Did Obama Get Help from "The Cosby Show?"

…one idea seems to be gaining traction, and improbably it has Bill Cosby and Karl Rove in agreement: “The Cosby Show,” which began on NBC in 1984 and depicted the Huxtables, an upwardly mobile black family — a departure from the dysfunction and bickering that had characterized some previous shows about black families — had succeeded in changing racial attitudes enough to make an Obama candidacy possible. – central paragraph in a New York Times story on Nov. 7.

I certainly remember fondly “The Cosby Show,” which ran on NBC at 8pm, the anchor comedy leading a string of four sitcoms on Thursday evenings through 1992. “Family Ties” and “Cheers” were two of the other sitcoms that appeared on NBC’s powerhouse-ratings night.

I don’t doubt the “The Cosby Show” helped a little with improving racial attitudes in this country, but I always found myself wincing a bit whenever I saw the show. Bill Cosby’s character, Cliff Huxtable, was always being teased and berated by his wife Claire, played by Phylicia Rashad, in the episodes I saw. A little troubling to me, looking back at it now – though I don’t think it has had any political significance – is that Barack and Michelle’s relationship seemed too much like Cliff and Claire’s when we first came to know Michelle, with the woman seeming too much the boss in the relationship.

In the sitcom, Cliff and Claire engaged in comedy banter where Cliff would typically act as straight man and Claire would deliver the mild-insult zinger. Almost always Cliff wasn’t wholly in the wrong -- Cliff wasn’t a milquetoast or straw man – but he seldom was allowed to be in the right as the script played out, or show the strength that Claire did.

Today, in the warm glow of the election result, Barack and Michelle are portrayed as a model couple, in articles like the San Francisco Examiner’s “Barack and Michelle Obama-A Family Business” and the Baltimore Sun’s “Barack and Michelle: A modern first marriage?” But from what I remember, in 2007 when Barack was first powering-up his effort to get into the presidential race, Barack was lavishly deferential to his wife, giving her bodacious credit for his good family life and career success and Michelle seemed blunt and curiously too much in command. She seemed to be a supercharged Hillary, which was perhaps the campaign plan. In retrospect, the introduction of Michelle to the nation was a dud. The nation wasn’t craving another Bill & Hill soap opera with all its attached psychodrama.

I don’t think I’m wrong in remembering that Michelle’s role in the campaign was curtailed after her misinterpreted – yet not politically savvy -- remark “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country.” It was only during and subsequent to the Democrat Convention that Michelle returned and was re-introduced to the country. After the convention, Michelle, usually making appearances without Barack, was used to great effect in a role ballyhooing the merits of her husband, the candidate.

I know it may not be politically correct to say so, but weak husbands with bossy wives is one of the stereotypes of African-Americans that still needs to be overcome. While the Cliff-Claire characters were not the weak & bossy stereotype, that stereotype was not challenged in “The Cosby Show” whereas a great many other stereotypes were.

Too, because the Huxtables were a very upper-middleclass black family, their civilized behavior – if that’s the right term – did not break with white-bigoted expectations as it would have had the family beeng poor or middleclass with the show’s strong family cohesion and the love expressed between family members. The show, as it was, did not swim against the stream of bigotry as much as it might have and is given credit for.

Still, the sitcom was funny and wildly successful in the United States and I have been delighted to hear of the impact “The Cosby Show” had worldwide in syndication. Due to the nature of their societies, the show probably has done much more to confront bigotry in the nation of South Africa than in the U.S.

So, was “The Cosby Show” a necessary precursor to the Obama victory? I doubt it. Obama is the unique, right person for the moment -- someone whose personal qualities and policy positions have been pitch-perfect. Like Lincoln, Obama was an unexpected, brilliant candidate who came from Illinois to win the job of American President. He did it on his own. Oh, all right: He did it on his own, with help from Michelle.

