The Matrix (of Influence)

Thanks, rem, whoever you are, for inspiring this blog post. At the beginning of this blogging adventure, I kind of jumped in and started picking apart some specifics of the Tibetan cultural issue without giving a more general framework. It's-a time for the framework.

Taking Diehl's cue, we'll do this spatially, assigning different cultural influences to each of the cardinal directions. We'll start with south and west. To the south (taking Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, as center), we have:

Bollywood! And all the other -ollywoods!

Shahrukh Khan, my freakin' hero. Ladies, there are much better pictures of his muscles online, but I'm keeping this strictly BYU-rated (really though, I just don't want to make all the guys jealous of Shahrukh's raging pectorals).

The beautiful and graceful Aishwarya Rai. If you want to try and find pictures of her pectorals, be my guest, but Bollywood queens are, as of 2012, quite a bit more modest than their Hollywood counterparts. This is, sadly, changing, but for now we can enjoy good ol' family friendly entertainment from most of India's silver screens.

My wife and I have gotten into Bollywood films over the last few months, and I'm starting to feel that if a movie isn't three hours long with at least one redirection of plot and an incredibly dramatic hug at the end, then I've wasted my time and money. The millennia old Indian penchant for dramatic storytelling - the Ramayana has been popular in India for literally thousands of years - has translated easily into film, and is taking the world by storm. Netflix just recently added a sizable Bollywood catalog to their on-demand playlist, including classics as well as brand new offerings.

There are -ollywoods from all over India, each of them having their distinctive style. I don't know much about these other cultural centers, but I will make a point of researching them so I will know their influence if and when I see it in Bylakuppe.

Now to the West:

Hollywood and MTV!
(Though I'm not sure how relevant MTV is anymore - does anybody out there know?)

Katherine Heigl - Lori and I just saw this, and we think she rocks.

Jay-Z and Alicia Keys - two of my favorite and, I think, two of the most honest-to-goodness talented people in the biz today

  The movie and music industries of the West, of the US particularly, are without question the biggest influences on pop culture worldwide. K'Naan grew up in Somalia listening to Tupac and Biggie, gamelan kids in Bali wear Metallica T-shirts, and Disney is ubiquitous worldwide. The internet has made the whole library of western media available anywhere with a connection, and cheap pirated copies of CDs and DVDs are available in most countries. The flash, glitz, and freedom of western expression is particularly attractive, especially to traditionally "repressed" people. Musicians and actors in the US do whatever the hell they want - so it seems and so it is. Rock and roll, particularly, represents for many cultures what it represented when it first came to the scene in the US - raw expression, freedom, sexuality, and rebellion. Tibetan rock, from my little knowledge of it, represents a bit of a counterculture - not against HH or the Tibetan mainstream, but against Chinese oppression and domination. It's rebel music, as much as Bob Marley's was.

Note the leather jacket and shades! James Dean, Elvis Presley anyone?!

So, there you go. More to come in the next exciting episode.

On Going Native

I did some "serious research" on this particular bit of terminology, and I found some good things in journals, books, etc., but I found this and like it too.

Posted by Victoria S Dennis on September 03, 2007

In Reply to: Re: Going native posted by Bob on September 03, 2007

: : I am looking for the origin of the phrase "going native". It is often used to describe anthropologists' or travellers' growing immersion in new cultures they are engaged with (and has a racist note in it). But I can't find a source and would be grateful for information

:
: Not an origin, but another, perhaps older, use. In the (U.S.) State Department, diplomats and other embassy personnel are rotated to differenet countries at intervals, at least partly to avoid the problem of them "going native," meaning that they become so acculturated and familiar that they begin to identify with and sympathize with the locals, to the point of not representing our own national interests. It's a delicate balance: diplomacy requires experience and understanding of the host country, but too much experience, and one can forget who's signing the pay checks.

In British English it dates from the 19th century. The British felt it very important to their collective prestige in the Colonies to maintain their identity as "sahibs", as distinct from the black or brown "natives", so much anxiety was caused if any member of the British community showed signs of "going native" in his habits, e.g. by adopting the local dress and socialising with the locals. This anxiety lasted as long as the Empire itself did; in Kenya in the 1940s my father, aged 19, used to take off his shoes to save them getting dusty when riding his motorbike across the open savannah. When this was reported to his family he was taken to task by his elders for "going barefoot in public like an African". (VSD) 

http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/55/messages/565.html

Boy howdy, do I like blogs - I can say "to hell with academic sources" whenever I feel like it. It's liberating. 

