BBC Chinese School

[Serial_Apologist]

S-A
Just a thought. How much do you know about Shintoism, the indigenous belief system in (of?) Japan?

Well effectively nothing, I have to confess. All I have ever learned about Shintoism has been from a wonderful series of TV programmes from 1994 titled "Nature Perfected", about the evolution of gardening and landscape design worldwide - the video tapes of which I must dig out again sometime - and an historical series, also on telly, which suggested a role for Shintoism in Japanese nationalism and even militarism in the 1930s, which struck me as oddly contradictory for such an apparently peaceful belief system until we are forced to acknowledge the way Buddhism has apparently been used as an excuse to terrorize Muslims in Burma at the moment.

Maybe the place to start on Shintoism is, as usual, here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinto

As with so much else - and I would include my own Marxism in this - the problem seems to consist in perfectly rational, evidence-based, or at any rate demonstrable theories being taken up and then converted into religious faith-based systems of leaders and followers, because they then become instruments of rule and control by ruling orders determined to maintain and strengthen their position and dominance.

My guessing is that Zen and Shintoism managed to co-exist under one roof, so to speak, because both see nature in a non-hostile, non-controlling way - rather in the way that the bringers of Buddhism to Tibet would be accepted by the ancestral and other spirits protecting the Tibetan mountain valley communities, as long as the Buddhists were prepared, in return, to take these spirits and their spirit-world on board as a part of what became Tibetan Buddhism, along with all its wonderful Tantric superstitions, gong-bashing chantings, colourful ceremonials and celebrations.

[Serial_Apologist]

It’s been a long time since I read about Zen in any depth, well, more like in quantity, and in those days, books were serious business. That was why I said Zen was like philosophy (or theology, maybe) and not something you could refer to in everyday life. Anyway, from my now rather faded memory, I understand the term that is translated into ‘self’ as an element of human nature; something common in all of us that has a strong tendency to be attached to all the worldly things and desires, and not the awareness of unique self, the me-ness, in the Western sense.

Re-reading what I wrote yesterday, I now don't feel that I answered your above point at all properly - instead putting my own construction on what you'd written in order to interpose the point that I had wanted to make.

Watts, as I understand him, makes two distinctions in dealing with the Buddhist concept of suffering as caused by attachment - the first of which, flowing more from his reading of many texts of Mahayana Buddhists than from the Pali Canon, sees suffering as arising, as you say, from attachments in a world whose most fundamental law is one of change, impermanence, and of the impossibility of life without death. In the second, in which he comes close to modern linguistics without actually naming it as such, he points out that the "self", consisting in that which is of course naturally differentiated from all other selves by dint of origin and circumstance, comes ineluctably, or as a consequence of upbringing, to trap itself in Maya -a term useful in general for mistaking the world of classification, static image, description and representation for fluid actuality.

Maya understands that all inferences made by others about the self are likewise based within unquestioned conventions. The "disciplines" (or Upaya) used by Zen to overcome this in order to liberate the individual consciousness from Illusion are thus said to free the subject (who as explained only becomes a subject by way of being defined objectively) by breaking conceptually his or her self-identification with his or her idea of him or herself by seeing it for what it is, and thereby seeing through it. This comes about in the form of sudden realisation with an associated added emotional punch, analogous to instantaneously "seeing" the point of a joke; and it comes through meditational practices which have uncovered how the thinking mind thinks its idea of itself, not only by reference to these outside attributions, (referring as these do to socialisation), but to its identification with a past to which he or she was rarely "present" in terms of fully experiencing it as it was happening, and which is therefore understood to have been an unreliable source.

In the end the seeker can only conclude that all efforts to identify with a self which is in reality a simulacrum are in vain, locked up as they are in a past one thinks one has depended on for one's idea of one's inner self as a soul that somehow survives the vicissitudes of life intact, but of which a large part turns out to have been unconcious; and the only conclusion to be drawn from this is that for any concept of a self to cling on to for security to mean anything at all, it would have to be so fluid as to be meaningless.