More Nishitani: re the "field of emptiness" or sunyata

I find this wonderful from a section of a 1982 paper by Frederick J. Streng titled "Three approaches to authentic existence: Christian, Confucian, and Buddhist." It tries to point a finger toward how things are "inside" Nishitani's "field or emptiness":

... the "field of emptiness" is not a substantive reality, but much more a state of consciousness which gives a certain quality or character to the arising and dissipation of existence. The emptiness which Nishitani talks about is not a nihilum as in the notion of nihilism. Rather it is a continual emptying of the self-centered grasp of personality and attachments to things. The interplay between the affirmative and negative aspects in emptiness, however, is perceived only when one realizes that it requires a complete negation of any abstraction of emptiness or being-in-itself. Thus, this is a radical kind of negativity which seeks to plumb the very depths of a notion of emptiness by negating even "emptiness" as a notion. Only by negating the particular forms of one's experience can one get beyond the negation itself to a sense that there is an intrinsic relatedness between all things. One must pass through the nihilism of nihilistic existentialism, which, in simply negating essences, judges life to be absurd. Nishitani claims that once a person passes through the claim of absolute negativity as the opposite to a universal essence (that is, "being-itself"), then one does not perceive life as absurd when confronted with nonbeing; nor need a person develop his or her ego strength as a superman or wonder woman. Rather, a new "mode of being" (nonattaching to being-itself) takes form as one moves through the depth of nihilism.

The deep realization of the emptiness of everything makes it possible to penetrate the ontological reality of all particular things while at the same time affirming the relative reality of particular things in existence. Emptiness, as understood here, is not a reality as being-itself, nor as a part of the intrinsic rhythm of all change; there is no reality outside the language system that correlates with the notion of emptiness. This is affirmed not because there is nothing whatsoever outside the language system, but because words are seen to be powerful, but inaccurate, constructors of experienced reality. Ontological terms should not be seen primarily as indicators of some thing outside of the language system in a one-to-one correlation with any concept. Thus, to perceive the nature of emptiness--in distinction to the notion of "emptinees"--is to avoid identifying this term with some presumed substance or principle. As soon as emptiness is taken as a reality either in the subject or as a reality outside of the self, it is no longer the root source for both the subjective and objective experience.

The effort to avoid both an absolute nihilism and a simply negative pole of an essentialism is matched only by the intensity with which Nishitani affirms that one must perceive the relationships between particular things while at the same time maintaining their particularity. He says that from the standpoint of emptiness, each thing is itself while not being itself, is not itself while being itself; its 'being' is unreal in its truth and true in its unreality. This may sound queer at first but, in fact, through such a view, we are enabled for the first time to conceive a 'force' by virtue of which all things are gathered and brought into relationship to one another--a 'force' which, since ancient times, has been called nature (physis, natura).

If one were not to assume this intrinsic relatedness through the "ground of emptiness," Nishitani is ready to admit, something would exist "in-itself," namely, when it is separate from everything outside of itself. In the everyday conventional subject-object awareness, the identification of something-in-itself is significant because it excludes what is not-itself. This results in a total lack of being able to perceive the nature of anything outside of oneself, and finally ends up in a chaotic awareness. "Only on the field of emptiness," Nishitani continues, "where being is being-nothingness as well as nothingness-being, is it possible that each being is itself in the face of all the others, and thus, at the same time, is not itself to all the others."

The result of perceiving the world from this standpoint is that the uniqueness of a thing requires that it is situated as the root center of all other things. The relationship that particular unique things have with each other while being essentially interrelated is called "circuminsessional'' by Nishitani. When a particular thing recognizes its basic character as "no-self nature" it recognizes that its being is one with emptiness; by letting go of its own "self" it becomes a participant in the center of all other unique particulars. From the standpoint of emptiness, then, a thing "is" in terms of its own "selfhood" when it both is subordinate to all other things and at the same time becomes the center for all other things.

Since the field of emptiness is also identified as the field of the "circuminsessional relationship," all things manifest their own reality when they have let go of grasping after some unique essence of themselves and found their own absolute selfhood in complete interrelatedness. The mode of being which is the genuine "suchness" of a thing is that it is inaccessible to identifying it simply with either the subject or the object; rather something really "is" when it is identical with itself and at the same time with other things. All things in the world, then, are seen to be interrelated. To be interrelated means being both the center and the supportive aspect of, or subordinate to, another thing at the same time. The absolute interdependency that one thing has with another for its own unique selfhood is expressed by the term "circuminsessional," in which "all things in their 'being' thus enter into another home-ground, are not themselves and, nevertheless precisely as such (i.e., on the field of emptiness) are themselves to the very end." This web of circuminsessional interpenetration is called by Nishitani a "mode of being"; it is "the thing's in-itself mode of being, its nonobjective mode of being as 'middle,' its selfness."

the Unraveling of American Justice: Plea bargaining

American justice nowadays is a sham. It is easy to see how things devolved to get where they are: there is a constant flood of accused people that need to be processed through a system that is a maze built around byzantine laws. To deal with the deluge, the system is radically dependent on plea bargaining to lop out of the process the most-expensive step, people's right to trial.

