¨
A motley collection of "cryptid" sightings. Some are barely believable stories about bioluminescent spiders and frogs. Others are frankly unbelievable. A glowing lake monster in Lake Erie? A pterodactyl which looks like a UFO? Yeah, that´s likely...
But sure, it´s entertaining.
It seems a new form of trafficking and slavery has developed in Southeast Asia. Hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world are virtually imprisoned in "scam centers" in Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. Tricked by promises of good office jobs, they are forced to work with various Internet and phone scams. The centers are often controlled by Chinese crime gangs.
However, it seems that both China and Thailand have decided to move against the gangs after a high profile abduction of a Chinese actor (!) in Thailand (he was trafficked to Myanmar) and Thai fears that Chinese tourists might avoid their country unless something is done stat. The Chinese government is of course entirely hypocritical, due to the slave-like conditions in China´s seafood industry, not to mention Tibet and Xinjiang. I suppose the crime syndicates messed with the wrong officials.
The Myanmar military is apparently also sick and tired of the scam centers at their side of the porous Thailand-Myanmar border, since they have decided to aid the Thai efforts to clean up the place. So I suppose you could say that this story has a "happy ending" of sorts...for now. Something tells me the scamming will continue elsewhere.
Speaking of which...
The YouTube clip above tells a somewhat bizarre story connected to the scam center issue, this time from Cambodia. An attention-seeking influencer from Taiwan staged an incident in Cambodia, claiming to have been kidnapped and tortured by a gang operating a center. The Cambodian authorities weren´t amused and sentenced both him and an accomplice to a long prison sentence. Even the Prime Minister of Cambodia Hun Manet condemned the hoax. One thing the YouTube clip doesn´t tell us is whether or not the Cambodian police also took action against the scam centers...
Slavery never really went away, did it?
Sheikh Hasina claims in her first statement from the Indian exile that the United States orchestrated her overthrow. My impression is that her government tried to maintain good relations with both China and India, and that the pro-Chinese connection angered the Americans.
There are also various conspiracy theories floating around, such as Hasina´s claim that the United States wants to create a "Christian state" on territory poached from both Muslim Bangladesh and Buddhist Myanmar!
The article linked below also mention Indian claims that the protests against Hasina were organized by China to pull Bangladesh out of India´s orbit, but that seems very unlikely. The new figurehead leader, Muhammad Yunus, strikes me as the centrist-liberal-globalist type.
To be continued?
Mindfulness has taken the world by storm. I happen to know that mindfulness
exercises have even been offered to unemployed in Sweden – not clear how on
earth that would increase their chances to get a job?! Inevitably, there are people
who believe that mindfulness is dangerous and cultic. Like the story about a guy
who was followed straight into the men´s room by a chaperon during a meditation
retreat. Or what about the urban legend that Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 POTUS
elections due to her, or perhaps her staff, constantly meditating according to
this method? One of these days, some ethnologist should write a paper about all
this!
Meanwhile, we can try to decode two overlapping scholarly articles by
Robert Sharf: “Is Mindfulness Buddhist? (And why it matters)” from the journal “Transcultural
Psychiatry” 2015 Vol 52(4), and “Mindfulness and Mindlessness in early Chan”
from the journal “Philosophy East and West” Volume 64, Number 4, October 2014.
Both are available for free at Academia.edu (registration required, but that
too is for free). I admit that decoding the articles were quite hard, but I
think I got the gist of it.