Anywho, the phrase "going native" is darn close to a dirty phrase in most anthropological circles. The idea is that, to maintain objectivity and scientific accuracy, a certain distance must be kept from the "subject material" (what a terrible way to talk about human beings!). The thing is, I'm not an anthropologist (at least by name - everybody does anthropology work whether or not they write it down and publish it) and I never plan to be one. I'm a musician. Most of the time, I feel that throwing "-ologist" on the end of something beautiful robs it of its warmth and relegates it to the realm of soggy textbooks in dank library-dungeons.  

My reason in going to and vision for being in Bylakuppe relates to what Bela Fleck did in his recent exploration of the origins of the banjo in Africa. There are definitely some of what could be called "ethnomusicological points of contact" made by what Bela did, through making high quality recordings and re-exposing people to an instrument that left their country and evolved in a different way in a different place, by comparing the modern American banjo to its analogues in various regions, and by interviewing the musicians who play these instruments at both virtuoso/professional and casual levels (if those terms may be very loosely applied - music doesn't mean the same thing everywhere). But his purpose in Africa - and, to a musician, this purpose is a sacred one - was to find some great musicians and make some great music. He didn't only play the banjo, the instrument for which he is famous, but he spent time learning instruments local to the areas. In the second picture, you can see that he traded instruments with the master musician he was visiting.

This is the kind of "going native" I'm into. Diehl, who wrote the book that was a large inspiration for going to a Tibetan community in India, was inducted into and played keyboard in a Tibetan rock and blues band - if that doesn't require some going native, I don't know what does. Playing that kind of music simply can't be done well whilst one is "detached." Rock and blues music don't work without mutual understanding and intense connection.

For the sake of music, and for the sake of the people who make it, Bela Fleck learned historical material along the way, and no doubt researched some of the areas of scholarship important to anthropologists that touched his journey (though I doubt he spent a bunch of time with JSTOR - hey, maybe). The wonderful thing is that that kind of learning is natural, completely owned by the learner, and takes none of what might be called "effort." Frustrations and troubles come up - the plane tickets might be expensive and the van might break down in the middle of the route and it might be easy to mistake the mosquitoes for birds of prey - but these problems are swallowed up in the joy of love for what one is doing.

When asked about the perfect humanity (zhi ren 至仁), Zhuangzi replies, “Perfect humanity is without affection for parents,” and further explains,
The ultimate humanity is supreme and so filial piety is not enough to describe it. . . . It is easy to be filial by being reverent, but it is difficult to be filial with love; it is easy to be filial with love, but it is difficult to forget one’s parents; it is easy to forget one’s parents, but it is difficult to make parents forget me; it is easy to make parents forget me, but it is difficult to forget the whole world; it is easy to forget the whole world, but it is difficult to make the world forget me. (Zhuangzi 14.497–99) 

Here, perfect humanity as that without affection for parents does not mean that parents are obstacles to perfect humanity. It simply means to forget your parents. It is more difficult to forget your parents than to love them, because as long as you know that you should love them, you can at least make some effort to do so. Here, to forget your parents does not mean to not love them; rather, it is to love them without knowing that you ought to love them and that you are loving them. When you love your parents so naturally, spontaneously, and effortlessly, you have forgotten your parents, which is certainly something more difficult to accomplish. So it is easy to love with effort, but more difficult to love effortlessly. It sounds paradoxical, but conveys a profound message: sages can do things effortlessly, but one cannot become a sage without making great effort. 

From: Respecting Different Ways of Life: A Daoist Ethics of Virtue in the Zhuangzi by Yong Huang

How tragic when people get so caught up in research and discourse that they forget why they got into the focus in the first place! Happiness flitters away.

My faculty mentor, Dr. Grimshaw, he has expressed sadness and frustration at the ethnomusicology world's continual shifting of paradigms from participatory observation to cold, purposely outsider observation and back again. I vibed with his view of how to do in-field research - by golly, be in-the-field! Participate in the culture as well as the subject of study, whatever it is, insomuch as it doesn't interfere with personal moral beliefs (and it's not a bad idea, especially for a Latter-day Saint, to evaluate whether or not a cultural practice is at odds with core doctrine or if it is really just at odds with Mormon/American/Utahn/Whatever culture). So what if you lose some objectivity? You gain some life. Then, when back in the office, sitting in front of the computer, be fully there as well and do some scholarly justice to the material.

