The Useless Tree

Wen Jiabao is better than Mao Zedong

      I have just finished grading final exams for my Chinese politics class.  One question asked students to compare and contrast Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.  Most answers emphasized the differences but some telling similarities were noted.  So, events like the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution are in my mind today, and they lurk in the background as I read the news of the aftermath of the terrible Sichuan earthquake.  That is what has led to today's blog idea: Wen Jiabao is better than Mao Zedong.

     I will not go overboard with the praise for Wen's handling of the earthquake tragedy.  He has certainly done a good job in rallying people to respond to the crisis and he has shown a genuinely caring attitude and heart.  I will wait, however, before I become one of his supporters on Facebook.  Let's see how he, and the Party, deal with the longer-term issues of why school buildings performed so badly, and whether the relative openness of the media coverage continues (it seems not), and how re-building proceeds in coming months and years.  I will give Wen this much, however (much to the delight of my Chinese nationalist friends) he has proven to be a more effective leader in a crisis situation than George W. Bush - but, then again, that's not saying much...

     The larger, and to me more interesting, comparison is that between Wen and Mao.   What would Mao have done under the circumstances of the Sichuan earthquake?  It is, of course, impossible to know.  But let's consider how he actually responded when confronted with the emerging disaster of the Great Leap Forward in 1959.  Instead of accepting that his ideology had created famine and starvation, he resisted reality and fought back politically, sacking the man who dared stand up to him, Defense Minister Peng Dehuai.  The lives of millions of people mattered less to him than his own ideological "correctness" and his own political position.  It took two more horrible years after the Lushan Plenum in 1959 before the country could begin to drag itself up from the man-made horror of the Great Leap.  Some leaders, most notably Deng, recognized what had happened and they embraced a more pragmatic orientation to avoid such calamities in the future.  But not Mao.  He attacked again, in 1966, against the pragmatists, fomenting the Cultural Revolution and casting the country into ten years of political chaos. 

     One conclusion to draw from this sorry history is that Mao did not "serve the people," as the famous slogan has it.  He served himself and his ideology, much to the people's harm.

     Wen is not like this.  His presence in the quake zone has communicated his commitment to responding to the immediate needs of the people there.  Yes, it is a propaganda coup for the central government, but that does not mean that Wen is not genuinely involved and moved by the disaster.  He obviously is.  The pictures of him next to the destroyed school, crouching down and peering into a pit where child victims lay, are truly heart-rending.  I'm sure his heart was rent.   And his being there put pressure on local officials to attend to the rescue and recovery work.   He has done a good job.

      Wen's truer enactment of "serve the people" makes sense in the context of post-Mao China (or should we, at this point, be saying post-post-Mao China?).  The regime's legitimacy has shifted away from ideologyl to performance, away from Marxist rationalizations to the delivery of a better standard of living.  Indeed, I would call it "Mencian legitimacy," after the sensibility of Mencius, who continually demanded of rulers that they attend to the needs of the people.  Ironically, "serve the people," captures the Mencian spirit. 

     Wen, in particular, has presented himself as a man of the people, a leader who cares for the poor and powerless.  It was he who went to a train station in January, during the snow crisis, to publicly apologize.  He plays the role of a modern Mencian well.

   Mencian legitimacy is not necessarily a democratic legitimacy.  As in the PRC now, it may not require electoral competition for executive and legislative power.   An "enlightened" authoritarianism, which was the standard in Mencius' own time, may be able to respond to popular needs, as now seems to be the case in Sichuan.  Indeed, a focused and centralized political authority may be able to act more quickly and effectively, at least for a time, than a slower and sloppier democratic system.  It seems certain that, thus far, the response of Wen and the central government has bolstered regime legitimacy in the eyes of many, many Chinese citizens.  The leadership is seen to be doing the right thing, and doing it with real care and conviction.   Mencian legitimacy can strengthen authoritarianism.

