I immediately assumed it would take a lot of tweaking to turn a javascript and xml based project into a Firefox extension; turns out all it took was adding a container file, setting some variables and creating the right file structure. In a short time, I had a semi-working extension up and running. Cookies didn’t seem to work, so rather than figure out why, I moved to using Firefox’s in-built preference system, much preferable anyway. That part isn’t finished yet, but it works with a restart after changing the preferences. The rest seems to work as it should. Anyone interested should now download the reader here:

https://gaea.site5.com/~sirimang/pali/digitalpalireader.xpi

Let me know if it actually works outside of the lab.

Saw Ajaan Tong yesterday. He’s still as strong as ever, and full of wise and kind words. He was happy about the outcome of our efforts at Wat Thai LA; especially after the abbot made an unexpected visit to Chom Tong last month to ask him to allow me to stay and teach in Los Angeles. He says it seems I’m worth the trouble after all… that my ordination was not in vain, and he calls me an “Ajaan”.

As I’m typing here in the lobby, he just walked by, and I’ve let him know I’m returning to Los Angeles tomorrow. He’s surprised, so I explain I have to return to see my father who is in Los Angeles on vacation. Today back to Chiang Mai, tomorrow flying to Bangkok in time to catch my return flight on the same day back to LAX. Onward and upward.

Read: yesterday’s meeting kicked ass (my English <-> Monk translator is broken).

Lots of constructive dialogue, but the best part was realizing that these people are really slick… they had the whole presentation organized very well, they are very knowledgeable about all the various aspects of this project, and most importantly, they are very well connected with the upper echelon of Thai monastic and lay society. Sure, purists might sneer at the thought of relying on connections with high class officials but, hey, you’ve got to admit it does make little-guys-like-us’s job all the easier.

The most remarkable thing about the three-hour-long board meeting is that apparently the first two-and-a-half hours before I came in were spent bickering and arguing about every subject that came up. When it came time to talk about the meditation center (the only part of the meeting I was allowed to witness) not one person raised an objection, whether it was in regards to making me the administrator of the center, building meditator housing, or even buying more land adjacent to the proposed center. It is amazing to me to find a group of Thai business people who actually agree that teaching Buddhism and meditation is what a monastery should be doing; though, I suppose it goes with what I’ve always found, that the biggest obstruction to spreading Buddhism is with the frocked, not the unfrocked (trying to avoid using the M-word).

And that’s really what is special about Wat Thai of Los Angeles, why I’ve stayed on so long; this curiously twisted state of affairs where the monastic community is not in charge of things, something I would be among the first to denounce if it didn’t, curiously enough, work directly in my favour. Hypocrite? Maybe. Or maybe you can call this kusala upaya – making lemonade outta them lemons.

I can’t help but feel like finally I have the support to turn the work and training of the last ten years into something meaningful and productive. Sure, I don’t doubt that the road ahead is still uphill, but it’s now looking less like the little engine that could and more like a 49-ton diesel locomotive of damn right I can.

So, I don’t want to say I’m optimistic, but looking at the tea leaves seems to leave no conclusion other than that I’ll be spending a great deal of my future in Los Angeles. The whole game has changed in these past few days, I’ve anted up and you can count me in, at least for the next round. Of course, it goes without saying that it could fold like a house of cards in a minute; such is the nature of samsara. If it does, I’m pretty sure it won’t be my fault; these past few days have given a confidence that was lacking before. Rather than wondering to myself whether I can somehow scrape together enough patience and perseverance to continue to fight against overwhelming opposition, I find myself looking at the hand I’ve been dealt and saying, “man, you know, I can work with this…” The game has changed, and you can count me in for this round.

Expect http://www.sirimangalo.org/ to go through some real changes in the near future; we’ve got a meditation center to promote.

The middle way forces you to give up everything about who and what you are. This is the hardest pill to swallow. It is hard not because it is wrong, but because you are wrong. Everything you cling to is painful, everything you stand for falls over, everything that has meaning to you is meaningless. It is the ultimate test of selflessness.