The practice known as mindfulness isn´t *really* a form of vipassana or
Theravada insight meditation, rather having modern roots in a Buddhist revival in
Burma (Myanmar). It´s mostly associated with Mahasi Sayadaw (1904-1982), who
apparently developed the most well-known techniques. Mahasi wanted a form of
meditation that was suited for laypeople, including those who knew next to nothing
about Theravada philosophy or liturgy. The result was “bare attention”, a term
coined by Mahasi´s disciple Siegmund Feniger. The technique is easy to learn
and was rapidly exported to many other Buddhist nations from Burma, both those following
Theravada and those practicing Mahayana. Even later, it conquered the world in
a secular form and can be used by essentially everyone: Buddhist modernists in
the Western world, Christians, prison inmates, hyperactive children, and (perhaps)
Madame Clinton´s campaign staff. It´s seen as part and parcel of a universal
and non-sectarian Buddhism. It also has a “perennialist” angle, treating
spiritual mind-states as cross-cultural. The mystics really did have exactly
the same raw experience, although their way of expressing it was culture-bound.
And now *you* can get the same experience, almost in your own backyard! Indeed,
you can actually get enlightened without following the rather complex and
demanding Buddhist path.
Not so fast, argues Sharf. The word translated “mindfulness” is the Pali
“sati”, which in turn is the same as the Sanskrit “smriti”. The original
meaning is something like “to remember” or “to recollect”. It turns out that
the meditative technique bearing this name in Theravada has very little to do
with modern mindfulness. In Theravada, “sati” doesn´t mean to observe your thoughts
and feelings as they come and go, effectively dismissing them all (the
mindfulness approach). Rather, it seems to be the exact opposite: “sati” entails
a careful analysis of each thought or feeling, learning to discriminate good “dhammas”
from bad ones, according to the moral precepts of Buddhism. Also, the practice
of “sati” can´t be isolated from studies of Buddhist scriptures, proper rituals,
the communal life of the monks, and so on.
The author further points out that mindfulness is based on a view of the
mind not found in Theravada. Mindfulness seems to imply that there is such a
thing as “pure” cognition of an object, without any interpretations of the discursive
mind. Our consciousness can therefore be trained to look at these qualia
dispassionately “from without” (so to speak) and then simply dismiss them. The
highest state would presumably be one of entirely pure mind, unsullied by any
qualia whatsoever. But according to Theravada philosophy, there is no state
like this. Consciousness and its objects arise co-dependently, so if
consciousness of objects cease, consciousness itself ceases. At least in this world,
that way madness lays. Sharf also points out that modern mindfulness is all
about positive thinking (and, I suppose, glossy magazines), while traditional
Theravada also sought to cultivate an attitude of world-weariness often
bordering depression (by modern American standards). Meditation on corpses is a
well-known example. One meditative state was known as “knowledge of appearance as
terror” and was likened to a mother witnessing her three sons being executed!
No safe space here, bro.
While mindfulness is thus a very modern thing, similar movements have
arisen within Buddhism before. For instance within Chan Buddhism in medieval China
(Chan is usually known as Zen in the Western world, Zen being the Japanese form
of the name). Chan masters who had a substantial lay following developed
techniques which seem to resemble “bare attention”. The techniques were attributed
to a certain Layman Fu, promised instant enlightenment, did away with monasticism
and ritualism, and so on. Sounds familiar? Sharf also speculates that the
esoteric Tibetan practice known as Dzogchen may have been another example of
such a “dumbed down” practice. He then describes what kind of criticism was
leveled against the Chan “bare attention” approaches by more traditional Chan
groups. They believed that the radicals couldn´t distinguish between right and
wrong, and that their practices led to “falling into emptiness” and “meditation
sickness”. This was apparently a dramatic euphemism for the practitioner being cut
off from everyday life and society, everything that makes us sane and human. To
retain our balance, we have to actively engage with Buddhist doctrine and forms
of life. An Indian master named Kamalashila criticized the Chan master Heshang
Moheyan during a debate in Tibet by saying that yogis who put an end to thinking
end up in the realm of “beings without minds” for 500 eons as mindless zombies!
In sum, then, Sharf´s point is that mindfulness is modern, that similar
movements in the past were heavily criticized from more traditional quarters
and probably only represented a minority, and that “bare attention” is based on
perennialism, erroneous notions about the human mind, fake positive thinking, a
chase after sensual pleasure, and commercialization. Almost anything than the
actual Buddhadharma. Well, yes, that does sound very modern indeed…
Perhaps we should be mindful of mindfulness? Ashtar Command, zoning out!