     But Mencian legitimacy can also work against authoritarianism (just as it can work against democratically-elected leaders who fail the test of serving the people, as is arguably now the case with Bush).  What happens if the grief of the people turns into anger against officials?  Might the people then demand that they should have a greater role in determining who their leaders should be?  If, as Mencius says, "Heaven sees through the eyes of the people, and Heaven hears through the ears of the people," then what should happen if the people claim a greater role in the selection of political leaders?  Heaven could come between the Party and the people.  I wonder what Wen would do then?

Still Here

     Sorry for the relative blog silence of late.  Between grading (which I am still finishing), preparing for a summer program that I am directing, and doing some family stuff for the Memorial Day weekend (traveled to Staten Island, NY for a gathering of in-laws), I have been getting behind in posting.  Maybe it is the three year lull - I will be celebrating a three-year blog-versary later this summer.  In any event, I'm back and will apply myself with increased vigor.

     Here is something I noticed the other day, a review of a book written by a friend, Danlel A. Bell's China's New Confucianism.  I haven't seen the book yet, but have read some of the previously published essays it is based upon.  Here is an excerpt from the review:

At the core of Bell's book is his speculation on the long-term effects of the Confucian revival. China under Mao assumed a Legalist policy (strong state sovereignty, harsh laws) that helped restore its global footing. One reason Mao's brand of Marxism worked was that it incorporated elements of Confucian self-criticism, emphasizing that "demands should be directed at oneself before being directed at others." But as the gulf between rich and poor widens and social-justice issues such as the chaos in Tibet threaten the Communist Party framework, "new left" intellectuals envision the eventual replacement of Marxist ideology with something like a Confucian socialist republic. China's drive toward economic growth may be fueling political control, Bell notes, but "hardly anybody really believes that Marxism should provide guidelines for thinking about China's political future." What next? "It is not entirely fanciful to surmise that the Chinese Communist Party will be relabeled the Chinese Confucian Party in the next couple of decades."

     I would just add a couple of points.   First, I'm glad to see him peg Mao as a Legalist.  It may seem obvious to those who follow Chinese history, but it is a point that needs to be made.  I would not want the current Confucian revival in China to produce a "Mao as Confucian Gentleman" narrative.  Second, while it is true that Marxist ideology has clearly declined, it is still a bit difficult to imagine that the Communist Party would, in the near future (let's say 10-20 years) explicitly embrace a Confucian political identity.  Some sort of nationalism is the more likely ideological turn - it is easily within reach of the regime, it is a common move for governments all around the world, and it would not require the kind of explicit philosophical revision that an invocation of Confucianism would necessitate.  Think of all those Chinese women who would ask if a "Chinese Confucian Party" was going to return to the historical subordination of women? 

     In any event, I am going to order Daniel's book today.

The Needham Question.....and the Chuang Tzu Answer

       Jonathan over at Frog in a Well has a post about the the "Needham Question," named for the great historian of Chinese science, Joseph Needham: Why didn't China develop theoretical science in the manner of early modern Europe?  He does a good job of reminding us how fraught the very question is:      

Half a century of scholarship has produced a massive aggregation of knowledge about science and technology in China which shows, among other things, that scientific and technical progress continued throughout the early modern period (which, started a half millenium earlier in China than in the West) but that China’s population obviated the need for the kind of massive “labor saving” capital equipment, so industrial production moved in other directions.

    He also recommends an article by Nathan Sivin, "Why the Scientific Revolution Did not Take place in China - or Didn't it?

    Here is a quick summary of some of the most common reasons given for China's supposed lack of theoretical science:  

....China’s bureaucracy siphoned talent away from a potentially entrepreneurial merchant class, China did not have the spur to competition that Europe’s many warring states inflicted on each other, China’s totalitarian government quashed initiative.

      I'm not a historian, and will defer to those who dig deeply into this issue, but let me throw out another factor that may have contributed to a certain skepticism toward grand, abstract, theoretical scientific explanation:  Chuang Tzu.