Because bargained pleas are known -- by those in the know, and not me, until now -- to be such fantastic deals compared to the price that'll be paid if a case goes to trial and one is convicted, even fully innocent people take a plea bargain [aka, cop a plea] instead of undergoing the risks of trial and a decision made by an unpredictable jury swayed by emotion.

In his 2002 article for Slate, "Why Innocent People Confess," Michael Kingsley tells the story of the so-called Central Park Jogger's supposed rapists of, now, 18 years ago. Five teenaged boys confessed to raping and nearly killing a park jogger. Turns out, years after their conviction, the boys were exonerated by DNA evidence. Why in the world did the boys avoid a trial for a crime they had nothing to do with? Because the evidence at the time of trial was overwhelming in the pre-DNA days of 1988 when the crime occured, so, in order to avoid risk of life in prison [or death penalties?], the boys implicated each other and copped a plea.

Kingsley explains the plea bargaining situation in America thus [Emphases, mine]:

... for every one criminal conviction that comes after a trial, 19 other cases are settled by plea bargain. And when, as part of a plea bargain, innocent people confess to a crime they did not commit, that isn't a breakdown of the system. It is the system working exactly as it is supposed to. If you're the suspect, sometimes this means agreeing with the prosecutor that you will confess to jaywalking when you're really guilty of armed robbery. Sometimes, though, it means confessing to armed robbery when you're not guilty of anything at all.

In 1978 Professor John Langbein, now of Yale Law School, wrote a dazzling and soon-famous article in the Public Interest called "Torture and Plea Bargaining." Langbein compared the modern American system of plea bargaining to the system of extracting confessions by torture in medieval Europe. In both cases, the controversial practice arose not because standards of justice were too low, but because they were too high. In medieval Europe, a conviction for murder required either two eyewitnesses or a confession by the perpetrator. This made it almost impossible to punish the crime of murder, which was an intolerable situation. So, torture developed as a way to extract the necessary confessions.

Plea bargaining evolved the same way, Langbein explained. As our official system of justice became larded with more and more protections for the accused, actually going through the process of catching, prosecuting, and convicting a criminal the official way became impossibly burdensome. So, the government offered the accused a deal: You get a lighter sentence if you save us the trouble of a trial. Or, to put it in a more sinister way: You get a heavier sentence if you insist on asserting your constitutional rights to a trial, to confront your accusers, to privacy from searches without probable cause, to avoid incriminating yourself, etc.

But the situation is really far worse than this -- that is, it is even worse than citizens' deprivation of their rights as defendants! Impartial judges and defendants are effectively left out of the bargaining process that goes on between the prosecutor and defense attorneys, who rely on incomplete -- to the level of sketchy or wrong -- grasps of essential facts. And, of course, in this rump justice system that we have, "the people" are not being protected by laws that are just. Thus, American "justice" is injustice, for all concerned or unconcerned.

In a Cato think tank paper, published in Regulation, titled "The Case Against Plea Bargaining," Timothy Lynch argues the rather obvious, that plea bargaining "... should be abolished since the practice is unconstitutional." First Lynch explains our terrible situation and then he relates the circumstances in Bordenkircher v. Hayes, a watershed 1978 U. S. Supreme Court ruling, decided 5 - 4, that determined that plea bargaining was OK.

The story that led to the ruling is a sad one: Paul Lewis Hayes was indicted for passing a forged check in the tiny amount of $88.30. He was offered a sentence of five years by the prosecutor, and threatened with a new charge of life imprisonment, under Kentucky's "Habitual Criminal Act," if he didn't take the deal. Hayes insisted on his right to trial, was convicted, and given a life sentence. On appeal, Hayes's attorney argued that the prosecutor violated the Constitution by threatening to punish him for simply invoking his right to trial. The government side admitted that that was exactly what happened, but was not improper. The Court decided against Hayes with this rationale: There is "no element of punishment or retaliaion so long as the accused is free to accept or reject the prosecution's offer."

