Knowledge in itself is not power,

The Men are In Love

2008-05-04T21:40:03Z

Yesterday while in a bus, I got to overhear a man on the phone with his love, Sandra, as he assured her that he loved her and would never wrong her. At that same time we drove by a man sitting on a bench holding flowers and from that emerged these words:

The men are in love
and they're walking down the street
Speaking pretty words and carrying flowers in their hands

Gentle lions that they are
Sons of Atlas and of Zeus
Whose achilles heels have been cut, by cupid's mastery in aim

Oh how these men are so in love, as they're running down the streets
Stumbling by with their weak knees
But with strong convictions in their heads

Yes these men are in love
and they are courting dames in modern towers
loving their Rapunzels with fake extensions
And their Snow Whites in tanning booths

Emancipated Cinderellas
Who prefer to date a beast
and who all make great sleeping beauties
(as they smudge their make up on their sheets)

Yet the men are in love
with their little mermaids in their beds
and mermaids they are
and mermaids they’ll stay

The men are in love
and blind
and tamed
and good

Becausse,

Everyone enjoys the sight of the vulnerable patriarch in love

itsjessme @ 2008-03-05T23:15:00

2008-03-06T04:30:31Z

I am tired of hearing about the consciousness of poverty.. that Latin Americans are stuck in this endless wheel of societal mistakes... do we not remember that perhaps that the wheel originated when unwelcomed visitors came without knocking at the door? that they keep getting new visitors with promises of "development" which is really just a bunch of maquiladoras benefiting from a widespread desperation for labor?

Ok, yes no one is a complete victim, people choose at times to accept poverty, to be abused... but have we been in their shoes? or walked barefooted like them? how is it to step out of the victimization when its the only tools we are granted?

I am empowered because i was socialized in an environment that nurtured my education, my thirst for knowledge, and I am lucky.... but with that luck comes responsibility and I can't help but think that I am just being pulled between ideologies, that all I am living is in blanket generalizations... I mean is there even such a thing as "Latin America" when the experience of people in this romanticized land is so diverse?... yet I write about it, hear about it, and still speak about it as if I had claim over it... 12 years since I stepped off that land, sorta makes you loose credibility.. but we can always pretend

I litttle something I thought of in my postmodernism class...

2008-02-20T23:22:45Z

Now

This is now,
no this is now
now
now

I am writing right now
but that now just passed

present now past
As I say it,
I also bid it...goodbye

Now is not now
there is no now
neither now nor present
Just constant motion

If the past is all just dead nows
and there's no now?
Is there a past?

How about future?

But future is merely illusion
once it happens, it no longer is..... future

or past or now

This is now
no its future
or maybe past

... maybe its just eternity

itsjessme @ 2007-12-16T12:16:00

2007-12-16T16:16:20Z

La novicia del convento está escribiendo una carta y comienza:

'Querido Monseñor'.

Se da cuenta de que aquél puede mal interpretar sus palabras y vuelve a
empezar...

'Excelentísimo Monseñor'.

Recapacita pensando que es demasiado formal.

'Señor Monseñor'

Este título le parece muy mundano.

Así que probando varios títulos, decide que el mejor es 'Don Monseñor'.

Para asegurarse de no meter la pata, le pregunta a la Madre Superiora:

¿Madre, Monseñor se pone con Don?

Claro que se pone condón, si no, este convento

sería una guardería................

The Lady Outside of Bengladesh

2007-10-19T06:03:11Z

There’s an old lady living in a village right outside of Bangladesh
I was told her gentle hands were the ones that made my purse
(For which the five dollars I was paying had been part of a fair trade.)

If I could one day share a meal with her and over food exchange our stories
I would ask her countless questions of her life within such world.

How do you spend your waking hours?
What are your thoughts during the day?
What do you think of those outside your village or of the one who sold your purse?

What makes you suffer?
What makes you happy?
Who do you love?
Who do you dismay?
I have so many questions for the one who made my purse

I come from a faraway village where we have traded labor for machines
Where the craft has been replaced by assembly lines to satisfy the market needs

I wish I could meet the lady who must compete with factories
Do you struggle day to day?
Do you live your life in peace?
Do you care that everyday I flaunt your labor on my shoulder?