     Chuang Tzu's aversion to abstraction and analysis is well known.  Chapter two of the book that bears his name is, among other things, a powerful statement of epistemological skepticism that works against the modern scientific enterprise.  "Those who divide things cannot see" - that, in itself, would seem to reject the scientific method.  

      Of course, Chuang Tzu wrote long, long before early modern transformations came to China.  But, however we date those broader historical eras, his book was still being read, and had thoroughly permeated the intellectual culture of China, when the precursors of modern science were taking shape there.  To some extent, his skepticism may have given some pause to those Chinese thinkers who were predisposed to move toward abstract theoretical explanation.  In some ways, Chuang Tzu prefigures the "linguistic turn" in twentieth century Western philosophy, a turn that ultimately leads to a fundamental critique of modern science.  At the very least, Chuang Tzu may have planted a seed of doubt in the Chinese intelligentsia toward grand scientific theorizing.

     I would also throw into the mix the destructive effect of Qin Shihuangdi.  His attack on the intellectuals and destruction of texts had a particularly deleterious on the Later Mohists, an indigenous Chinese logical tradition that, as Graham suggests, might have (and that is a very hypothetical "might have") developed into a foundation for something like a more abstract scientific argumentation.  Their texts were not re-discovered until the 19th century.

     Between Chuang Tzu and Qin, theoretical science faced some powerful obstacles, both material and intellectual, in early modern China.

(Sorry if the formatting of this post is odd.  Typepad has changed its system and I am trying to get used to it.)

Angry Black Mencius

      A controversy of sorts has emerged over the planned Washington DC statue of Martin Luther King.  Apparently, some organization called the US Commission on Fine Arts, which has a role in the proceedings, feels that the model of the monument is too "confrontational."  Eugene Robinson has an op-ed in today's Washington Post that sums things up nicely:

At issue is the statue that will stand as King's official monument in Washington. The arts commission, which rules on the aesthetics of such memorials, has sent a letter to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation complaining that the depiction is "a stiffly frontal image, static in pose, confrontational in character."

What they thought they were getting, commissioners wrote, was a "dynamic" and "meditative" King. Leave aside for the moment the question of how any sculptor is supposed to make someone look dynamic and meditative at the same time. The point is that the arts commission, for some reason, was not comfortable with the image of a stern-faced, 28-foot-tall black man who has his arms crossed.

 I am totally with Robinson on this:

Here's what is really going on: It's clear that some people would prefer to remember King as some sort of paragon of forbearance who, through suffering and martyrdom, shamed the nation into doing the right thing. In truth, King was supremely impatient. He was a man of action who used pressure, not shame, to change the nation. The Montgomery bus boycott, to cite just one example, was less an act of passive resistance than a campaign of economic warfare. Yes, he knew that televised images of black people walking miles to work would help mold opinion around the world. But he also knew that depriving the bus companies of needed revenue would hit the Jim Crow system where it really hurt.

     King was confrontational.  He had to be.  He was struggling against powerful political and historical forces.  In defiance he spoke truth to power, he demanded that right be done.  So why not remember him in all the glory of that struggle and defiance?

       In a way, King reminds me of Mencius, who also bravely spoke truth to power.  While perhaps Mencius would not have pursued the same political tactics as King, he would have recognized the moral purpose of the civil rights struggle.  Mencius, like King was quite willing to confront power holders with their shortcomings, as in this passage (Lau translation):

Mencius went to P'ing Lu.  "Would you or would you not," said he to the governor, "dismiss a lancer who has failed three times in one day to report for duty?"

"I would not wait for the third time."

"But you yourself have failed to report for duty many times.  In years of famine, close on a thousand of your people  suffered, the old and the young being abandoned  in the gutter, the able-bodied scattered in all directions."

"It was not within my power to do anything about this."

