I’m writing you this missive from a wooden bench in Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park. Today they’re running both a big Indian festival and a big vegetarian festival here. All the curry you can possibly stand all in one place. My idea of Heaven.

I’m in Tokyo because we just finished our annual Dogen Sangha Zazen retreat in Shizuoka. Which is down where Mount Fuji is, about two hours by bullet train from Tokyo. I’m also having many meetings with the company I work for who just got bought out by another company. The good news is they’re still speaking to me. The bad news is that it seems no matter how this thing works out I’ll probably end up unemployed.

So I’m walking around here today thinking how incredibly weird it is to be in this place. When I was a teenager I fantasized about Tokyo. But I knew I’d never get there. It was too far away, too expensive to travel to, I knew no one there, couldn’t speak the language, there was obviously no way I could ever reach such a place. Yet Tokyo has gone from being unimaginably far away to being a place so familiar I’ve even shown Japanese people from other cities around the town. Shee-oot, my boss (now former boss apparently) was born and raised here and still didn’t know how to get from Shinjuku to Akihabara in a sensible way till I told him.

The world continues to shrink. The events in places once unimaginably far away sometimes seem frighteningly close to home now that we can travel there in mere hours or better yet watch with rapt fascination as they unfold before us in high def right in our bedrooms. But I’ll tell you something that will probably cause every card carrying Buddhist out there to gasp. I know almost nothing about the events unfolding right now with those Buddhist monks in Myanmar or Burma or whatever it’s hip to call it. I don’t even know that much. I mean, I thought Myanmar was the name of a convenience store.

All’s I know is that some Buddhist monks are protesting against the government, who are apparently really bad people, and that their non-violent forms of protest are drawing a very violent reaction. More power to the monks, I say. I hope this does some good. But beyond that I have to say that the whole thing doesn’t hold a great deal of interest to me (insert giant gasp of Buddhist disbelief here).

It's not that I don't care. It's just not the most important thing going on right now.

I’ve been inundated with e-mails over the past week or so from Buddhists all over the place who want me to know their position on the matter and want me to join them in supporting the monks. Well, it’s not me in particular they want to join them. These are all bulk e-mails being sent out to hundreds of people. In the absence of any real concrete information, a lot of these folks turn to rumors and speculation. One guy’s been sending me a series of increasingly lurid horror film-like accounts of the supposed atrocities. These may or may not turn out to be factual. But in the absence of confirmed facts, the only real result of reading such things is precisely the same kind of deviant kick you can get watching one of those torture porn flicks they make these days. It’s very thrilling. But not very useful. Like all bulk e-mails I find them annoying as Hell and hit the delete button as soon as I see what they are.

Maybe that seems incredibly callous and lacking in compassion. But I don’t really think it is. Here’s why.

In terms of Buddhist compassionate action the most urgent problems we need to attend to are the ones right in front of us. But we get confused these days because so much stuff is put right in front of us through our ever-increasing array of amazing high-tech communications paraphernalia. Yet when things are too far away from us, there’s really not a whole lot we can do about them. Yes, you may be able to do a little to help the monks in Myanmar. Maybe you can send a donation -- though I hear they’re refusing them. Maybe you can voice your support -- as I just have (see above). You can send a petition to the Myanmar government asking them to stop busting monk heads. If you’re really gung-ho you can get on a plane and go join the fun. But apart from that, there really aren’t a whole lot of ways to get involved.

Yet our concern for these kinds of problems often seems to far outweigh both our capacity to do anything about them and our interest in dealing with stuff right under our noses. Look. There’s trouble everywhere. One of these days we’ll establish communications with creatures on other planets. Once we get over the initial Big Wow of that it won’t be too long before there are folks here on Earth who are wringing their hands over the unfair treatment of the Glophnar miners on Nebulous VII in the Zeta Reticuli system. In the same way as the events in Myanmar, once utterly unknowable to anyone living in North America, seem urgent and pressing, problems on worlds we now don’t even imagine exist will someday seem just as vital.

Were I to speak to one of the guys who keep sending me these bulk e-mails, I might say, "Turn off your TV. Close your newpaper. Disconnect your internet for a few hours." What you read in newspapers and blogs and what you see on TV is not reality. It's third hand reports of confused misunderstandings of situations you can never truly grasp because they are forever beyond your capacity to know them. A photo or video only shows you what went on in front of the camera -- if it truly shows even that -- and ignores the universe that contributes to and influences the events you're seeing. It's a lie. Those things are not real. But your reaction to them is. Be very careful.

Which is not to trivialize what’s going on right now in Myanmar or to say we shouldn’t do what we can. We should do everything we can to make this world better for everyone. We need to let the assholes beating up those monks know we're watching and we do not approve. It’s just that all but a very small amount of the concern now being lavished on the monks in Myanmar by these well-meaning Buddhists who put me on their bulk mail lists seems misplaced. Sure it’s important and sure it’s your duty as a human being to help however you can. But once you’ve done the little bit you’re able to, you’re finished.

All too often, though, I see people using their supposed humanitarian concern for people undergoing great suffering in tragic situations in far away places as a means to avoid working on much more urgent problems very, very close to home. It’s as if very big, very colorful problems in exotic and remote places are much more important than the far smaller and more mundane stuff right here. Yet dealing with the small mundane stuff right here is your real duty.