I want to know her feelings
Her thoughts and her concerns
Ask her what she dreams of
And if her reality is far from them

There’s an old lady living in a village right outside of Bangladesh
I was told her gentle hands were the ones that made my purse
(But are the pieces of paper she received part of a just and fair exchange?)

Ahh Faulkner... for a little inspiration...

2007-09-27T06:33:11Z

William Faulkner's speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1950

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work - a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

* The speech was apparently revised by the author for publication in The Faulkner Reader. These minor changes, all of which improve the address stylistically have been incorporated here.

From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969

500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art

2007-06-14T19:37:49Z

itsjessme @ 2007-05-17T23:12:00

2007-05-18T03:13:20Z

"To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security, makes himself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love, need courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern - and to take the jump and stake everything on these values."

- Eric Fromm

itsjessme @ 2007-05-17T23:07:00

2007-05-18T03:09:28Z

Charity

I see humanity as a herd of cattle inside a fenced enclosure. Outside the fence are green pastures with plenty for the cattle to eat, while inside the fence there is not quite enough grass for all the cattle. Consequently, the cattle are trampling underfoot what little grass there is and goring each other to death in their struggle for existence.

I saw the owner of the heard come to them and when he (sic) saw there pitiable condition he was filled with compassion for them, and thought what he could do to improve their condition. So he called his friends together and asked them to assist him in cutting the grass from outside the fence and throwing it over the fence to the cattle. And they called that charity.

Then, because the calves were dying off and not growing into serviceable cattle, he arranged that they should each have a pint of milk every morning for breakfast. Because they were dying off in the cold night he put up beautiful well-drained and well ventilated cow sheds for the cattle. Because they were goring each other in the struggle for existence he put corks on the horns of the cattle so that the wounds they gave each other might not be so serious. Then he reserved a part of the enclosure for the old bulls and the old cows over seventy years of age. In fact he did everything he could to improve the conditions of the cattle.

And when they asked him why he did not do the one obvious thing—break down the fences and let the cattle out, he answered, “If I let the cattle out, I should no longer be able to milk them.”

Leo Tolstoy

****************

It doesn’t interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequences of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.

- David Whyte

********************

itsjessme @ 2007-05-14T00:01:00

2007-05-14T04:02:45Z

En una peluquería.... Una pequeñita
>>de 5 años acompaña a su padre a la peluquería para que éste se haga
>>un corte de cabello. El peluquero, hombre muy amable, decide dar
>>a la niña una pieza de pan dulce para hacer más grata la espera.
>>La niña se sentó a un lado del sillón, precisamente debajo de donde
>>cortaban el cabello a su padre. El peluquero voltea a ver a la
>>niña, y le dice: "¿Sabes algo, muñeca? ...Se te va a llenar de
>>pelos tu bizcocho." La niña pronta responde: "Sí, ya me
>>platicó mi mamá...y que también me van a salir chichis..."

itsjessme @ 2007-05-06T01:11:00

2007-05-06T05:17:43Z

I think I am ready to go back to where I had left off in my discovering of God.

I think I am ready to take all the injustice, corruption, poverty, opression, hunger, war, death, greed, selfishness, ignorance, and hatred I see around me and begin to discover how I can find the beauty hidden within them.

The past few months I've lost myself... but now I begin the reconstruction of who I WANT TO BE.... and its a rather exciting feeling.

itsjessme @ 2007-04-26T02:00:00

2007-04-26T06:03:04Z

The allegations made by the Save America fund (http://www.saveamericafund.com) stating that Bush is allowing the foreign takeover of the United States is an unfortunate example of the failure by many of us to understand the complexity of the immigration debate. Illegal immigration is not the attempt of foreigners to infiltrate our country but rather the result of the economic desperation lived in Latin American countries. So much energy is being spent on creating divides between the pro or anti- immigration arguments that the commonalities are being overlooked. There’s so much attention in creating borders and “keeping them out” that we often ignore the fact that the vast majority of illegal immigrants would much rather stay in their country but unable to do so.