"Supposing a man were entrusted with the care of cattle and sheep.  Surely he ought to seek  pasturage and fodder for the animals.  If he found that this cold not be done, should he return his charge to the owner or should he stand by and watch the animals die?"

"In this I am at fault."... (IIB.4)

     Mencius gets right up in the face of the governor.  When the latter tries to shirk his responsibilities, Mencius comes at him again from another discursive angle.  He was determined to make the political powers-that-be do the right thing, and he did, in this case at least.   There is a certain defiance and confrontation in Mencius however much it might have been expressed in distinct cultural practices of another time and place.  And that is rather like Martin Luther King.

       Yes to the "confrontational" King statue!

Taoists in Texas Moving to Vermont

    A story in today's NYT reports on a family in Texas that has embraced the "voluntary simplicity" movement: the are giving away most of their possessions, to free themselves from the burdens of material things, and moving to a mountain cabin in Vermont (just up the road from me!):

Like many other young couples, Aimee and Jeff Harris spent the first years of their marriage eagerly accumulating stuff: cars, furniture, clothes, appliances and, after a son and a daughter came along, toys, toys, toys.

Now they are trying to get rid of it all, down to their fancy wedding bands. Chasing a utopian vision of a self-sustaining life on the land as partisans of a movement some call voluntary simplicity, they are donating virtually all their possessions to charity and hitting the road at the end of May.

       A variety of American sources are mentioned as an inspiration for this move:

Though it may not be the stuff of the typical American dream, the voluntary simplicity movement, which traces its inception to 1980s Seattle, is drawing a great deal of renewed interest, some experts say.

“If you think about some of the shifts we’re having economically — shifts in oil and energy — it may be the right time,” said Mary E. Grigsby, associate professor of rural sociology at the University of Missouri and the author of “Buying Time and Getting By: The Voluntary Simplicity Movement.”

“The idea in the movement was ‘everything you own owns you,’ ” said Dr. Grigsby, who sees roots of the philosophy in the lives of the Puritans. “You have to care for it, store it. It becomes an appendage, I think. If it enhances your life and helps you do the things you want to do, great. If you are burdened by these things and they become the center of what you have to do to live, is that really positive?”

Juliet B. Schor, a sociology professor at Boston College and author of “The Overspent American,” said the modern “downshifters,” as she called them, owed debts to the hippies and the travel romance of Jack Kerouac.

     Seattle, Puritans, Hippies, Kerouac.  Come on, this is a Taoist impulse.  These people are heeding Chuang Tzu, even if they have not read him.  They are "getting free" and no longer allowing themselves to get tangled in things.   They are following the spirit of passage 12 of the Tao Te Ching:

The five colors blind eyes.
The five tone deafen ears.
The five tastes blur tongues.
Fast horses and breathtaking hunts make minds wild and crazy.
Things rare and expensive make people lose their way.

 The Harris family have a blog, Cage Free Family.  So, we can watch their progress as they go.  Someone should give them a copy of the Tao Te Ching.

Confucian Civil Unions, Perhaps?

   I've been thinking more about the California gay marriage decision and Confucianism.  Thanks to the comments from my last, brief post, I have a new idea: a modern Confucian would be more likely to accept civil unions for gay couples than marriage.  This is a tentative conclusion, the reasoning for which I spell out below, and I welcome all comments and criticisms.

     Justsomeguy and the Western Confucian raise some good points.  Let me take Western Confucian's first. 

       He argues, from Analects 7.1, that Confucius understood himself to be a defender of tradition, not an innovator.  Confining marriage to heterosexual couples is generally recognized as the traditional practice; so, Confucius would likely be against the innovation of gay marriage.  I generally disagree with this argument. 