Some fun facts (or factoids?) about "The Langoliers".
The behind the scene footage is almost priceless. Yes, most of the mini-series was taped at an actual airport, Bangor International in Maine. You can see the actors and crew surrounded by (perhaps annoyed) airline passengers! The plane used was apparently sold to a Swedish airline at one point, but eventually ended up on a scrap heap in Burma.
The actor starring the crazy Mr Toomy, Bronson Pinchot, was apparently quite the mad hatter IRL, as well. Weirdest of all is that Bangor is Stephen King´s hometown. Never been to Maine but, dude, is it really *that* scary? Even during rush hour?
"Where is that damn anthropologist, there is no bloody contradiction between being a werecat and being a Buddhist!"
This unsympathetic man is apparently the 145th "Shankaracharya" of the Govardhan Mat in Puri, Orissa, India. In the first clip, he attacks the Hare Krishna (ISKCON) as a bunch of unclean LARP-ers, undesirables and interlopers. In the second, he defends the caste system (or strictly speaking the varna system, which the caste system grew out of).
Still, it *is* funny when he exposes the hypocrisy of those who "oppose caste" while having a class society of their own. For instance, the British, who still have a monarchy. Didn´t they make Victoria the Empress of India? Or the Muslims in the Indian sub-continent, who apparently have a de facto caste system. Or the Buddhists in Burma, who claim to be peaceful, but then create their own "kshatriyas" to fight the Muslims!
Browsing the YouTube channel of Govardhan Mat, I have to say that No 145 often comes across as a militant political agitator, apart from being a very "traditionalist" Hindu.
Make of this content what you wish.
“Dalai lama”
is a book in Swedish about the Tibetan god-king. The author is Bertil Lintner, a
Swedish foreign correspondent resident in Thailand. Lintner met and interviewed
the Dalai Lama a couple of times.
While his
book is about 100% pro-Tibetan/anti-Chinese, it´s not a pure hagiography of the
exiled Tibetan leader. Quite the contrary, Lintner reveals that the peaceful
Buddhist “socialist” was once a CIA asset, and that the CIA conducted a
large-scale secret war against China using armed Tibetans as proxies. The Dalai
Lama can´t have been unaware of the situation. Indeed, the escape of the Dalai
Lama from Chinese-occupied Tibet in 1959 was aided and abetted by the CIA.
When
Lintner met the Dalai Lama for the first time in 1984, the Tibetan leader
revealed that he originally wanted to go into exile in Burma (Myanmar), a
predominantly Buddhist nation which at the time was neutral. However, the Burmese
turned him down, so the Dalai Lama went to India instead. There is just one
problem with this story: how on earth could the Dalai Lama´s traveling party on
the run in Tibet get a message across to the Burmese government? The method
used, or so Lintner believes, was radio communications with the CIA at Okinawa
(then controlled by the United States). The Americans then radioed Rangoon.
Officially, none of this happened, and the Dalai Lama supposedly sent a messenger
on foot (or was it yak) to India to ask for asylum there – something Lintner
believes can´t have happened, the whole thing being too risky. So the contacts
with the Indian government probably also went through Okinawa.
The Dalai
Lama had to call off the armed struggle in 1974 (I think), due to the thaw
between the United States and China (the US needed China as an ally to contain
the Soviet Union). It seems he successfully transitioned to a peace apostle and
international lobbyist after that, and no longer calls for a fully independent
Tibet, but the Chinese government obviously still see him as a potential threat
to the “unity of China”.
