist.

"Formats         Amazon Price   New from   Used from
Kindle Edition £12.34                  --                --
Paperback          --                     £6.72            £8.10"
Note how some sellers are offering the book as a paperback at nearly half the price of the Kindle edition.
Knowing what we know (or reasonably presume) about pricing and costs, it is annoying to see this. In fact it makes us rather crotchety and ill-disposed to publishers who seem clearly to be attempting to profiteer. I suspect that authors may start to be aware of this and prepared to move publication routes to make their work available possibly better margins and almost certainly higher sales figures.

They are presumably obtaining copies from you, the publisher, so we know that your overheads should allow you to offer the e-version to us for less than the 'new' price listed. There is at least one site dedicated to watching price lists for Kindles and some of us are prepared to wait or to fill our kindles with other publications. It is rare that the book is an 'absolutely must have (now)' item.

Do yourselves a favour. Look at the wholesale paperback price and undercut your own cheapest offering to the trade when pricing Kindle editions. We are aware that there are costs to do with marketing and with editing and nurturing writers, but we are aware that if those can be covered by paperback prices to wholesale trade at half of the asking price in cases like the above book, then there really isn't much excuse for asking the price above, for example. You're still going to be making a killing and with less risk of remaindering.

You risk driving authors more quickly into self publishing and social-media promo which would make you, as publishers obsolete or radically redefine your role. Your best chance to retain a niche is to roll with the wave not mis-serve your authors and readers by profiteering.

Sincerely yours,
A Kindle Reader


Cultural Intelligence: Improving Your CQ to Engage Our Multicultural World (Youth, Family, and Culture) eBook: David A. Livermore: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store:

To be better organised, know yourself

It's true: Want to be organized? Know thyself. | Unclutterer: "Someone who is easily distracted shouldn’t have an intricate paper filing system based on numbers and codes. Someone who takes his shoes off at the front door shouldn’t have a shoe organizing system in his bedroom. The more a system reflects how you live and your preferences, the more likely it is to work for you."
When I started out in ministry I bought Michael Saward's filing system. It's a well thought out system and I was able to use it, but found it a bit of a faff. A few years later, I came across a piece of advice that led me to abandon the system. You see, I'd found that Michael's system reflected his interests and priorities. There were things that her was clearly interested in and thought to be important for a clergybeing to have in their filing system which I just didn't use at all, and there were things I needed to add in that were relevant to my interests and priorities that clearly weren't his. So there were point at which his filing system creaked or echoed hollowly.

The piece of advice that helped me to recognise the reality and re-think how I organised my filing cabinet was this: "don't construct a filing system but rather a finding system". In other words we need to think about how our own minds work in order to think about how we might re-find information at a later time. So I began to ask myself: where am I likely to look if I want to re-find this? I recognised that, quiet often, I work by visual memory (whereabouts I might put something) and by my own classification system. So I grouped things according to semantic groupings that meant something to me and had the labels on the files in different positions so that a visual element was introduced.

I'd suggest trying it yourself, if you don't already.
Of course, this means that some of us also need to ask a further question: "Do I really think that I'm going to want to find this again? Or is this developing into an information graveyard where I respectfully bury things that I won't want to disinter?"

Bashir Lazar

Of all the things I've seen at the Edinburgh Fringe this year, Bashir Lazhar is probably the one that stays with me.

It started life as a play in French set in Quebec, you can read a bit more here: Coolopolis: Bashir Lazar, quickie drama review: "It tells of an Algerian immigrant who loses his family to fire and then comes here, fakes teaching credentials and becomes a passionate and committed substitute teacher. However some of his methods are misconstrued by the bureaucrats, which leads to some conflict."
What I enjoyed about it was that I could tell it was working on several levels for me but I've not yet fully teased them apart, but it's a good feeling. There's some play with writing both on a blackboard but also on other surfaces and even on the characters themselves. This motif mixes with the theme of identity (with a subtext, I suppose, of narrative's role in identity formation). What I was left with, though, was the way that this version took what was evidently a one-actor play and put one another actor in who plays at the fringes of the monologue but at the end gains a speaking part which gives a sense of hope that, despite the bleakness of what has happened to Bashir Lazhar, our lives can nevertheless have a positive impact and enebale others to find their voices. Ironically -from my perspective- this atheist character illustrates the idea that in is losing our lives for others that we find it. Or perhaps, it is in opening our narrative out to others' stories, that our narration finds significance. Again ironically, because this perspective is explicitly rejected in the commentary offered by Bashir.

This is a moving play well presented. If you are going to the Edinburgh Fringe this year, go to see this play. It's in Assembly Two at 1425hrs.