The recognition said (as I understand it) to come from this is that one constructs one's idea of oneself and modifies it as one goes forward in the deep knowledge, not that all meaning has been drained from life, and why therefore carry on? - but that meaning is something that belongs to "the realm of meanings" and signifiers; that by mental and physical engagement one re-contextualises one's sense of being, and, like a lot of Boulez's music, one is a work-in-progress. And I think this is what Watts means when he explains the Buddhist doctrine of the unreality of the self, soul or ego which Hindus called the doctrine of Anatman, namely the inseparability of the soul from the bigger Self (Atman) which is claimed to keep the universe in balance. Today some speak of us being what we are as being the air we breathe, the food we intake, the ground we walk on, and of respecting the ecological grounding all living beings share in common.

Well, some modern Pagans do!

[gradus]

The Chinese won.

[Dave2002]

The Chinese won.

That was a bit of a surprise, though on the TV I think only three subject areas were mentioned.

Programmes like this sometimes remind me of a poem by Roger McGough - http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-lesson/

[clive heath]

If we are to have poetic instruction I think I prefer from Henry Reed's LESSONS OF THE WAR

I. NAMING OF PARTS

To Alan Michell

Vixi duellis nuper idoneus
Et militavi non sine gloria


To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
And to-day we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For to-day we have naming of parts.

[Serial_Apologist]

That was a bit of a surprise, though on the TV I think only three subject areas were mentioned.

Programmes like this sometimes remind me of a poem by Roger McGough - http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-lesson/

I can't imagine the gentle McGough writing such a poem. ISIS, or Breivik, maybe.

[Dave2002]

I can't imagine the gentle McGough writing such a poem. ISIS, or Breivik, maybe.

Obviously your imagination is limited then

I don't think we're meant to take it literally and seriously. Having had experience of students of various sorts, ages and nationalities in different countries I can certainly identify with some of the views. Teaching young students can be very difficult, and the standards of behaviour in some classes can make things much harder than necessary.
One obvious "mistake" the Chinese teachers made was to try to set ground rules, and to point out something to the effect that "discipline is important - this is a large class, so even slight disruption willl slow us down, and prevent you and others from learning ..."

There's nothing wrong with that, and it is largely true, except that if one is talking to the n% (where n can be anything from 5-50) who aren't interested, then they really just don't care, and if there are no consequences then they have no interest in their own or anyone else's learning and may actually play a "game" of trying to cause as much disruption or antagonism as possible - "pushing the boundaries". In some cultures there are ways of getting the message through, or removing students with that attitude from classes, but in the UK such students can prove very difficult.

Trying to explain to youngish students anything about pedagogy or theories of education, or other rational approaches, is also likely to be a waste of time. Students often think they know more about teaching than those trying to teach them, and of course it's "the teacher's fault" if the students fail to learn and suceed.

[Serial_Apologist]

I certainly "knew" more about meteorology at 15 than the syllabus our teacher was trying to convey to us as part of Geography O Level. In the end he said: "All right then, if you know so much more about it than I do, you come up and instruct the class!" The end of the lesson was the sole occasion I can remember in my schooldays of the teacher allowing applause.

[Dave2002]

I certainly "knew" more about meteorology at 15 than the syllabus our teacher was trying to convey to us as part of Geography O Level. In the end he said: "All right then, if you know so much more about it than I do, you come up and instruct the class!" The end of the lesson was the sole occasion I can remember in my schooldays of the teacher allowing applause.

Yes, but subject knowledge is not what it's all about these days. Did you do something else for a living once you left school, or did you actually try teaching?

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes, but subject knowledge is not what it's all about these days. Did you do something else for a living once you left school, or did you actually try teaching?

Well, not to adolsecents or children, no. I did lecture once on jazz - in front of American students!

[DracoM]

Sorry - wrong thread.