Motormouth

This afternoon was MOMO MANIA 2008! Momos are dumplings/wontons. Twenty kinds were represented at the event, including the usual range of meats (from mutton to chicken), fish, paneer, tofu, veggie, cheese, potato, spinach, even fruit. They weren't all spectacular, but we got a kick out of seeing countless plates piled high with momos. Even better was the concert, which was an apparently famous band (according to Yanik, the best Newari group in KTM) called Kutumba playing with a Japanese singer who's been living in Nepal and singing Nepali music for ten years, Sundari Mica. It was nifty. We left before the momo-eating and -making contests because of the cold and watched football at Yanik's for a while instead--Yanik, Tais, Taka, and Ghorov. It was a game between Man city and Arsenal, and the commentators are hilarious--"That was an absolutely exquisite score!" "What a sumptuous attempt at a goal!"...gotta love the Brits.

Tomorrow is a transit strike because of petrol prices, which I guess must be increasing again. Not only no buses, but no taxis either, which rules out any travel outside of Boudha. While the circumstances here don't make me homesick, I do think I'm getting to appreciate more and more how very privileged my life in New York is. It's not that I wasn't aware of it before, but living in another city for this long brings up trivial daily things that wouldn't really be considered travel challenges (especially since tourist spots have generators), like utilities and transit and prices. A mental picture of my bathroom at home crossed my mind today and I realized how overwhelmingly comfortable it is--no drafts, no lack of toilet paper, a bathtub, hot (clean) water round the clock, a medicine cabinet. I'm spoiled here too, where I can walk 5 minutes and have access to the Hyatt's health club, and on mornings as cold as these I can't help but think about the countless people who have nothing remotely of the sort and are out on the streets. It's a hard thing to live in a place where the divide between the richest and the poorest is so extremely apparent...the world becomes a truly absurd mirage of order.

The more I see of the world, the more my interest in it deepens, as I am increasingly perplexed by all of it. People like Anil are so inspiring, but I have little faith that the solution to our problems lies in politics and economics per se. That's probably because I don't buy that our problems are essentially political or economic. The systems don't seem to be what's behind the achievements of men like Anil--it's a fundamental compassion that's lacking in most members of bureaucracy. His ability to know the rules, to bend them, to be part of a system that has its own momentum and personality without losing his own, is remarkable--and exceptional. It is a rare strength of character.

There are more people with that strength than I would have guessed, but I don't count myself among them. It's not because I'm incapable, but rather because I know it's not the kind of life that would make me happy. I used to firmly believe that the only way to change a bad government was from inside it. Now, though I still think there's some truth to that, working in a hierarchical entity is (to me) a living analogy for a simultaneous struggle against more immediate internal tyranny. Like digging for gold in an empty mine, when there's a nugget in your pocket!

Such efforts can be astoundingly noble and often brilliant. But yet it seems like this kind of work is the externalization of a transformation that has to happen internally, before anything can last outwardly and be more than just a change in the current. It would take Anil to the "nth" exponent to change the system itself, and not just to be "one of the good ones".

Of course, that's a sweeping assertion, but not a conclusion. I don't mean to discredit the value of institutions in the least, or the good intentions of people within them. On the contrary, I admire and sometimes fear them. Deciding not to be one of the warriors for good in the system is based on my own conviction, not an objective improbability of making improvements. The constant struggle of life in public service is like being trapped in a vice, for a sensitive person. In a way, I'm jealous of people who have the kind of iron will it takes to forge a meaningful career in what I could call "functional compassion". There are a few people I've met in the flesh whose presence convinced me that it's possible to do it and still have a deep inner life, like Jacqueline Novogratz. But I don't know their intimate circumstances, and I have to live according to my own.

At the same time, against my will, I feel a certain cynicism rising in me that I thought I had come to terms with. I know it's possible for people to change, for education and kindness to open up new worlds. But I also see so many people trying, everywhere, to no avail. And many of these people have the best intentions that they can. That doesn't mean they're pure or selfless, they're just the best they can be; and it seems like that just is not enough to get back a good result most of the time. People are struggling everywhere and getting nothing materially back for it.