Quoting the Court in another context, Lynch writes, "It always is for the interest of a party under duress to choose the lesser of two evils. But the fact that a choice was made according to interest does not exclude duress. It is the charactistic of duress properly so called."

Lynch also tells us, "the Supreme Court has repeatedly invalidated [government actions] that were purposely designed to coerce individuals and organizations into surrendering their constitutional rights" and he offers many examples of this.

Also, Lynch shows that plea bargaining rests on a constitutional fiction. Here a quote of Chief Justice Young of the Federal District Court of Massachusetts, from the article [Emphases, mine]:

Evidence of sentencing disparity visited on those who exercise their Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury is today stark, brutal, and incontrovertible. True, there was always a sentencing discount for those who plead guilty and turn state’s evidence. In this District that discount used to range from 33% to 45%. Today, under the Sentencing Guidelines regime with its vast shift of power to the executive, that disparity has widened to an incredible 500%.
...
Not surprisingly, such disparity imposes an extraordinary burden on the free exercise of the right to an adjudication of guilt by one’s peers. Criminal trial rates in the United States and in this District are plummeting due to the simple fact that we punish people–punish them severely– simply for going to trial. It is the sheerest sophistry to pretend otherwise. This is nothing new, of course. Sugarcoat it as we may with terms like “acceptance of responsibility” for those who cooperate, we have always punished those who demand that the government carry its constitutionally-mandated burden of persuasion beyond a reasonable doubt before an American jury.

Michael O'Hear, a Marquette University professor, in a paper called "Plea Bargaining and Procedural Justice," is sympathetic to situations that are similar to mine. He writes:

Many defendants welcome the impersonal, rapid-fire nature of the routine case processing mode, preferring just to "get in over with" in cases that are unlikely to result in substantial sentences of incarceration. From a procedural justice standpoint, though, the concern is that not all defendants are content letting the police report do the talking for them.

Even if the report is entirely accurate, the defendant may have a "story" to tell that would contextualize the information collected by the police. And even if that context is irrelevant to the lawyers' assessment of the case, it may nonetheless be subjectively important to the defendant to tell his or her side of the story. Yet, in the routine case processing mode, the defendant may have no opportunity to do so until after the prosecutor has decided what the plea offer will be (if at all). Given the realities of criminal defense -- notoriously overburdened public defenders and private defense lawyers whose practice economics also demand speedy case processing -- the defendant's lawyer will often spend little time with the defendant before an agreement is reached with the prosecutor. At that point, the pressure will be on the defendant simply to consent to the deal without troubling anyone with new information. In such a case, the defendant would be well justified in concluding that he or she has no real voice in the process.

"...no real voice in the process." I'll say!

Nishitani's Path of Nothingness

Quick Bio of Nishitani Keiji Nishitani (1900 - 1990) was a Japanese philosopher of the Kyoto School and a disciple of Nishida Kitaro. Because the nature of Nishitani's philosophy was expressed more religiously and subjectively, he felt ideologically closer to the existentialists and the mystics, namely Søren Kierkegaard and Meister Eckhart, than the scholars and theologians who were aimed at more objectively expressing their ideas. ... Nishitani focused on creating a standpoint "from which he could enlighten a broader range of topics," and wrote more on Buddhist themes towards the end of his career. Sadly, tragically, he is said to have associated himself with Japanese nationalism/ fascism during WWII. English-language books by Nishitani: Religion and Nothingness (1983) The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism (1990) On Buddhism (2006) Source of info: wikipedia

Nothingness, Nihilism, Emptiness and Śūnyatā are all important terms that Western Buddhists struggle to understand. Different sects within our religion place different meanings on them. Philosophers co-opt the terms, insisting on bridling them with their own conceptions. Nothing and empty are already shackled to common understandings we learned in our childhood; nihilism to an understanding that comes later. And sūnyatā is of particular interest since, by popular interpretation, it negates even itself.