     First, while Confucius does present himself as against innovation in 7.1, various commentators (Hall and Ames; Leys) have argued that, in fact, Confucius was very creative in his thinking.  The idea that hereditary status was not a sufficient claim for legitimate rule was quite radical in its time.  To the extent to which Confucius and Mencius looked toward a moral meritocracy (i.e. the morally good should rule), they pushed against the political status quo.  This is especially evident in Mencius.   Indeed, Mencius is so problematic to established powers-that-be, it is said (pdf file!) Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming Dynasty, decreed that this line from Mencius be deleted:

The people are the most elevated, next comes the state, the sovereign comes last.

    We could also invoke Analects 9.3, in which Confucius creatively adapts specific elements of Ritual to suit his immediate purposes, to suggest that Confucians do not simply defend tradition for tradition's sake.  Tradition is important, to be sure, but it must be enacted in relation to the contemporary ethical context.  If Humanity is best served by revising tradition, then tradition must be revised.

      Yet even if we accept (and I suspect not everyone will) that Confucius was, in fact, more of an innovator than he lets on, I think Western Confucian's point should give us some pause.   Modern Confucians would be careful in how and when and how far they revise tradition.  They might be more comfortable with incremental steps: choosing a silk cap instead of a linen cap (Analects 9.3), not throwing out the cap altogether.   And gay marriage is a rather significant socio-cultural change.  It's big.  And that might mean Confucians, in seeking some sort of balance between contemporary Humanity and established tradition, might gravitate toward civil unions, at least for a time, instead of marriage.

      One of the students in my tutorial this semester also raised in interesting point when I broached the possibility of Confucian gay marriage: does it violate the rectification of names (Analects 13.3)?  The idea here is that "marriage" generally is taken to connote heterosexual unions.  To move to gay marriage delinks the practice from the name.   I don't see this as an insurmountable problem, insofar as I understand the rectification of names to demand that we live up to certain standards of Humanity (i.e. if a "father" is not living up to the duties of a "father," then he should not be allowed to use the name "father").  If the moral purpose of marriage is a life-long commitment to a particular loving relationship, and the family building possibilities that it brings, then it would seem that the practice of gay couples committing themselves to one and other and raising children in a supportive and loving environment meets the Humane (ren) standards of "marriage".

     The issue, however, might be a matter of time and timing.  It takes time for society to come to understand that gay marriage is as much marriage as any other sort of marriage.  This would not absolutely disallow gay marriage, but it might militate for some transitional period during which gay couples could enter into civil unions (with all the legal recognitions and rights of "marriage") that would establish a broader social understanding of the good of gay marriage. 

     I could see how gay people would chafe at this, arguing, as the California Supreme Court does, that there is no compelling state interest in denying them all of the benefits, cultural as well as legal, of marriage.  But  the problem here is to derive a Confucian position on the issue, not one that simply puts a Confucian facade on a California perspective (full disclosure: I am perfectly comfortable with extending the practice of marriage to gay people - but this post is not about my personal position, but what the most plausible modern Confucian position might be).

      Bottom line: Confucians would lean toward civil unions at this point, but would be open to gay marriage in the future, perhaps after more states have taken similar moves.

       Justsomeguy also raises an important point when he raises the yin/yang thing:

Yin/Yang cosmology. While the Analects are fairly silent on this issue, Confucius's appreciation for the Yijing can be taken as an endorsement of that formulation. While they are both ultimately divisible into further aspects of yin and yang (a possible work around), I'm not sure how he'd view double yin or double yang relationships given the way this system is devised. They would be unbalanced.

     Again, I do not think this is a fatal objection.  We are not talking about a very large sector of the population, after all. What percentage of the US population identifies as gay or lesbian?  And what percentage of those people seeks a married relationship?  And what percentage of all marriages (say, in Massachusetts where it is allowed) are gay marriages?  I don't have these numbers (but would love it if someone sent them in!) but I suspect in all cases they are quite small, well below 10% in all cases.   Allowing gay marriage, then, whatever yin/yang "imbalance" it might bring, would not have a significant effect on the yin/yang balance of society at large.  Indeed, the overwhelming experience in Massachusetts, where I live, is that ultimately gay marriage is not that big a deal.  It hardly effects the daily life, for good or ill, of the vast majority of people.   Once the practice is established, it's not that big a deal (it's getting it established that is big).