Virginia Tech and Gendered Violence

2007-04-25T04:14:03Z

I wrote a note on facebook... if you get a chance to read it, i'd definitely like to hear your take on it.

Love you all,
Jess

itsjessme @ 2007-04-09T21:46:00

2007-04-10T01:46:16Z

Random Thought:

What makes me a woman?
The structure of my bones?
Childbearing abilities?
Or sexual pleasure agilities?

My sister e-mailed this to me: I found it rather cute

2007-04-09T19:29:13Z

An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole, which she carried across her neck. One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water, at the end of the long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.

For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do.

After 2 years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream. "I am ashamed of myself, because this crack inmy side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house." The old woman smiled, "Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot's side?" "That's because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house."

Each of us has our own unique flaw. But it's the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding. You've just got to take each person for what they are and look for the good in them.

SO, to all of my crackpot friends, have a great day and remember to smell the flowers on your side of the path!

itsjessme @ 2007-03-26T09:14:00

2007-03-26T13:17:54Z

A veces me canso de que mi mente curiosa trae conotaciones que no son reales... no me gusta cuando me meten en una caja con un nombre que no pertenece a mi.. por eso escribi este poema:

Pedí igualdad
Y me llamaste comunista
Dude del gobierno
Y me transformaste en anarquista

Cuestione a papa dios
Y me excomunicaste como atea
Y por no querer ser utilizada
Me clasificaste como feminista

Pero nunca me trataste como una ser humana
Única
Que no quiere ser catalogada

Quien quiere que veas mi belleza
No por las curvas de mi cuerpo
Sino por el fondo de mi alma

Que no quiere ser manipulada
Ni aceptar tu ideología
Solo quiero hablar contigo
Para preguntarnos porque no?

No necesito tu protección
Nada más tu compañía
Pues el peligro es invisible
Y tu fuerza masculina en verdad no vale nada.
- 25 de Marzo de 2007

itsjessme @ 2007-03-17T20:35:00

2007-03-18T01:35:49Z

Trip to the border was life-changing and I could never ever do it justice by writing about it(but i will very soon, I am just still processing it).

We are planning a "Border Awareness Week" at Georgetown the last week in April leading up the to May First March for Immigrant Rights on the Capitol.

If at all possible you kiddos should really consider coming out for that week/weekend because its gonna be filled with amazing people, stories, marches, and good old times.

Love you and miss you all,
Jess

itsjessme @ 2007-03-02T17:51:00

2007-03-02T23:03:28Z

In a couple hours I leave to spend a week in the Mexico/ US border..... When I return I expect to be angry, upset, dissapointed with the the world for failing to treat human beings with dignity. I also expect to meet beautiful strangers walking in the desert and sharing stories only believed to be myths. The theories and illusions of that space of earth will become real and I will return with a desire to do something about it....

Well those are my expections... now I am leaving them here on this little livejournal so that I can go with an open mind, expecting nothing, knowing nothing... to come back in seven days with a week's worth of stories and and experiences....

Love you all very much,

Jess

itsjessme @ 2007-02-27T02:15:00

2007-02-27T07:18:06Z

"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." For, you understand, "the people must have a religion." That is the safety-valve.

- Voltaire

And so the faith slowly withers and reason pleads for loyalty...... I don't know anymore

http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bakunin/godandstate/godandstate_ch1.html

A must watch....

2007-02-27T02:24:04Z

I saw this today in class and found it to be absolutely genious... It's only thirteen minutes long... but completely worth it.

Let me know your impressions...

http://www.hurluberlu.com/en/movieViewer.php?filmName=ilha_das_flores

Besos,
Jess

itsjessme @ 2007-02-25T23:54:00

2007-02-26T04:55:02Z

No esperéis que los extranjeros nos recuerden lo debido, que para tel empeño teneis conciencia y espíritu. Todo lo bueno que hagáis ha de salir de vuestra iniciativa.”

