by Shirfu Samanta
We live in the most complex social system construed by humans in history. It is technically advanced, global, and interdependent. There are complexities upon complexities and no one person or even group of people understand the whole nor can reproduce it.
It is indeed marvellous because I, sitting in the mountains can instantly communicate with anyone in the world. Even though I am far from wealthy, I actually have a better life than Queen Victoria the most powerful monarch in history. She could not get fresh dragon fruit regardless of how many ships where at her command. If she wanted an excellent cup of Japanese green tea or Taiwanese Oolong, it would take months for her to receive a package. I can order those teas and everything else and have it at my door in a few days. The Suez Canal was an engineering marvel in 1869 cutting travel time from Europe to India to weeks instead of months and making a much safer route. I live much further from India than London is from India, but I can arrive in New Delhi in hours. Faust sold his soul to Satan for unlimited knowledge. You have a cell phone which allows you access to unlimited knowledge and it only cost a few hundred dollars.
Common diseases like the flu killed thousands, many babies never made it past a few days of life and the mothers too often died in the processes. Few people lived into their 60s. A flu shot will help you avoid the disease, it is rare nowadays for mother or child to die and many are living into their 80s and 90s. Having a heart attach in the 1960 meant a dangerous long operation where they opened up your chest and it took weeks before being released from the hospital. The same disease now is treated quickly without more than a pin hole being made and it takes few days before release.
So, the world is really like a miracle, but the thing is that in order to produce this world of great wonder there are systems within systems within systems. Just think about that Oolong tea. We picture some romantic idea of women with bamboo hats and scarfs making their way through the hillside selecting the best fresh leaves and placing them in a basket. In the evening, they spread these leaves out to begin the drying process and when ready packaged. Packages in box, boxes on trucks winding down the mountain road to merchants, to seaside and off to Europe, America, Australia, or Canada. On another truck and to your local tea vender. You purchase it and make a lovely cup of tea on a relaxing autumn day.
You don’t think about the scientists who are studying the soil where the tea is planted, you are not think about analyzing the amount of sun and fog or hot and cool days that make for the quality of the tea. You are not thinking about the mechanical inventions that make the tea drying machines and packaging machines. What about the truck; there is the mechanics, the driving skill of the driver to manage the mountain roads, the insurance company that underwrites it, the computer at the insurance company to help with tracking everything, the banks where the insurance companies have their money. The merchants who have a worldwide network that use satellites to communicate. The heavy equipment that are used to load ships, the ships, the fuel for the ships, the advanced communication equipment that allows a ship in the middle of the ocean to be tracked and communicate with its home office and local naval authorities. The policing of those waters, there aren’t too many tea pirates anymore. And so, it goes. Thousands upon thousands of operations so you can have a relaxing cup of tea.
Each one of these operations requires the accurate transmission of knowledge. But all of this knowledge is not free of agendas or biases. The tea grower wants to get the highest price for her labors, so she presents her tea to the merchant in glowing words as to the richness of the soil, the quality of the leaves, etc. Her goal is not accuracy of information but maximizing her reward for labor. And every strand in this complex net has its own bias some of it is profit driven, some how a particular aspect is viewed, some psychological reasons and some social reasons.
If we take what we learned from the simple tea example and we begin to think about a government, a media company, a religion, a political or social movement we can see how complex these systems can grow and all along the way there are incentives for less than accurate information being transmitted. In short, it is all fake news.
This fake news is being used to manipulate or influence you in different ways. To vote for this party or that person, to buy item X even if you don’t need it, or to think this way about something and don’t think that way. All of these entities are trying to make you think and feel the way they wish and not necessarily according to the truth or even what is best for you. But because all of these systems are complex, none of us can think through and do the research on everything and so we farm out some of our mental processes.