Lintner
wonders what will happen when the Dalai Lama passes away. He is 87 years old,
and although he has stepped down from his political positions in the Tibetan
exile government (based in McLeod Ganj close to Dharamshala in India), most Tibetans
still see him as their rightful leader. Traditionally, the new Dalai Lama is
appointed through a peculiar system in which a small boy is found by monks from
the Geluk sect of Tibetan Buddhism and declared to be the reincarnation of the former
Dalai Lama, but this means that it takes decades before the new Dalai Lama can
start functioning as a real leader. Lintner fears that the Chinese Communist
regime will “find” their own “Dalai Lama”, in effect setting up a kind of
anti-Pope, something they already done with the Panchen Lama. The Dalai Lama
may have tried to reform the system, perhaps proposing that the Tibetan
government in exile becomes wholly secularized, but it´s possible that the
traditional-minded Tibetans will refuse to accept such reforms.
As for China,
the only Chinese Communist leader who has expressed any kind of understanding
for the plight of Tibet is Hu Jintao, who seems to have been finally purged
from the CCP leadership in 2022. Everything points to repression in Tibet
becoming worse in the near future. Lintner speculates that the armed struggle
may erupt again after the current Dalai Lama is gone, since an important
Tibetan exile organization, the Tibetan Youth Congress, is more militant and
demands full independence. I also wonder how the creeping neo-cold war between
the PRC and the US will affect the Tibetan question. The Dalai Lama has met all
US presidents since George Bush senior (except Donald Trump), so the United States
clearly haven´t forgotten their old allies in this particular geopolitical
theatre…
If Swedish
is a language you can actually read, “Dalai lama” is a good introduction to modern
Tibetan history and politics (the book is 170 pages short). And, of course, to
the life of the 14th Dalai Lama. One thing the book doesn´t describe
very well are the actual religious beliefs of Tibetan Buddhism, but then,
that´s an extremely complex topic and I don´t fault a foreign correspondent for
not understanding them!
Recommended.
“Burmas Historia”
(The History of Burma) is a book by Bertil Lintner, a Swedish reporter who is
something of an expert on South Asian politics. “Burmas Historia” is probably
the only book in the Swedish language dealing with the colorful but tragic history
of Burma or Myanmar, as the nation is usually called these days. The book was
published in 2014, and therefore doesn´t cover the latest eight years of the
Burmese tragedy.
Lintner
begins the story in 1057, when King Anawratha of Pagan created the First Burmese
Empire. Important figures of Burmese history mentioned in the book include King
Mindon, Queen Supayalat, General Aung San, U Nu, Ne Win, Thein Sein and Aung
San Suu Kyi. Most of the chapters deal with 20th century
developments, when Burma went from being a British colony to becoming an independent
state, only to succumb to military rule from 1962 onwards (with a short period
of ostensible liberalization circa 2011-2021). Around 1988, the military regime
changed its political spots from “socialist” to “capitalist”, but little seems
to have changed in practice.
One of the
problems of modern Burmese society is that the military (Tatmadaw) functions as
a de facto political party, and directly controls not only politics and the
media, but also the economy, not to mention the black market trade. This is the
system then-dictator Ne Win passed off as “Burmese socialism” during the Cold War.
(The Maoist CPB or Communist Party of Burma regarded the system as “fascist”
and fought a people´s war against it, which may perhaps tell us a thing or two!)
Another very obvious problem is that Tatmadaw has essentially zero popular support.
Every time the military has allowed free elections, the democratic opposition
party NLD and its allies have won essentially every contested seat. And yet, military
rule always manages to reassert itself. One reason is surely its extreme
brutality and total disregard for international public opinion, but other explanations
also suggest themselves.
Burma or
Myanmar isn´t an ethnically or religiously homogenous nation. The majority is Burman
(also called Bamar) and Buddhist, but the large “border regions” are populated
by other ethnic groups: Karens, Karenni, Shan, Mon, Chin, Kachin, Wa, Rohingya,
etc. While some of these are Buddhists, others are Muslims or have adopted Protestant
Christianity. Animism is also strong. Many of the ethnic minorities have long-standing
grievances against the Burmans. One example are the Karens, who supported the
British colonial power against their erstwhile Burman oppressors, only to
become an oppressed minority group again when Burma finally regained its
independence. Some of the Karens have converted to Christianity. A peculiar
legend exists among Western missionaries about the Karens believing in a “older
White brother” who would return one day and give them knowledge of the true god.