Inner and outer resources operate at different tempos, it seems, when it comes to getting what you give and vice versa. The functioning of the law of cause and effect isn't always so obvious. I suppose "karma" is what people would label a "religious" explanation of this disparity, which operates seemingly regardless of scale--it's true for individuals, and it's true for organizations, and it's true for countries. That's why I feel like there are other forces at work here, and systems need to be understood as having their own power--i.e., the whole actually is separate and maybe more than the sum of its parts.

And then, what's beyond all the systems? What's happening behind the scenes? Not the scenes of closed doors and handshakes, but on an essentially global scale. People talk about the global village as this giant aggregate of corporate, national, and personal components, and nothing more, like the world is no more than us. But while human beings might be manipulating all sorts of power, we aren't the power itself, and we need to find a way to understand and address the root cause of why we are subject to all these accidents and coincidental mishaps and successes. How does power go wrong? Power doesn't corrupt. It seems that we as a species are just not developed enough to handle power without, in a sense, "self-destructing". Something is wrong with our mental machinery, maybe because that's all we're running on, without understanding the fuel. I guess our abuse of resources extends to the metaphysical, because I'm not talking about neurotransmitters.

It seems more than probable that the root cause of such catastrophic dysfunction is the same as the root cause of illness and, in fact, all suffering according to Tibetan medicine and Buddhism: ignorance. Last night I was listening to a recording of H.H. the Dalai Lama XIV at Stanford University, and there were introductory remarks made by someone in a high position in the department of neuroscience. I found it both funny and tragic that at an event clearly meant to bridge gaps in cultural and intellectual understanding--with quite seriously good intentions on the part of the academic world--there was still an astounding degree of close-mindedness in the desire to control the dialogue.

Of course boundaries must be set for a speech event, but why? Not because "there are certain concepts [karma, enlightenment, etc.] that we don't examine in neuroscience, and so wouldn't be profitable topics for our discussion today". It's because vast numbers of people, even very smart people, are incapable of hearing what is behind terms, which are just the form of speech and not the act of communication itself. The blacklisted topic of "karma", for example; one of the first things H.H. mentions is the "law of cause and effect"--the two are essentially the same thing, if you reduce the meaning of karma to an English translation that doesn't require any adjustment to a new idea. This need to rephrase things in a way that's comfortable for others to hear causes so much time to be wasted, and meaningless conflict. Regardless, a conversation between Buddhism and neuroscience opens up myriad mental cans of worms besides problems of phrasing.

His Holiness, who is supposed to be an incarnation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, may have infinite patience for such limitation. I don't, including in myself--mental laziness is frustrating and destructive. Of course, so is impatience, so I suppose I've come to an impasse there.

My sister had a friend who would constantly say during arguments, "I don't understand", or "that doesn't make sense". Her take on it was that miscommunication is the only way to crawl back into ignorance with any dignity. I quite agree, and this tendency of people exposes itself shamefully in cross-cultural dialogue. Not that unintentional misunderstanding is impossible, it must be; but in many cases of what are supposed to be "open forums", it's simply ridiculous that people with such highly developed minds are unable to understand a new idea. Rather, they are openly unwilling. In my opinion, that close-mindedness is far more offensive and undermining to ourselves than admitting a lack of knowledge.

Anyhow, before this becomes more tangential and uninteresting, I will end my entry for tonight. This issue of phrasing and what misunderstanding (cultural particularly) really consists of is intensely interesting. I definitely think it is an extension of whatever the root cause of violence and greed is. Which is funny...if the issue of willful misunderstanding can be called "delusion", and violence or war "aggression", and greed "attachment", then corruption is just an exact, dynamic manifestation of the three poisons, the root cause of which is ignorance.

I think the only suitable career is as a teacher, since education fights ignorance, if I ever learn enough to be able to teach. Now, enough of this; to bed.