So, to tie it together, I want to (need to) "go native" as much as possible if I want to understand and be able to make this music from the inside out, and if I want to effortlessly (using Zuangzi's definition) take part in the music and culture, understanding that no matter what I do I will have 23 years (is that really how old I am?!) of background that is unavoidable and inexpugnable. Heck, I might seem as strange to the Tibetans as these guys would have to the Londoners:

These guys from Vanuatu visited London as part of a British television series. They wore British clothes most of the time, in case you're wondering. Everybody's got to adapt a little! It was probably too darn cold anyway.

but that's just part of life and intercultural interaction. I'm cool with that. We are going to learn from each other, not because I'm American and have something to teach them, or because their culture is so much better and richer than mine (these being the two polar sides that plague many views of world culture), but because we are all human beings with something to give and room to take something in return.

We're going to make some great music, and make some great friends. And, damn the torpedoes, ain't no-one gonna stop it.

P.S.

This is pretty funny.

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/02/22/72-study-abroad/

Jainism Paper

Beau Hilton

RELC630

Dr. Keller

Anekantavada

            “An” – article of negation. “Ek” – one, single. “Anta” – view, side. “Vada” – doctrine of. “Anekantavada,” then, is the doctrine of “no single view.” To a Latter-day Saint, or, indeed, any of the People of the Book, the claim that no single view of things is the completely right view seems at first to be at least uncomfortable, if not blasphemous: God is supreme, and His truth is the truth. However, to a Jain there is also the notion of a supreme truth, namely, that truth which was discovered and handed down by the Tirthankaras. How, then, can anekantavada be one of the three core tenets of Jain religion? This paper will explore the doctrine of anekantavada and examine its capacity for usefulness in the lives of religious persons of all faiths. I will, primarily, defend the doctrine in the spirit of syncretism and appreciation. Anekantavada will be argued for by virtue of three of its effects. First, it encourages inter-religious dialogue, appreciation, and “holy envy.” Second, it helps religious persons to remain open to new spiritual inspiration. Third, far from denying absolute truth and encouraging moral relativism, it asserts that there is a supreme truth, but that that supreme truth is simply beyond human grasp until omniscience is gained.

Jain Logic

Before any of the outlined points are defended, a cursory explanation of the logic of anekantavada is in order. Two supplementary doctrines or theories provide the framework for anekantavada, namely nayavada and syadvada.[1] Nayavada describes the standpoints from which a thing might be investigated, and recognizes validity in both Buddhist and Hindu views. That is, a thing might be investigated based upon its identity or center of being, and corresponds to a degree with the Hindu idea of the Brahman-Atman and advaitya, or non-differentiated reality – all things have a core that is real. A thing might also be investigated in terms of its change or action, which corresponds to the Buddhist view of the transitory nature of things. What is found by investigation depends on the viewpoint of the investigator.[2] Syadvada is a system of qualification and predication that holds seven valid options, which are derived from three possibilities. The options are these:

1.     X is

2.     X is not

3.     X is and is not

4.     X is inexpressible

5.     X is and is inexpressible

6.     X is not and is inexpressible

7.     X is and is not and is inexpressible.

The three possibilities are yes (is), no (is not), and inexpressible.[3] Syadvada comes from the Sanskrit “syat,” which may be translated as “in a way” or “conditionally,” and must be added to all of the options above. Therefore, there are many ontological possibilities – in a way, X is and X is not. To use Cort’s analogy, a table is a table if we are using it as a table, but what does it become when we sit on it? Is a desk a dining table when it is being used to eat at? “In a way,” says Syadvada, “the answer is yes and it is no.” Upon combining nayavada and syadvada, the doctrine of anekantavada comes into clearer light – there are many ways to describe and know things, many things may only be understood by their changing nature, and all of this must be qualified by the “syat” addendum. The purpose of all of these mental gymnastics is simply to get at a clearer, rounder, and more accurate view of truth, nature, and each other.

Inter-Religious Interaction

Krister Stendahl had three maxims for inter-religious dialogue, the third of which is to allow room for what he termed “holy envy.” In our relationship with the theologies of other faiths there is a tendency to feel threatened by anything beautiful, to disallow the possibility of seeing beauty “because those religions are false anyway,” or to become angry when falsehoods are found. Armed with anekantavada, none of these reactions hold for long. May it be, perhaps, that we are all looking at the same thing from a different angle? Is it possible that what we are seeing is true “in a way,” and maybe that way is a valid way in at least one sense? Later we will examine the greater context of anekantavada and how it prevents absolute relativism, but for now let us be relativists so far as the doors of religious littleness are thrown open and inter-religious appreciation may be gained. Anekantavada allows us to understand why aspects of our own faith may be threatening to others while simultaneously allowing us to be less threatened by beauty, truth, or falsehood we find in other religions. According to anekantavada, it is certain that our own viewpoint is not complete, whether its content of truth is a kernel or a wagonload. Religious dialogue is made more comfortable by anekantavada, but more than this, anekantavada will be impetus for the honest seeker of truth. Upon realization that one’s own view is not complete, one would want to find out about as many other views as possible with the goal of eventually finding something transcendently real. A person may, using this doctrine, move from disgust to tolerance to appreciation and possibly to acceptation. Anekantavada, while not forcing a person to accept all things as equally true, at least opens that person’s eyes to the prospect of truth in other places.