Opposition
to the military regime is often made difficult by mutual suspicions between the
ethnically Burman democracy activists and the minorities. For instance, many
Burmans consider the Muslim Rohingya to be “illegal aliens” and didn´t really
care when Tatmadaw attacked their settlements. Meanwhile, there is a plethora
of armed rebel bands based on other ethnic minority groups. The military is
smart enough to enter peace agreements on-off with such rebels, thereby weakening
any united resistance against its rule. Mutually beneficial deals concerning
illegal trade, or geopolitical considerations, have played a role in these agreements.
For instance, the Wa people have a de facto independent state in close alliance
with China, something tolerated by Tatmadaw since China is an important backer of
Burma. An ironic twist to the story is that China permitted the Wa to overthrow
the Communist Party of Burma in this region, when the militant CPB became too
much of a nuisance to the more pragmatic Chinese leaders…
Still, the
NLD and the ethnic minority groups have been able to unite from time to time,
so there is probably still a chance that Tatmadaw will fall one day at the hands
of a general popular insurrection. What will happen the day after, is another
question entirely!
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| The Indonesian orchid "Kimilsungia" |
"Guns, Guerillas and the Great Leader: North Korea and the Third World" is a book written hy Benjamin R Young. It was recently published by Standford University Press as part of their "Cold War International History Project". While the book does contain interesting facts (and a lot of borderline factoids), it nevertheless comes across as a rough draft. The book tries to describe North Korea´s foreign policy from 1956 to 1989, but lacks a more detailed analysis of the entire period in question. There isn´t even a general summary chapter. To be honest, the book comes across as a kind of catalogue of every weird North Korean mishap in the Third World, but without any attemp at a real synthesis. There are also a number of strange errors: the author (or his editor?) confuses Mauritius with Mauritania, claims that Muhammad is a "deity", and insists on calling the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna "the People´s Liberation Front" - while that is what the name means, everyone else just calls it JVP. After reading the book, I still don´t understand *why* the DPRK did what they did (as in "why really"), although a few answers can be gleaned by reading the narrative carefully.
Which doesn´t mean you shouldn´t read the book. If you love killer clowns on a Halloween rampage in the Third World, you gonna love "Guns, Guerillas and the Great Leader".
A long time ago, I assumed that the DPRK were a super-isolationist Communist regime which really did have an independent line, and in contrast to Enver Hoxha´s Albania didn´t even try to create a "world movement" all their own. Later, I assumed that North Korea was really just a Soviet satellite, although a slightly idiosyncratic one. Judging by Young´s overview, the truth is more complex and also more sinister. North Korea was politically independent from both the Soviet Union and the People´s Republic of China, but also economically dependent on them - the "North Korean miracle" was really Made in Elsewhere. The solution seems to have been to play off the Soviets and the Chinese against each other, reaping dividends from both. When necessary, the DPRK carried out its own influence operations, economic deals and even terrorist attacks. There is a certain irony in this, since the "Democratic People´s Republic of Korea" was established by the Soviet Army and saved from USA/UN occupation by the People´s Liberation Army of China! Yet, since both the Soviets and the Chinese left early, the Kim family clan could remain firmly in control and pursue their own policies without direct supervision by Moscow or Beijing (both of which frequently complained about the North Korean attitude). So why were the North Koreans allowed to continue, year after year, even when they carried out crazy stuff worthy of a Gaddafi? I assume the reason is geopolitical: neither the Soviets nor the Chinese Communists can allow a "capitalist" or "pro-American" unification of Korea, and therefore need the DPRK as their buffer state in the north. This gives the Kims (including the present one) a certain leverage and ability to manoeuvre. They can go very far without risking more than some diplomatic reprimands backstage...