-Popol Vuh

itsjessme @ 2007-02-24T21:22:00

2007-02-25T02:22:17Z

“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home – so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood [s]he lives in; the school or college [s]he attends; the factory, farm, or office where [s]he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

itsjessme @ 2007-02-23T21:46:00

2007-02-24T02:50:28Z

So I found out today that one of my professors actually has two cds out. He went to Berkley and I absolutely love him..

Support his music... he's an amazing man.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/alifshey

If you guys come visit me this semester.... you can meet him and he can sign your cd.

Love,
Jess

Spiritual approach to Anarchism

2007-02-14T19:32:06Z

someone sent it to me...
Thought you might want to read it...

Various elements of Buddhism correspond dramatically with Western
anarchist theories, both ontological and epistemological. The avoidance
of systems involving private property or hierarchical leadership evident
in the Pali Canon (the oldest known Buddhist scriptures) of Buddhism
bears a close resemblance to many of the themes present in anarchist
writings. In addition epistemological anarchist theory is reflected in
the fundamental Buddhist doctrine of “sabbe dhammaa anattaa,” “All
things are without self-existence.” [1] All of these Buddhist elements
are linked together in a cohesive system that proves quite accommodating
to the anarchist paradigm.

In a process that is similar to other world religions, the followers of
the Buddha up until the present time sometimes deviate from the way of
life he advocated. But it is this earliest incarnation of historical
Buddhist life that offers intriguing solutions to the complex issues of
property and ownership. If property itself is the axle upon which turns
the false dichotomy of the ruler and the ruled, according to early
anarchist philosophers like Proudhon, then the lifestyle of the early
Buddhist monk snaps the axle, thus revealing its own form of anarchism.

The linkage of issues of property and government has been long
recognized in the West. As early as the 1550’s, the French law student
Étienne de la Boétie had linked the two: “Tyrants would distribute
largess, a bushel of wheat, a gallon of wine, and a sesterce: and then
everybody would shamelessly cry, ‘Long live the King!’ The fools did not
realize that they were merely recovering a portion of their own
property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were
receiving without having first taken it from them.” [2] Later, the 19th
century French anarchist Proudhon investigated the concept that
“property is theft.” [3] The Buddha also felt that issues surrounding a
sense of property or possession were entangled in a problematic web, as
is illustrated in the Mahaanidaana Sutta (The Great Discourse On
Origination):

‘And so, Ananda, feeling conditions craving, craving conditions seeking,
seeking conditions acquisition, acquisition conditions decision-making,
decision-making conditions lustful desire, lustful desire conditions
attachment, attachment conditions appropriation, appropriation
conditions avarice, avarice conditions guarding of possessions, and
because of the guarding of possessions then arise the taking up of stick
and sword, quarrels, disputes, arguments, strife, abuse, lying and other
evil unskilled states.’

‘I have said: “All these evil unskilled states arise because of the
guarding of possessions.” For if there were absolutely no guarding of
possessions…would there be the taking up of stick or sword…?’ ‘No,
Buddha.’ ‘Therefore, Ananda, the guarding of possessions is the root,
the cause, the origin, the condition for all these evil unskilled
states.’ [4]

In this way the tensions of property and rule, ownership and theft, are
dismantled without the use of violence or legislative acts. A new “rule
by contract” is established after the concept of private property has
been relinquished by becoming a Buddhist monk. This contract consists of
the Vinaaya, the rules for monks and nuns, the first section of the Pali
Canon. These rules do not involve a life of private possession at all,
and so have little to do with government or politics. The early Buddhist
monk had a solution to a society controlled by a government that
confuses and conflates issues of property and rights of possession and
literally runs off the stolen possessions of its subjects. A total
withdrawal from this cycle, spurred on by insight into its roots,
renders such power useless and obsolete. The causal link of possession
and theft is seen not as a problem to be solved, but as a hopeless
quagmire that must be avoided or abandoned altogether. The rulers and
kings that came into contact with communities of Buddhist monks were
often shocked to find that this way of life dismantled their power
through not granting it as having substantial importance. Once lay life
is abandoned, there is essentially no one left to subjugate, as is
illustrated in the Saamattaphala Sutta (The Fruits of the Homeless Life):

And when King Ajaatasattu came near the mango-grove he felt fear and
terror, and his hair stood on end. And feeling this fear and the rising
of the hairs, the King said to Jiivaka ‘Friend Jiivaka, you are not
deceiving me? You are not tricking me? You are not delivering me up to
an enemy? How is it that from this great number of twelve hundred and
fifty monks not a sneeze, a cough or shout is to be heard?’