What, then, is to be made of this word stew? And what is to be made of what the words represent, if they represent anything more than a puff of smoke that has fully vanished? And, as Kyoto School philosopher Keiji Nishitani seems to have insisted, Is the very meaning of our lives to be found where there is no meaning?

Let us begin with existential nihilism which refers to "the feeling of emptiness and pointlessness that follows from the assessment that 'Life has no meaning.'" Karen L. Carr who wrote Banalization of Nihilism defines it in two contemporary forms:

• People for whom what used to make sense no longer makes sense. These folks feel "deeply empty" and cannot quickly find relief.
• People who respond to their feeling of emptiness by "conforming to the masses and by satisfying their shallow desires." These folks suffer a loss of passion and are likely to become superficial in their relationships and interests.

In Nishitani's view, the first form of nihilism is the vital first step toward "actualizing one's ideal self and improving one's life." The second much-more-common form parallels the flatland culture of moderntimes where self-centeredness and self-absorption are ascendant and our surrounding world is seen as being at human's disposal (rather than integral to the fabric of existence, as was the view of pre-modern societies).

Writes Nishitani in his book The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism:

if nihilism is anything, it is first of all a problem of the self. And it becomes such a problem only when the self becomes a problem, when the ground of the existence called "self" becomes a problem for itself....Thinking about the issue by surveying it as an objective observer cannot touch the heart of the matter.

Thus, understanding the threat that nihilism imposes only becomes possible when one's own existence becomes a problem to oneself. This is not something that a person can truly approach abstractly {as is happening here and now in this wordy post!} Nihilism is known only by being caught in its clutches.

Nishitani claims that in order to escape the universe of shit we find ourselves in when we are enclosed in this angsty black hole of existential doubt is to move from the field of consciousness to the field of nihility and then to the field of emptiness.

The Field of Consciousness
[aka, The Field of Reason]

From a paper in the journal "Philosophy of Education" by Yoshiko Nakama, I find this cool definition of Nishitani's field of consciousness [Emphasis, mine]:

The field of consciousness is the locus of the separation of subject and object where consciousness tries to grasp objects through conceptual representations. The field of consciousness is the source of dualism. Dualism posits oppositional distinctions such as subject and object, good and bad, and life and death, and it implies that there is the self that tries to grasp and objectify the nature of the object from the self's point of view, which Nishitani thinks is the human-centered attitude. The dualistic view separates the self not only from other things but also from itself. Nishitani writes [in Religion and Nothingness], "At this level, even the self in its very subjectivity is still only represented self-consciously as self."

Thus, the Field of Consciousness, where the great majority of people are [including, likely, YOU, dear reader], is downright diabolical, though, of course not literally thus. The self is alien from the self. It is the condition that René Descartes discovered and wrote about in the year 1641: Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am. Descartes believed that this "ego cogito" circumstance was beyond all doubt, and a wonderful thing, to boot. "Ego cogito," however, assumes that self and all else are and must remain fundamentally separated. But the Buddhist Path has the promise of leading us out of this all-suffering Munchkin Land.

The Field of Nihility
[aka, The Field of Relative Emptiness
and similar to The Field of the Ekstasis of Self Existence]

This is where people find themselves when life's meaning eludes them and they do not succumb to shallow diversions. When Siddhartha first left his father's compound, stepping out into the miserable real world, the Field of Nihility is what he found: Everything was pointless, full of misery or bodings of misery with no escape other than the certain black nothingness of death.

Existential philosophers found this field, but for most of them they find, usually, No Exit. For Jean-Paul Sarte, the "cure" is taking responsiblity for one's doomed life. But here, the ego remains in full lustre. Of the existentialists, Nishitani most admired Friedrich Nietzsche whom, Nishitani observed, attempted "to posit a new way of being human beyond the frame of the 'human,' to forge a new form of the human from the 'far side' [and] 'beyond [dualistic] good and evil.'" Yet, [as Fred Dallmayr wrote in his article "Nothingness and Sunyata," published in Philosophy East and West Vol. 42, Issue 1] "no matter how radicalized, subjectivity and subjectivication for Nishitani do not consitute the endpoint of relentless doubt.