I think the main, or even only, reason for DPRK´s "solidarity" with "the Third World" is the North-South conflict on the Korean peninsula. Judging by Young´s account, this is the case even when North Korea tries to get influence in Africa. It´s really a way to counter attempts by *South* Korea to gain such influence, or to move first. Sometimes, North Korea wants to test its weaponry, or even engage South Korean agents and military personnel abroad. During the Vietnam War, North Korea supported North Vietnam and the NLF, while South Korea did likewise with South Vietnam. The DPRK sent fighter pilots to Vietnam, and tried to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the South Korean troops active there. They also attempted to abduct South Korean military, spread Communist propaganda among them, etc. In Africa, the two Koreas were engaged in a decades-long propaganda war against each other, the purpose of which was to secure African support for the North Korean position within the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which North Korean diplomacy tried to use as a forum and a tool for DPRK interests. While the aid to various Third World nations was originally free of charge (the North Koreans even paid handsomely for propaganda in various foreign newspapers), during the 1980´s the relations became more business-like, with the DPRK demanding payment (in foreign currency) for services rendered.
What struck me most was the intensely opportunist character of the North Korean foreign operations. Machiavelli would have liked these guys. In Uganda, North Korea supported both Idi Amin, Milton Obote and Yoveri Museveni! In southern Africa, North Korea originally had cozy relations with Zaire´s very own killer clown Mobutu Sese Seko, only to abandon him (and his Angolan FLNA proxies, and I suppose his avasuits), in favor of the Angolan MPLA. In the Middle East, Kim Il Sung secretly supported Egypt´s peace deal with Israel, while saying the opposite in public! And despite its support for North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, the DPRK pivoted to Pol Pot´s Cambodia after the war, even trying to get Vietnam expelled from the NAM. The bromance between Cambodia´s Sihanouk and Kim Il Sung must have been something to behold, with Sihanouk telling a high-ranking US official that the North Korean leaders don´t want war, since they are used to a life in complete comfort and luxury (something that must have impressed this truly precious prince who, alas, was no stranger to war). Sihanouk preferred having North Korean body guards, notorious for their brutality, being intensely suspicious of Cambodian royal palace guards...
A fun fact is that North Korea weren´t the only opportunists in these transactions. Frequently, *they* were taken advantage of themselves, especially in the super-corrupted African theatre. Once, a pro-Western newspaper in Cameroon published pro-DPRK propaganda just for the money. Many "Korean friendship associations" in Africa paid people to become members, which all kinds of unscrupulous elements took advantage of. In Uganda, the "friendship association" supported Museveni, at a time when the North Korean regime was still aiding and abetting Obote. The Communist Dergue regime in Ethiopia cynically accepted aid from both Koreas! But then, the Dergue may also have been the only regime in the world which accepted aid from both Cuba and Israel...
Judging by Young´s account, the best aid rendered by the Kim regime to its "allies" in the Third World was the military one, which included both weapons, ammunition and frequently brutal instructors. He doesn´t have an opinion on the quality of the huge palaces and monuments built in Africa by North Koreans. Much other aid was substandard, including porcelain factories which made dishes of such bad quality that you could cut through them with a steak knife. I´m not surprised. One popular "export" were the Mass Games, a kind of political gymnastic exercises, which could be used for propaganda purposes in a variety of nations (although the locals preferred to enhance the Mass Games with references to their own cultures). This brings me to perhaps the most entertaining portion of North Korean foreign propaganda: its notoriously inept character. It´s not clear to me whether the Kim Il Sung leadership really didn´t get it, or whether they simply didn´t care, since the real deals between DPRK and its "allies" were negotiated off-stage.