All of that is very dramatic, I suppose, when relating to the events of today… we did manage to compromise on the issue of opening a new center in North Hollywood under Wat Thai. I think the solution is really the best… it didn’t seem right anyway to make such a young monk the head of the meditation department at such a big monastery with such big and powerful monks, and a couple of times at the meeting I suggested that the best thing for me would be to just leave and find a place more suited to my way of practice. So, we swung back and forth, me trying to explain how difficult it is to run a meditation center when you are nothing more than a resident teacher under the authority of people who know very little about meditation centers in general, and they trying to tell me that everything would be just fine doing exactly that.

There were other complaints as well, like how I don’t make effort to get along with the other monks, not going to the daily chanting, etc. Actually I do go sometimes; not often, though… part of this is just laziness on my part, what with all the teaching and stuff. Another part is that I didn’t grow up Thai, and so I don’t understand what the big deal is about chanting in general unless it is for the purpose of memorizing something, or as a specific meditation practice. Finally, much of the chanting is silly anyway, stuff about living in a cage made up of the various characters of the Buddhist religion, extolling the praises of the Thai king, etc.

The best argument I heard, though, is that it should be easy to run a meditation center if you are virtuous and pure; this is always something that hits home to a Buddhist meditator… we can always improve in these areas. This is surely a part of the problem; as long as one is not fully enlightened, there will always be conflict, always suffering. But given the blatantly obvious differences of culture, practice, understanding and opinion between me and the people I am supposed to work with, I think the comparison between my difficulties and the apparent ease with which Thai monks are able to run things is a bit of a stretch. Anyway, this is one I’m going to have to work on; I know I’m not perfect, and that if I really could see things perfectly clear, there would be no difficulty in this project or any other I could undertake. Such, though, is the path of practice.

So, in the end, a couple of them understood and the rest were willing to concede to my demand that they give me some sort of position of authority to run the place I am supposed to be running, while I conceded to their claim that to turn the position of meditation head over to me, when the vice abbot currently held it (no matter that he has never taken any interest in the position), would be potentially hazardous to the general sense of harmony (or what’s left of it) among the monastic community. And actually, as I said and the more I think about it, it’s a really great solution. I have no delusions of grandeur; I am a young, foreign monk with a lot to learn about being a good monk, let alone running a meditation center. I’d rather just have the monastic community at Wat Thai forget I exist than become some big shot head of a department, but what I tried to make clear is that if you want me to do a job, you really have to give me a position.

At first, they thought I should be content as “Ajaan Vipassana”. I refused. They’ve agreed to add “ผู้บริหาร” to the mix, a title that means “administrator” or some such thing. That’s about all I really want, but I know how these things go. They say to me that they’re going to make this perfectly clear, but when it comes time to meet tomorrow I am sure it would have been far more muddled had I not held my ground – such is politics. So, I was stubborn, and said “we’ll see” when asked if I was satisfied. I really like some of the board members; some of them seem really sincere and have really worked hard to help keep the monastery going. Some don’t seem as dedicated or as sincere, but such is the way of things. The head lay man requested that we have another meeting with the monks in LA to talk with them about it, so all is clear and they don’t feel slighted. I think that’s a great idea, and I said so. If there’s one thing I like, it’s constructive meetings – the Buddha was clearly of such a mindset as well. They said I should go to the monthly meetings of the monastery as well, and I said I was more than happy to from now on. I’m still not decided about the chanting though; I am just fine without the cage, thank you very much.

Tomorrow, the real meeting.

Mike Knight: Then we go to the backup plan…
K.I.T.T.: The backup plan, the plan created because of Murphy’s Law … whatever can go wrong, will go wrong … but isn’t it true that there are an infinite number of ways a plan can go wrong?
Mke Knight: That’s why backup plans suck.
– from Knight Rider

Today we have a prep-meeting so the L.A. board dudes can tell me what to say when we meet the Bangkok board dudes. Tomorrow I get to meet the whole board of Wat Thai LA for the first time, but I’m not crossing my fingers. Last night I had a productive conversation with Phra Kru Supat of Section Five, Wat Mahadhatu, the gist of which was that if I came to teach at Section Five, I’d never have to worry about things like visas, and that he’d be more than happy to job-share with me so that we both could have the much needed time off such a job requires.