The Great Doubt
[at the far side of The Field of Nihility]

Writes Zen Master John Daido Loori in Beliefnet, "boundless faith in oneself and in the ability to realize oneself and make oneself free, and a deep and penetrating doubt which asks: Who am I? What is life? What is truth? What is God? What is reality? This great faith and great doubt are in dynamic tension with each other ..."

Writes Malcomb David Eckel in the essay collection The Christ and the Bodhisattva:

According to Nishitani, the solution to the nihilistic dilemma is not to rediscover God, since the distinction between God and the self involves an inevitable sense of alienation. He argues that the self can rediscover itself in a meaningful way, not by projecting a divine subjectivity outside itself, but by breaking through even its own selfhood.

[Quoting Nishitani from his book Religion and Nothingness,] “Only when the self breaks through the field of consciousness, the field of beings, and stands on the ground of nihility is it able to achieve a subjectivity that can in no way be objectivized. This is the elemental realization that reaches deeper than self-consciousness. In standing subjectively on the field of nihility, … the self becomes itself in a more elemental sense.”

Wrote Rinzai Zen Master Hakuin, "At the bottom of great doubt lies great awakening. If you doubt fully, you will awaken fully."

Says Nishitani in Religion and Nothingness, "“What I am talking about is the point at which the nihility that lies hidden as a reality at the ground of the self and all things makes itself present as a reality to the self in such a way that self-existence, together with the being of all things, turns into a single doubt. When the distinction between the doubter and the doubted drops away, when the field of that very distinction is over-stepped, the self becomes the Great Doubt. …

"When this Doubt appears to the self, it does so with an inevitability quite beyond the control of the consciousness and arbitrary willfulness of the self. In its presence, the self becomes Doubt itself. The self realizes the doubt about reality. This is the “self-presentation of the Great Doubt.” Through it the uncertainty that lies at the ground of the self and of all things is appropriated by the self."

A little later in his book, Nishitani quotes a sermon by 18th C. Rinzai Zen master Takusui re a method of practice to encounter and address this delicious doubt. Here's some of it:

The method to be practiced is as follows: you are to doubt regarding the subject in you that hears all sounds. All sounds are heard at a given moment because there is certainly a subject in you that hears. Although you may hear the sounds with your ears, the holes in your ears are not the subject that hears. If they were, dead men would also hear sounds. . . . You must doubt deeply, again and again, asking yourself what the subject of hearing could be. . . . Only doubt more and more deeply . . . without intending to be enlightened and without even intending not to intend to be enlightened; become like a child in your own breast. . . . But however you go on doubting, you will find it impossible to locate the subject that hears. You must explore still further just there, where there is nothing to be found. Doubt deeply in a state of single-mindedness, . . . becoming completely like a dead man, unaware even of the presence of your own person. When this method is practiced more and more deeply, you will arrive at a state of being completely self-oblivious and empty. But even then you must bring up the Great Doubt, “What is the subject that hears?” and doubt still further, all the time being like a dead man. And after that, when you are no longer aware of your being completely like a dead man, and are no more conscious of the procedure of the Great Doubt but become yourself, through and through, a great mass of doubt, there will come a moment, all of a sudden, at which you emerge into a transcendence called the Great Enlightenment, as if you had awoken from a great dream, or as if, having been completely dead, you had suddenly revived.

Absolute Emptiness
[aka, Sunyata or Nothingness]

"Buddhists have argued from the earliest stages of the tradition that a person must learn to be self-reliant, but to be truly self-reliant, a person has to realize that the self is not ultimately real. Only then can someone experience the freedom and illumination that is the goal of Buddhist life." writes Eckel.

Writes the Wanderling:

Mahayana teachings have always considered that the understanding of Sunyata is an attainment which is extremely difficult and extraordinarily profound.

For example, in the Prajna Sutra it says "That which is profound, has Sunyata and non-attachment as its significance. No form nor deeds, no rising nor falling, are its implications."

Again in the Dvadasanikaya Sastra (composed by Nagarjuna, translated to Chinese by Kumarajiva, A.D. 408) it says: "The greatest wisdom is the so-called Sunyata."