North Korea is notorious for its bizarre and hysterical personality cult of Kim Il Sung, and later also of Kim Jong Il, his son and heir-very-apparent. This personality cult was liberally diffused abroad (or in North Korea to visiting foreign delegations), often to the bemusement and slight consternation of the intended targets. After reading some of the Great Leader´s sage pronouncements myself, I have to say that most of them are basic bitch commonplaces. "We have to strengthen the people, weaken imperialism, and mobilize. This is very important". That kind of level. I assume that the statements *about* the Great Leader and the Dear Leader are more, shall we say, turgid. Even foreign diplomats, including from friendly socialist nations, where frequently forced to listen to long speeches extolling the virtues and excellencies of Kim Il Sung. One Spanish visitor, I think, was taken to the doctor for a check up before being allowed to visit Kim - the medic explained that the Leader is such a great man, that people frequently faint in his presence! An African delegation, when realizing that the next 40 rooms of a Kim Il Sung exhibition in Pyongyang were very similar to the 20 rooms they had already walked through, kindly asked to be taken elsewhere. The translations of books about Kim Il Sung to foreign languages were frequently pretty bizarre. One English translation had the headline "Kim Il Sung: The Divine Man", while an Arabic translation claimed that Kim Il Sung is God! (No less.) Ironically, the idea known as Juche, which the Korean Workers´ Party claims is Kim Il Sung´s foremost contribution to revolutionary theory, was succeful in the Third World mostly because it was interpreted as a commonplace. Thus, in India, Juche was associated with everything from Plato to Mahatma Gandhi, which seems correct - for what is Juche other than the idea of autarkic self-reliance from the Western-dominated world economy, the dream of many Third World nationalists?
Unfortunately, the Communist fun house of North Korea also had a darker side. One thing that struck me was that the North Koreans sometimes attacked "progressive" governments they should logically have tried to lobby diplomatically instead, as when they supported the mad Maoists of the JVP against the left-nationalist SLFP government of Sri Lanka, or when they backed a small revolutionary foco against the Mexican PRI government. In both cases, the rebellions were adventurist and doomed from the start (the Mexicans hardly started theirs before the police arrested them). Notoriously, North Korea supported the Japanese Red Army, a kind of East Asian version of the Baader Meinhof gang. Further, there was the Rangoon bombing of 1983, during which North Korean agents tried to assassinate Chun Doo-hwan, the president of South Korea, during his official visit to Burma (at the time a socialist nation). Finally, there was the bombing of Korean Air Flight 858 in 1987, killing over 100 people, in retaliation for South Korea refusing to co-host the 1988 olympic summer games. After the Cold War, it´s been pretty much downhill from there, with the North Korean regime looking upon the Third World as a gigantic smorgasbord for smuggling, hacking and other ways to obtain hard currency (implicitly or explicitly threatening to nuke the US unless the West pays tribute is another sure method).
North Korea has become a rogue state and international outlaw, and it seems the roots of the predicament go pretty deep. So does the geopolitical realities that seemlingly make the North Korean entity as viable as ever, at least for the Kim clan and its cronies. Today, the great benefactor of "self-reliant" Juche DPRK is, of course, China.
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"Esoteric Theravada: The Story of the Forgotten Meditation Tradition of Southeast Asia" is a book by Kate Crosby published last year. I haven´t read literally all of it (it *is* very "esoteric"), but will post a review anyway (it´s my blog, after all). Despite being a scholarly work, it´s published by Shambhala, an independent pro-Buddhist publisher based in Boulder, Colorado.
Judging by several other works I´ve read, the almost exclusive emphasis on Vipassana meditation (which modern Mindfulness is based on) is a new phenomenon within Theravada, not older than the 19th century, when various modernization processes conspired to "resurrect" (or perhaps create wholly de novo) this kind of meditation technique. Before the 19th century, few, if any, Buddhists meditated at all, Theravada practice being about "merit-creating" and pseudo-magical rituals. While this scenario isn´t "wrong", Kate Crosby shows that the actual picture is more complex - and even more interesting.