For example, I don’t have time to read all the research on cancer. If someone I knows gets cancer, I trust the team of doctors. But they don’t have time to research everything either because they are busy treating people. They rely on studies of best practices, pharmaceutical companies, university researchers speaking in a seminar, etc. However, “best practices” are statistical studies in national healthcare systems get the most benefit for the least money not necessarily the top level of treatment which may cost tens of thousands of dollars. A pharmaceutical company wishes to make a profit from their research and development and the university researcher is trying to advance himself or herself in the field. Everywhere along the way there are biases entering the system and the whole of it is not based on getting you the best health care possible.
From this we can see that because things are too complex for one person to master sufficiently the information, we defer to others often specialists and we accept their opinions as truth from which we make our judgement. However, those specialists themselves have high probability of bias in the information they provide. Next, both with good and bad intentions there are those who which to manipulate or significantly influence your thinking about things. The government is not providing you the truth, they are providing you the picture they want you to believe. The same can be said about Evangelicals they want you to see the world the way they think, and Catholics want you to see the world the way they think. Muslims want you to think the way they think and secularists want you to think their way. This is not necessarily malicious. Those people may strongly believe they are following the truth and they try to accurately convey their thoughts and feelings. But the goal is to influence your thoughts and feelings.
As far as I understand it, all of these groups, various religions, governments, corporations, different institutions and so on are interested in influencing what you think and feel and in keeping you coming back for more. The Democrats don’t want you becoming a Republican and Republicans don’t want you to become a libertarian. Evangelicals don’t want you to become Anglicans and Muslims don’t want you to become Jews. Google doesn’t want you to become a Firefox devotee and Hilfiger doesn’t want you to become Ralph Lauren’s loyal customers. Only Buddhism is interested in freeing you from all those influences. Only Buddhism wants to help you change how you think and feel not what you think and feel. Changing how you think and feel is the key to being free from those manipulations and influences.
It does this by meditation. In mindfulness meditation we gain increasing control over our mind’s process. As we gain ability in meditation we learn to let go of the thoughts and feelings that arise and keep our mind focused. This allows us to gain experiential insight into the arising and falling of thoughts and feelings. It is difficult to do this when you are caught up or fixated on the thoughts and feelings. As we become better at disassociating from our thoughts and feelings, they lose their pull on us; the influence dwindles.
Next from reading Buddhist texts we learn what is spiritually healthy and what is not. But the buddha is not some snake oil salesman. He is the only great teacher of a spiritual tradition that started by saying to not accept something just because he states it, but put it to the test then accept it. What are some of the teachings that are for your spiritual well-being?
For example, the Perfection of Wisdom sutras teach “don’t get fixated on anything” and this includes Buddhism. The sutras teach that Buddhism is like a raft that will take you to the shore of nirvana. Once you arrive there you don’t drag the raft ever after. Another example is that many texts teach that nothing is good or bad in itself. How you use it can be good or bad. A knife is a very good thing if you are trying to slice your tomatoes. It is a terrible thing if you use it to slice your husband.
There is one practice in particular I wish to point to. That is asking critical questions about your own thinking and feeling. When some strong emotion arises or if it is very powerful then after it arises to look at it deeply. When someone steals a parking spot you had your eye on, why did you get angry? What were the thoughts that were involved in the anger? When you see some item you simply must have, what are the thoughts that compel you? If you explore like this, these passions will ease, and you can have a clearer head. You may not be able to completely remove the feeling, the karma may be too strong, but you can at least lessen it and knowing what is going on in your head can allow you to take counter measures so you don’t act without grounds. For example, maybe as a child you arrived late at school because you stopped to play along the way. The teacher disciplined you by ostracizing you for a few hours. Then months later your mother was late getting you to school and the teacher thinking you were at fault, gave you worse punishment. Your explanation was rejected and so the embarrassment and anger from the injustice became deep seated in your mind. Later in life you are always anxious when running late. By becoming aware of all of this now long forgotten, you may not end it but you can mitigate it.
Buddhism is about getting free. The government, social movements, institutions, corporations, religions, all of it is what Buddhist call samsara. That is the causes and conditions that keep you in the suffering realm. Not one of them can actually free you to nirvana. Buddhism is about true reality, true freedom, true words and true thought. Be free!