Personally, teaching at Wat Mahadhatu is not that interesting a prospect for me; I’ve tried it, and most of the meditators are only there because they don’t have the requisite interest or time to prompt them to seek out a more dedicated meditation center elsewhere in Thailand. On the other hand, it has great potential for funneling traffic into a dedicated child meditation center somewhere in the countryside, something that Phra Kru Supat is working on establishing. I have other places of my own, as well, and so this sort of setup does have great potential, besides the benefits of staying in Wat Mahadhatu from time to time, allowing for easy study of Pali and Abhidhamma as time permits.

Anyway, so there’s plan B. My guess is Los Angeles is a temporary position, not something that is tenable in the long-term, unfortunately. There just doesn’t seem to be the depth of interest either in the Thai community, or the American people at large. Everyone’s too busy trying to make ends meet; of course the funny thing is, if people were to dedicate their lives to meditation, there would be far fewer ends to try to make meet… IMHO.

Last year, I said I wasn’t going to stay at Wat Thai, any Wat Thai, and now here I am in Thailand about to go to a Wat Thai board meeting to talk about starting a meditation department at Wat Thai. See, they bought a piece of property near Wat Thai recently and have been talking about building a meditation center there. The general consensus is for me to stay there, but it’s still not clear whether they actually intend to give me any authority over the place, or whether they expect me to take orders from the current meditation head, an astrologer who supports the “Red Shirt” revolutionaries in Thailand. In case of the latter, I’ll probably be checking out in May, just after my birthday, to find a new place to live.

In that sense, I’m at somewhat of a crux right now. If they really are open-minded about having a non-Thai monk take over a department of the “Thai” monastery, then there’s really no problem. Otherwise, maybe it’s time to try a real American Tudong. We’ll see on Sunday, I suppose, but it may just as likely turn out that nothing is decided and I’ve traveled all this way for nothing more than extended jet lag and undernutrition (no food for the 30 hr night in transit).

Anyway, that’s all future for now; off to almsround soon, the one thing besides meditation that gives a routine to my life these days. Just thought I would share the latest update with those who are interested in such things.

‘Brethren, if outsiders should speak against me, or against my teaching, or against my disciples, you should not on that account either bear malice, or suffer heart-burning, or feel ill-will. If you, on that account, should be angry and hurt, that would stand in the way of your own self-conquest. If, when others speak against us, you feel angry at that, and displeased, would you then be able to judge how far that speech of theirs is well said or ill?’

‘That would not be so, Sir.’

‘But when outsiders speak in dispraise of me, or of my teaching, or of my disciples, you should unravel what is false and point it out as wrong, saying: “For this or that reason this is not the fact, that is not so, such a thing is not found among us, is not in us.”

- DN 1 (Brahmajala Sutta)

I was recently alerted via twitter to a Bill Maher article in which he does some pretty serious Buddhism-bashing. The alert came from this Buddhist blog, in the form of an open letter to Mr. Maher. I think the letter was quite well written, but not exactly how I would address this issue.

First of all, I don’t think Buddhists should be at all shocked when we hear fellow Atheists bashing our religion. After all, they generally fall into the category of anti-religionists and materialists as well, and have already decided that if something doesn’t fit with the axioms and proofs of modern science, it cannot be taken seriously.

Case in point, I recently had an email dialogue with the Atheist Society of Austin, Texas. I entered into the dialogue with the presumption that they were an open-minded and thoughtful bunch of people. I have to say I was wrong on both counts. They immediately dismissed meditation as a form of relaxation rather than scientific inquiry and placed my views in the categories of pseudoscience and newage (rhymes, as they pointed out, with sewage) nonsense. It is really sad to see this sort of thing take the place of honest and open discussion; categorization of this sort is just a sophisticated form of name calling similar to what bullies on the playground use when they don’t have anything more clever to say.

Religion, to the materialist atheists, is rubbish, since this is the one and only life our body will ever live, and so it is of little wonder they have such a lack of respect for anything above and beyond the most crude forms of scientific investigation; there is simply no point in their minds.