It turns out that alongside the official Theravada, there *was* a tradition of advanced meditation, which Crosby calls "boran kammatthana". This was an esoteric practice of unknown date which played a prominent part in certain monastic circles prior to the 19th and 20th centuries, usually communicated by word of mouth from master to disciple. It even played a role in a major Buddhist revival in Ceylon during the 18th century. There are similarities between boran kammatthana, Tibetan dream yoga, other Tantric practices, alchemy and Ayurvedic medicine. For some reason, Crosby doesn´t discuss possible similarities with esoteric Taoism. The usual suspicion is that the esoteric tradition within Theravada really is Tantrism, and since such influences were anathema to the 19th century modernizers, this simply became another argument to ignore or suppress it. Crosby, by contrast, believes that boran kammatthana is really inspired by Ayurveda, and that it´s so closely aligned to Theravada philosophy that an "alien" Tantric intrusion is unlikely. In other words, the secret tradition is in some sense legit. (Personally, I don´t see the contradiction.)
The most interesting section of the book tries to describe the actual practices associated with this old school form of meditation. The practitioner does experience various paranormal or supernatural phenomena: encounters with the spirits of the deceased, visions of other realms of reality, seeing spheres of light sometimes accompanied by luminous letters in ancient Khmer script, etc. Physical objects may be visible even when the meditator closes his eyes, or may appear in strange and unfamiliar shapes. Abstract themes for meditation may "appear" as quasi-physical objects, such as a sun´s disk or radiant gems. The practitioner is supposed to absorb the luminous orbs through his nostrils and place them inside his body, at the locations of various chakras or energy centers. This will eventually transform the physical body of the meditator into that of a Buddha! The relationship between this (apparently literal) transformation and the ultimate goal of nibbana (nirvana) is not spelled out in the esoteric scriptures, but presumably a person who dies while in this transmogrified state will immidiately attain liberation. (Does this mean that the Buddha-body is mortal? Or does the person choose to die? Not clear!)
Some additional techniques described in the book take numerology and peculiar written code words as their point of departure. There are affinities between boran kammatthana and alchemy (yes, it works with quicksilver and sulphur in Southeast Asia, too), magical tattoos, traditional medicine, and "forest monks" living at the outskirts of Theravadin civilization. At the same time, the esotericism was also surprisingly intellectually sophisticated. A close reading of Theravada Buddhist philosophy suggested that the "atoms" of samsaric existence are simultaneously both material and spiritual. (Compare Whitehead´s process philosophy!) But if so, spiritual mutations should lead to changes in the physical. Therefore, it´s entirely in keeping with Buddhist understanding that a spiritual technique such as meditation can transform a physical body. Presumably, it´s also logical to assume that a certain kind of body can make it easier to attain a "spiritual" state such as nibbana.
When Theravada modernized itself during the 19th and early 20th centuries, the esoteric practices were gradually squeezed out. One way of doing so was to ban traditional medicine in favor of the modern, Western version. The sangha (monastic order) was taken over by modernists and controlled by the modernizing state. This was the course taken in Siam (Thailand). The esoteric tradition there had already been weakened during the 18th century when the Burmese invaded and devasted Siam, including the then capital of Ayutthaya. In Cambodia, the French colonial power supported the modernist faction within the sangha. The Cold War was another crushing blow. In Cambodia and Laos, Communist regimes (most notoriously the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia) decimated the sangha and Buddhism in general. In pro-Western Thailand, millions of people were relocated from the border regions, where the Thai government feared Communist infiltration. Traditional forms of Buddhism had survived longer in these areas than in others. However, it seems boran kammatthana isn´t completely dead. A few monasteries in Thailand still teach the practice, and the controversial Dhammakaya new religious movement has adopted a modified version of it. Somewhat ironically, it seems that the latest phase of modernization, with its emphasis on individual choices in religion, might favor the ancient esotericism...
There seems to be more to explore here. This is the *inner* school of the elders.
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| Where the teak at, bro? |