But as Gregory K. Ornatowski writes in his article "Transformations of `emptiness': On the idea of sunyata and the thought of Abe and the Kyoto School of Philosophy" in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies sunyata has undergone profound definitional changes throughout the course of Buddhism's history such that one has to wonder if enlightened and wise beings during these centuries are atuned to the same thingless thing.

... although to be praised for its bold attempt to blend a particular Eastern religious concept with Western-style logical philosophical discourse, [the Kyoto School which includes Nishitani] ultimately runs up against certainin consistencies as well as the criticism that the interpretation of sunyata used is less "Buddhist" than a particular type of twentieth-century "Japanese philosophical Zen." In attempting to understand the background to this appropriation, we have also been able to investigate one case of the wider issue of how Buddhist ideas were transformed over the course of their movement within and between different cultures and among various thinkers. This serves as a necessary antidote to the idea common among many Buddhist faithful (and faithful of other religions as well) that their own basic religious ideas somehow have not fundamentally changed over the course of time and that an unbroken line of continuity exists between the ideas of the founder and their own particular school. In the case of Buddhism, even when changes are acknowledged, Buddhists tend to attribute them to upaya, skillful means and adaptation to local cultures, with the "higher"understanding of the ideas unchanged. Yet, such an interpretation seems difficult in the case of sunyata, given the significant transformations it experienced as it moved from the Nikayas to the Prajnaparamitas, to Nagarjuna and to Yogacara, and then to the Tien Tai, Hua Yen, and Ch'an schools in China and their corresponding schools [including the Kyoto School] in Japan.

So what can be said as a definition of Nishitani's sunyata? The following delicious words come from Nishitani's Religion and Nothingness:

It has often been pointed out that the subjectivity of the ego resolutely refuses to be viewed objectively. And yet, the self shows a constant tendency to comprehend itself representationally as some “thing” that is called “I.” This tendency is inherent in the very essence of the ego as self-consciousness. Therefore it marks a great step forward when the standpoint of Existenz-in-ecstasy, held suspended in nothingness, appears as a standpoint of truly subjective self-existence. Nonetheless, traces of the representation of nothingness as the positing of some “thing” that is nothingness are still to be seen here. The standpoint of sunyata, however, is absolutely nonobjectifiable, since it transcends this subjectivistic nihility to a point more on the near side than the subjectivity of existential nihilism.

As a valley unfathomably deep may be imagined set within an endless expanse of sky, so it is with nihility and emptiness. But the sky we have in mind here is more than the vault above that spreads out far and wide over the valley below. It is a cosmic sky enveloping the earth and man and the countless legions of stars that move and have their being within it. It lies beneath the ground we tread, its bottom reaching beneath the valley’s bottom. If the place where the omnipresent God resides be called heaven, then heaven would also have to reach beneath the bottomless pit of hell: heaven would be an abyss for hell. This is the sense in which emptiness is an abyss for the abyss of nihility.

… even in Buddhism, where we find the standpoint of emptiness expounded, a transcendence to the far side, or the “yonder shore,” is spoken of. But this yonder shore may be called an absolute near side in the sense that it has gone beyond the usual opposition of the near and the far. Indeed, the distinguishing feature of Buddhism consists in its being the religion of the absolute near side.

Is blogging over with? passe? dead?

When two great buddhointegroblogospheric sites each, independently, comment in terms of blogging being a bygone exercise -- disappearing like glaciers, Republicans and 401(k) balances -- you know we're being informed of a threat to the worldwide web, that it's a global warning.

Cliff Jones of This is This writes, "It is dead. It died on the blog. With its browsers 'round its ankles."

Cliff cites a post in the BBC News blog of Rory Cellan-Jones, where we are told, "I do think that there is evidence that early adopters from the tech crowd have moved on, perhaps disappointed that their blogs are not reaching a mass audience - or discovering that it's easier to have a conversation in a smaller space, where the madding crowd doesn't keep butting in."

Where elsewhere are bloggers off to? Wired Magazine says, "Twitter — which limits each text-only post to 140 characters — is to 2008 what the blogosphere was to 2004. You'll find [Robert] Scoble [of Scobleizer blog and Scoble on Twitter], [Jason] Calacanis [of calacanis.com], and most of their buddies from the golden age [of blogging] there. They claim it's because Twitter operates even faster than the blogosphere. And Twitter posts can be searched instantly, without waiting for Google to index them.