All of the problems in the world, from Myanmar to Iraq to Iran and wherever else start from exactly the same place. You. I’m not trying to be poetic here either. It’s really, literally all your fault. One of the hardest ideas in Buddhism for most folks to wrap their craniums around is the idea that even problems that seem to be absolutely positively beyond any shadow of a doubt out there -- like the nasty shit going down in Myanmar -- are, in fact, very much internal problems. The connection between you and all of humanity and the rest of the universe is incredibly intimate. It’s so close you can’t see it anymore than you can look directly into your own eyeballs. Yet it’s even more real than your own eyeballs.

When I talk about this stuff sometimes people think I’m advocating complacency. Like I’m saying, “Myanmar is way far away dude. Don’t sweat it.” But that’s not it at all. The real Myanmar is right here. You just think it’s out there. And by imagining it to be far, far away you’ve placed it in the realm of things you can’t possibly really deal with and you avoid taking the action that's truly necessary.

That may sound like a contradiction of what I said right at the outset of this piece. But it’s not. See, cuz the ways we supposedly deal with stuff far, far away is mostly kind of bullshit. It’s stuff we can hold up to our friends and say, “Look at me! I’m being like totally compassionate! I care about the problems of the world!!! Don’t you see this button I’m wearing on my shirt that says so?” But it doesn’t really help all that much. Maybe a little tiny weensy bit … maybe. But not much.

The most truly compassionate thing you can do for the world is to work on yourself. That is your interface with everything. That’s where it all begins. This is how you start to fix what’s wrong with the world. The ripples you send out never dissipate completely. They’ll be felt all the way to Nebulous VII in the Zeta Reticuli system and a zillion miles beyond.

If you’re in the Cleveland area be sure and catch my movie Cleveland’s Screaming! at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque on Saturday October 6th at 9:15 PM.

I’ll be speaking at the Akron Public Library on November 7th (Wednesday) at 7 PM

And if you miss Cleveland’s Screaming! in October or you just want to see it again, you can catch it on November 9th at the Beachland Tavern in Cleveland along with a live performance by the band I’m in 0DFx as well as CD Truth, Cheap Tragedies and special guests TBA!

Brad Warner is the author of Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up!. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff. If you're in Southern California and you want to try some Zazen for yourself, he has a group that meets every Saturday in Santa Monica.

Heard of the Women's League of Burma? It's is a multi-ethnic umbrella organization of twelve ethnic women's organizations from the multi-ethnic military dictatorship Myanmar, formerly (and still, by opponents of the dictatorship) called Burma. You probably know Aung San Suu Kyi, who was elected Prime Minister in 1990 in the only democratic election since the military took power in 1962; the results were nullified and she was put under house arrest, where she's been on and off (mostly on except for 1995-2000) ever since. She has chosen to stay in Burma rather than leave to join her husband (who died in 1999) or children, who live in the UK. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.



Right now, Suu Kyi is in Insein Prison, notorious for its harsh conditions, after she "met" with 1000 monks who had marched to the gate of her house as part of a series of peaceful demonstrations by Buddhist monks against the government, now beginning to be called the "Saffron Revolution." This is the second major set of protests this year--there was another in April--and the first time that the country's monks have led the dissent.

Also on August 22, monks withdrew spiritual services from all members of the Burmese military. Two days later a march of 100,000, led by 20,000 monks and 150 nuns who had joined the monks the day before, marched in Yangon. Yesterday there was a huge military crackdown in the city; here you can see some video, including the shooting of a Japanese journalist at about 3:44; at 3:36 you can see the soldiers pushing the man towards his execution. (Link via Left Wing Nutjob.)



The monks have been locked in their monasteries and internet services have been cut off (though the American Association for the Advancement of Science, working with Burmese groups, has made available satellite images of villages being burned and civilian relocations). A U.N. Special Envoy has been sent to Rangoon to "intervene" and has met with Suu Kyi. Food aid, which had been cut off, has been allowed again at one northern port.


There has been criticism of Burma's neighbors China, India and Thailand for not joining major world leaders (including the U.S.) in issuing statements criticizing the crackdown--China even vetoed a U.N. Security Council Resolution against Burma in January. But Burma's economic importance to the East as a source of oil and natural gas means that, as one Thai leader frankly admitted, such statements are unlikely to come.

So that's what the Women's League of Burma is up against. A group of women world leaders, convened (to her credit) by Condoleeza Rice, is writing to put pressure on the government, at the suggestion of Phillipines president Arroyo, who also spoke at the U.N. before the meeting. (Interestingly, Filipina women's organizations seem to have played a role in the formation of the Burma Women's League.) Here is the statement and list of signatories.

Now, if you've read all that and are having that "but what can I do" feeling, you can add your little bit by visiting the website for the U.S. Campaign for Burma, where you can donate and find a list of other things to do, including an upcoming protest in Houston and potentially Los Angeles. If you're on a campus somewhere, you could organize a march to raise awareness, like they did at Harvard.

Bitch_PhD was inspired by Jon Swift. If the name sounds familiar, you know that when someone using it holds your feet to the fire, you better get hopping.

Cross-posted from Bitch PhD.