For this reason, I don’t think it is worth getting all upset about what Bill Maher said, though I agree he has done very well at making himself look like a bona fide idiot. It’s not the first time for him, though, and surely won’t be the last. I think the key is to stop thinking we share something in common with these people, be they comedians or politicians. If they are not meditating, there’s not much chance of ever engaging them in anything approaching a profitable discussion about the nature of reality; these people are so mired in sensual intoxication (and proud of it), it’s pretty unreasonable to think they will be able to understand something as sophisticated as the teaching of the Buddha. And as Buddhism is more and more brought into the spotlight, there will be ever further misunderstanding promulgated by the like of Bill Maher.

So, where did Maher go wrong? Let’s see:

But before Tiger moves on there’s one more apology he really should make, and that’s to Buddha, for dragging him into this mess and proving once again, that whenever something unspeakably tawdry, loathsome and cheap happens, just wait a few days. Religion will make it worse.

Read this a couple of times… it doesn’t even make sense. You don’t apologize to someone for dragging you into a mess. But, to the point – religion, he says, makes problems worse. Why? Because it makes you feel guilty, of course. The whole thrust of Maher’s article is that one shouldn’t feel guilty for sexual promiscuity, and that Buddhism does exactly that. Which, of course, is so not true it isn’t really worth commenting on, yet one can’t help but point out that the real problem for Buddhists that Mr. Woods was addressing in his apology is not sexual promiscuity at all, it is sexual infidelity. The former is considered by Buddhists to be a relatively benign form of sensual addiction; the latter can cause people to commit suicide. Is Maher really so dense that he can’t see the evil in what has been done to a wife and children who so depended on this man to be faithful to them? Or the real reason for Woods’ inclusion of Buddhism in his apology? Again, it would not be a surprise.

And it really is outdated in some ways – the ‘Life sucks, and then you die’ philosophy was useful when Buddha came up with it around 500 B.C., because back then life pretty much sucked, and then you died – but now we have medicine, and plenty of food, and iPhones, and James Cameron movies – our life isn’t all about suffering anymore. And when we do suffer, instead of accepting it we try to alleviate it.

This is the paragraph that I find most objectionable; utterly objectionable. For an American in the 21st century to say that life doesn’t suck as much as it did in India 2500 years ago is pure blind arrogance, and hypocrisy to boot. Maher is always going on about how stupid his country is, how evil are its elected officials, and how unfair is the treatment to the downtrodden, and here he does an about face and tries to say that everything is suddenly hunky-dory because, guess what America? You’ve got iPhones and James Cameron movies. I think, honestly, he’s just joking here. I would bet he himself can see that sensations like Apple and Avatar are nothing more than crowd control keeping America’s hungry (>10%), depressed (9.5%), unemployed (9.7%) and uninsured (15.4%) from actually thinking about the terrible situation they’ve been put in. But that just makes him a hypocrite. Instead of actually finding anything wrong with Buddhism, he starts refuting his own position that something is fundamentally wrong with America. Sure religion is a part of the problem, but religion isn’t starving or torturing its people.

The open letter was pretty clear in making the points that (a) sophisticated electronic gadgets and fake alternate realities don’t really do anything to alleviate suffering, they just add to the problem of addiction and withdrawal, and (b) the whole of the Buddha’s teaching is DEDICATED to the alleviation of suffering. So is Bill Maher on crack or something? No, you say, he’s just being funny. I disagree. Funny has to include that kernel of reality to provide the irony necessitated by humour – Maher has missed the nail entirely and there is nothing funny about straw man arguments. Rather than make your victim look ridiculous, you just wind up looking silly.

Tiger said, ‘Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves’ makes us unhappy, which confirms something I’ve long suspected about Eastern religions: they’re a crock, too.

Craving for things outside ourselves is what makes life life – I don’t want to learn to not want, that’s what people in prison have to do. Buddhism teaches suffering is inevitable. The only thing that’s inevitable is that if you have fake boobs and hair extensions, Tiger Woods will try to **** you.