           

Openness Assists in Inspiration

Chief among the sins is pride. Pride sets up a wall between the heart and the infinite and prevents their contact. I wonder how many revelations or spiritual impressions have not been received simply because a person refused to believe in the chance of such revelation being real. In this same line of thinking, perhaps aparigraha, ahimsa, and anekantavada are three sides of the same issue – refusing to see other possibilities can be a result of stubbornly grasping at preconceived notions, and this in turn is violence to the soul.[4] All religious traditions value humility as the antithesis to pride and prerequisite to religious experience, and anekantavada is in many ways a doctrine of humility. There is recognition of the problems of knowing, and recognition that every being faces these same problems. It tells the practitioner to be rigorous in study and slow to draw conclusions, to be generous in his or her treatment of the views of others. As Carrithers points out, in-fighting and out-fighting does occur on occasion among the Jains, sometimes with physical violence, but it is difficult to find a case in history where the fighting has taken place over doctrinal issues.[5] This openness of view contributes to peace with other humans and peace with divinity, allowing an influx of compassion and learning from both.

Anekantavada and Supreme Truth

As was stated at the outset, the Jain belief is in an absolute truth. In anekantavada there is not only possibility of supreme truth, there is surety of supreme truth.[6] Core to Jain doctrine is the ability of every soul to gain godhood. Godhood is predicated upon omniscience, or the experience of kevala-jñana, so it may be said that every soul has the ability to rise above the plane of limited cognition and finally grasp truth in its entirety. One ceases to have knowledge and instead becomes knowledge. In Jain doctrine this change occurs when the soul is no longer burdened down by heavy karmic particles. In other doctrines this change may happen in other ways, as the eventual outcome of devotion, atonement, samadhi, satori, and so on. In the practical sense, the recognition that supreme truth exists forces the simultaneous recognition that none of us (or, optimistically speaking, very few of us) possess this supreme truth. Life becomes a journey and quest to compassionately seek for supreme truth through study and right living, and through the study of right living. The quest is aided by seeing truth on all sides and by being open to the possibility of being wrong. Anekantavada does not make of us lazy agnostics, bitter nihilists, or sad impotents, but guides us in the path of the jina, conquerors.

Conclusion

         The study of anekantavada is itself subject to the doctrine of anekantavada – perhaps it is only useful from certain standpoints, and perhaps there are better ways to describe the principles and truths that anekantavada claims for itself. It is evident to me, however, from my own exploration and consideration of the doctrine, that there is more than just a little of the divine present here. As Joseph said, God holds none of our contracted notions and sees none of His children with anything but fatherly compassion. Anekantavada is a mode of thinking and acting that creates love in the human heart, expands the soul and the mind, asks for both more critical and more free thought, and drives one towards truth. I see nothing but God in that.

           

---

[1] For a better and fuller treatment of these doctrines, see Koller, “Syadvada as the Epistemological Key to the Jaina Middle Way Metaphysics of Anekantavada,” and Jain, “Saptabhangi – The Jaina Theory of Sevenfold Predication: A Logical Analysis.” The bulk of the information from this paragraph is sourced from these two essays.

[2] As an interesting note, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in physics holds that if a great deal is known about a particle’s current location, then very little can be known about its movement, and if a great deal is known about a particle’s movement, then very little can be known about its current location. A Jain would love this.

[3] See Cort, “’Intellectual Ahimsa’ Revisited: Jain Tolerance and Intolerance of Others”

[4] This is similar to the modern Jain apologetic view. See Cort, “Intellectual Ahimsa.”

[5] Carrithers “On Polytropy: Or the Natural Condition of Spiritual Cosmopolitanism in India: The Digambar Jain

Case.” 858-860. When fighting occurs in and around Jain communities, it is typically over the issues all communities fight about – land, money, etc. In the case Carrithers described, both offended parties added religious purposes for the conflict later, but the conflict arose over more mundane matters.

[6] Sinari treats this in “A pragmatist critique of Jaina relativism,” and calls the Jain philosophical tendency “transcendentalism par excellence.”