~C4Chaos [pictured on flickr, under the flow of a melting glacier, above] of the (hyper)stream ~C4Chaos [and still, reluctantly, of the infrequently-posting blog ~C4Chaos] tells us, in his blog, after a ten-day posting lapse, "Long-time visitors would have noticed by now that I no longer blog every day like I used to. Not to worry. I haven’t given up blogging. I’m actually more active now than I was before. Here’s why: Life is But a Stream, Why I Do Less Blogging and More (hyper)streaming."

What do we find on ~C4's site's (hyper)stream tab? Twitter and Friendfeed posts, on & on like there's no tomorrow.

There may be a flicker of hope, though. Cliff, "reporting from the twitching corpse," tells us in a follow-up blog entry, "Actually, reports of the death of blogging are greatly exaggerated. It’s interesting to read about this in newspapers, too. It’s like horses talking about the demise of cars. Things co-exist. Horses are still around. And like newspapers they are more for fun than function, they make a lot of mess and French people eat them."

Whew! That was close. I figure anything French people eat will be around for a long time. Do frogs still have legs? Why, sure they do. Mmmm, tastes like chicken.* Do blogs still have legs? Hell, yes. They talk the talk and they can still walk the walk.

* Or, tofo chicken for non-carnivores.

10/27/08 Update: In his comment to this post, C4Chaos tells us that behind him in the pic we do not see melted glacier water. [I knew that; I am teasing.] And that his hyperstream includes Twitter and Friendfeed posts, not Twitter and Facebook, as I had written. I've changed my post text in light of C4's correction re the hyperstream but not the water stream.

Update on my situation.

Yo, All.

A quick update on my situation. I met with the third, tie-breaking mental-health professional, a Dr. Edwards, whom I believe to be a doctor of psychology as opposed to being a psychiatrist. The meeting went well, I thought. At the end, I asked Dr. Edwards if he could tell me, in order to save me days of worry, if I had safely met the bar of being competent to stand trial. He told me that I needn't worry, that by his evaluation methods, I was competent.

This is good news! It's nice to know, that by a vote of two to one, I am not loony!

My next court date is on Election Day when I expect to receive a copy of Dr. Edwards's evaluation report. And, I expect that my case will then shift back to Superior Court. Here's the online record of my window-breaking felony thing at the Superior Court website. Punch the "details" button to open up the record, such as it is.

At the next court date in Superior Court, whenever that is, I expect that my petition to dismiss my public defender will be addressed.

Again, this week like last, I am spending many days at Steve's home in the Natomas area of Sac'to, getting online, thumbing through his bounty of spiritual books -- lots of Ken Wilber! Eknath Easwaran! books on the mind, God and goodness -- and listening to the Mahavisnu Orchestra and Led Zeppelin, while also taking care of my cat friends, doing a little vaccuming, eating hardily and studying criminal law.

Great Thanks to Steve, the Buddhoblogosphere et al

Steve, Ji and an unidentified friend.

Life has been challenging (at best) for me during my last six months in the wilderness. There are many to be thanked for kindness bestowed on me and help given to me during this period.

Topping the list: Great thanks to Steve (aka, Nagajuna on the Internet where he blogs Naked Reflections [link] and is, with me, co-blogger of the dormant Thoughts Chase Thoughts[link]. In meatspace, Steve and I are both inhabitants of the majestic city of Sacramento.) I thank Steve for his unwavering magnanimity and bountiful heart. Steve and his beautiful wife Ji have opened their home-and-hearth, providing me with a vacation from the drudgeries of Homeless World. Though there are abundant angels with me out on the cold, rocky streets of Capitol City, the cosy comforts and freedom of a house are irreplacable. It is a pleasure and a source of learning for me to converse with Steve; he's a brilliant, wise, compassionate man. Ji is a loving person and a magnificent cook. Also, I feel great gratitude to Steve and Ji's kindly, regal cats, Tao Tao and Jai Dee, who have befriended me.

Tao Tao and Jai Dee

The mighty buddhoblogosphere has been tremendous at dispensing wisdom and compassion by email and with comments to this blog. Of great note is the stream of help in my recent post pleading for advice.


I bow to you all.


-- Tom