Okay, we know, he’s just shooting from the hip, nothing new here. We all know that Buddhism does not teach that suffering is inevitable, but Maher again looks like an idiot here. Tiger is telling him that it is craving that leads to suffering and Maher is saying therefore suffering must be inevitable, since he himself is not interested in giving up craving. Of course craving leads to suffering; look at drug addicts or addicts to anything. If one cannot be at peace with oneself, how can one possibly hope to be satisfied by the ephemeral pleasures of external phenomena? It’s also pretty clear that he, or his writers, is just pulling quotes off the Internet in his search for what Buddhism teaches; when he couldn’t find a way to attack Woods’ statement about craving, he provides a totally unrelated “teaching” that suffering is inevitable.

In fact, Maher’s whole premise that Buddhism teaches “life is suffering”, one that the author of the open letter sadly picks up and runs away with, is currently the biggest myth about the Buddha’s teaching in circulation. Let me say it again, as I have said many times before: the Buddha never, ever, ever, ever said that life is suffering. Get it straight. He said old age is suffering. He said sickness is suffering. He said not getting what you want is suffering. He said getting what you don’t want is suffering. He said sorrow, lamentation, despair, pain and displeasure are suffering. He even said the process of birth is suffering. He never said life is suffering. Never. Not once. You can be sure he didn’t, because he would have to be stupid to do so, for the obvious reason that Maher points out. It’s a terrible way of approaching the problems in life, and it implies the inevitability of suffering.

And reincarnation? Really? If that were real, wouldn’t there be some proof by now? A raccoon spelling out in acorns, “My name is Herb Zoller and I’m an accountant.” …something?

It’s worth pointing out that by now Maher has left the whole Tiger Woods thing behind and is going after the bigger target. Woods’ apology had nothing to do with reincarnation, he didn’t even mention it, and it is not sure he even subscribes to it as a description of the nature of existence. But, as mentioned, it should come as no surprise that Buddhism will inevitably receive the same rough treatment by these people as faith-based religions have, and will be invariably placed in the same metaphorical rubbish bin.

First off, there is a great deal in the way of proof available at present in the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson and his associates; lots of “raccoon spelling out in acorn” type cases of children relating things they could not know otherwise. But the real reason there is no “proof” of rebirth is that it has nothing to do with the physical world and so the methods of material science are inapplicable, leading material scientists to sweep it aside with labels like “newage pseudoscience”. It is, of course, relatively easy to prove beyond doubt the theory of rebirth for oneself, but that takes meditation practice and, well, you know…

People are always debating, is Buddhism a religion or a philosophy: it’s a religion. You’re a religion if you do something as weird as when the Buddhist monks scrutinize two-year-olds to find the reincarnation of the dude who just died, and then choose one of the toddlers as the sacred Lama: “His poop is royal!” Sorry, but thinking you can look at a babbling, barely-housebroken, uneducated being and say, “That’s our leader” doesn’t make you enlightened. It makes you a Sarah Palin supporter.

Yes, that’s right. Religion = weird. First, religion is a word that simply means adherence; it says nothing about what one is adhering to. If you adhere to certain dietary principles, you are eating religiously, whether it is because some ancient book tells you, or Mr. Slimfast. In certain cases, it may serve no purpose, in others it may be vital to one’s mental wellbeing. Just because something is religious doesn’t make it weird.

But the point, of course, is that Maher has again made himself look silly. Tiger Woods is half-Thai on his mother’s side. The Dalai Lama is from Tibet Before you start trashing someone’s religion, make sure you research the right religion – the search for reborn religious leaders is almost exclusively a phenomenon of Tibetan (i.e. not Thai) culture and has little if anything to do with the Buddha’s teaching.

In the end, it is clear that Maher is doing what he gets paid to do; make jokes about things others wouldn’t dare and further his hypothesis that religion is, well, ridiculous. In this article, however, he fails to appear clever or witty at all because, let’s face it: Buddhism is a scientific inquiry into reality with verifiable results that can and regularly do change people’s lives from hopeless and desperate to confident and contented. It is a system free from blind faith and dogma and offers rational, logical explanations of how and why reality works the way it does. But my point is we shouldn’t look to people like Bill Maher to accept such statements or even suspend their disbelief long enough to conduct an honest investigation. Just because someone is funny and occasionally even witty doesn’t make them in any way wise.