‘Have no fear, Your Majesty, I would not deceive you or trick you or
deliver you up to an enemy. Approach, Sire, approach. There are the
lights burning in the round pavilion.’

Then King Ajaatasattu went up to the Lord and stood to one side, and
standing there to one side the King observed how the order of monks
continued in silence like a clear lake, and he exclaimed: ‘If only the
Prince Udaayabhadda were possessed of such calm as this order of monks!’
[5]

The King’s wish for his son would never come to fruition, because as
royalty they were caught up in the entanglements of ruler and ruled, and
the ongoing cycle of possession that serves as the string holding the
tangled mass. Likewise, his power as a ruler was only secondary to the
power of a voluntary community’s non-reaction, a lack of response that
undermined the very structure of power itself. The King was nervous and
afraid precisely because of the calmness of the monks; these men who
lacked property, and who were therefore not subjects of anything except
the mutual contract of Vinaaya that they observed.

The anarchist writings of Emma Goldman and Michael Bakunin also bear an
important link with that of Buddhist doctrine. Both of these authors
attempted to link religious and political authority, saying that these
served to support one another. For example, Emma Goldman in her essay
“The Place of the Individual in Society” claims that monotheism was used
to justify rule itself: “In former days religious authority fashioned
political life in the image of the Church. The authority of the State,
the “rights” of rulers came from on high; power, like faith, was
divine.” [6] Likewise, Bakunin in God and the State designated belief in
a powerful God the “safety valve” of government.

This is yet another causal chain that Buddhism uproots. For although
unfamiliar with any sort of Judeo-Christian God, Buddhism arose against
the backdrop of Hinduism. Despite the surface appearance of Hinduism as
exclusively polytheistic, there are many Hindu elements that bear close
resemblance to Judeo-Christianity, not the least of which being a belief
in an All-Powerful Creator God, in this case called Brahmaa. It was
Brahmaa’s wisdom which created the caste system that Buddhism rejected
wholeheartedly. In addition, many Suttas speak of Brahmaa as a celestial
being with a very long life who out of arrogance and a need to be
worshipped conjured up the notion that the universe was created in the
first place. Like all other beings in the Buddhist cosmology, he is
subject to change, to death and decay, and no amount of arrogance or
power can grant him omniscience. He has only tricked himself, and his
followers, into believing otherwise. This empty lie is addressed in the
Kevaddha Sutta:

Then that monk, by the appropriate concentration, made the way to the
Brahmaa world appear before him. He went to the devas of Brahmaa’s
retinue and asked them. They said: ‘We don’t know. But there is Brahmaa.
Great Brahmaa, the Conqueror, the Unconquered, the All-Seeing,
All-Powerful, the Lord, the Maker and Creator, the Ruler, Appointer and
Orderer, Father of All That Have Been and Shall Be. He is loftier and
wiser than we are. He would know where the four great elements cease
without remainder.’

Then it was not long before the Great Brahmaa appeared. And that monk
went up to him and said: ‘Friend, where do the four great elements –
earth, water, fire, air – cease without remainder?’ to which the Great
Brahmaa replied: ‘Monk, I am Brahmaa, Great Brahmaa, the Conqueror, the
Unconquered, the All-Seeing, All-Powerful, the Lord, The Maker and
Creator, the Ruler, Appointer and Orderer, Father of All That Have Been
and Shall Be.’

A second time the monk said: ‘Friend, I did not ask if you are Brahmaa,
Great Brahmaa …I asked you where the four great elements cease without
remainder.’ And a second time the Great Brahmaa replied as before.

‘And a third time the monk said: ‘Friend, I did not ask you that, I
asked where the four great elements – earth, water, fire, air – cease
without remainder.’ Then, Kevaddha, the Great Brahmaa took the monk by
the arm, led him aside and said: ‘Monk, these devas believe there is
nothing Brahmaa does not see, there is nothing he does not know, there
is nothing he is unaware of. That is why I did not speak in front of
them. But, monk, I don’t know where the four great elements cease
without remainder. And therefore, monk, you have acted wrongly, you have
acted incorrectly by going beyond the Buddha and going in search of an
answer to this question elsewhere. Now, monk, you just go to the Buddha
and put this question to him, and whatever answer he gives, accept it.’ [7]

Thus the Creator God of early Buddhism was not omniscient, and his power
utterly depended on the blind and mistaken faith of his followers. Even
the God himself knew it was a sham, but maintained the façade to retain
his power. The impact of such a theology, or perhaps of the conspicuous
Buddhist absence of theology, is huge when considering systems of
governance that fashioned themselves on patterns of celestial
governance, or Judeo-Christian monotheism. If absolute rule is regarded
not only as unnecessary but impossible, then a projected fixation of
authority from a separate, eternal, or independent source is immediately
negated. The dominant paradigm of modern government, the ruling hand of
a separate metaphysical entity, is swallowed whole by the assertion of
“sabbe dhammaa anattaa”: it no longer exists.

At this point the Buddhist ontological freedom of a life without the
need to guard possession is combined with a more significant,
epistemological freedom. The mind of a monk is freed from the craving to
attribute metaphysical reality to any entity whatsoever, whether it be
divine nature, human nature or the nature of the State. For if all
things lack self-essence, this inevitably extends to the power relations
that inform members of a given State. This fundamental sense of
emptiness and impermanence changes the focus of experienced reality in
which the only experience left is the contract, the actualization of the
doctrine itself.

This issue came to light clearly on the Buddha’s deathbed. Ananda, his
cousin and one of his closest disciples, was perplexed as to what would
happen after the Buddha was gone. The dichotomy of teacher and student,
guide and guided, was still in place while the Buddha lived. But in the
Mahaaparinibbaana Sutta, this dichotomy is denied and the practice of
the doctrine itself is stressed:

And the Buddha said to Ananda, “Ananda, it may be that you will think:
‘The Teacher’s instruction has ceased, now we have no teacher!’ It
should not be seen like this, Ananda, for what I have taught and
explained to you as doctrine and discipline will, at my passing, be your
teacher.” [8]

Thus the role of guidance from without is rendered obsolete. Buddhism,
unlike revelatory Abrahamic religions, focuses not on the appeasement of
the powerful but on the mutual consensus of practitioners who govern
themselves: “‘Therefore, Ananda, you should live as islands unto
yourselves, being your own refuge, with no one else as your refuge.’” [9]

Over the long centuries after the death of the historical Buddha,
hierarchical concepts were manifested in the later Mahaayaana schools.
Monasteries came to be governed by “masters,” and direct political
involvement became common practice, especially in the competitive and
highly sectarian nature of the later Japanese schools. How closely these
examples bear resemblance to the original doctrines of the Buddha is
highly debatable.

Regardless, it is within the context of these original doctrines
themselves where the Buddhist implication for anarchist theory comes to
light. From the Buddhist viewpoint, both “government” and “the governed”
are constructed illusions that are maintained through causal links,
links that are ultimately breachable. The two primary links, involving
issues of private property or hierarchical leadership, are addressed in
the Pali Canon. Though later manifestations of Buddhism canonized their
own writings, these writings exemplify the closest possible
representation of the life of the historical Buddha. Through this
representation we are given a glimpse of a society with no property and
no leadership, but an agreed-upon code, akin to a contract. Though
Buddhist tradition was destined to diverge from this source, these
ancient teachings provide an example of a 2,500-year-old system that
shares commonalities with modern anarchist theory.

itsjessme @ 2007-02-06T23:14:00

2007-02-07T04:15:12Z

“el tiempo es arte...

quien posee tu tiempo posee tu mente, posee tu propio tiempo y conoceras tu mente”