      But the yin/yang point might be important in another way.  It suggests that gay marriage is different from heterosexual marriage: the former is double yin or double yang, and the latter is yin/yang.  Again that difference may not be enough to reject it on Confucian grounds, but it is a difference that might have to be recognized in some manner.

     I should add here that a modern Confucian argument would not seek universal rights claims that apply to all individuals, as the California Supreme Court does.  "Rights" is not a Confucian concept, even though a certain ethical universalism might apply.  It is proper, from a Confucian perspective, to treat different things differently.  A father should shield his son from the law when he steals a sheep, but should presumably turn in a stranger who steals a sheep, because a son is not a stranger, the two are different. 

     Thus, treating gay unions in a manner distinct from heterosexual unions would be permissible for a Confucian.  And, given the various points made above, might be preferable, at least for a time.  That different treatment, however, is bounded by the general standard of Humanity (so, certain tangible benefits should not be withheld if so doing makes it harder to maintain strong and loving relationships).

     And so, I am drawn to the conclusion that a modern Confucian in California would, today, be more likely to advocate for civil unions for gays and lesbians and less likely to back gay marriage.

California Gay Marriage: Confucius Agrees

     The news today, somewhat unsurprisingly, is that the California Supreme Court has overturned a state ban on gay marriage.  What would Confucius say?

     I wrote about gay marriage and Confucianism once before, and I think the argument still holds (though it needs to be fleshed out a bit more, as I am doing in chapter 5 of my book):

...I think a modern Confucian perspective could accept a gay relationship if it was committed and constructive of lasting family bonds.  The type of sex hardly matters.  What is important is that people perform humanity-creating social responsibilities.  Genetics are less significant than caring social practices; so, adoption is fine - just as it was in ancient China.  It would seem, then, that gay marriage and child-rearing could be consonant with a Confucian-inspired ethics  (although an over-wrought homosexual identity would be frowned upon).

 I just wanted to put this out there and ask my Confucian-minded readers what they think.  Would a modern Confucian accept gay marriage?  Why or why not?

Sadness

     I have seen some deeply saddening pictures of the victims of the Sichuan earthquake.  Roland has reproduced one especially heart-rending scene; I will not print it here. 

    So much death, so suddenly and unexpectedly.  The mind reels.  I turn to my books, unable to fully grasp the depth of the grief of losing a loved one, a child, in such a manner.  Lieh Tzu offers what might be, for some, a bit of solace:

Death is a return to where we set out from when we were born.  So how do I know that when I die here I shall not be born somewhere else?  How do I know that life and death are not as good as each other?  How do I know that it is not a delusion to crave anxiously for life?  How do I know that present death wold not be better than my past life? (25)

      I remember when Aidan was just an infant, someone once said that it might be "better" were he to die.  And I also remember my passionate rejection of that idea.  Each life, whatever the circumstances, Chuang Tzu tells us, is equally valuable and real and sufficient as every other.  But Lieh Tzu reminds us that each life ends, and, however much we might grieve, we cannot know what that ending means in its fullness.  We cannot cling to life; we must accept endings.  And, perhaps, endings are better than we can know.  There may not be a promise of something like a Christian heaven, to which the souls of the departed retire.  But there is an openness to the possibility of something as good in death as in life. 

      Rest in peace.

The Tao of Neuroscience

    I'm not a big fan of David Brooks, but a friend brought today's column, "Neural Buddhists," to my attention, and it seems right for a post here.

    Brooks is thinking about the intersection of recent popular publications on neuroscience and enduring questions of spirituality.  He anticipates a new debate on science versus faith, one that puts the defenders of faith on the defensive; or, at least, challenges defenders of particular faiths.   The new science creates more subtle understanding about the human brain/mind and the creation and perpetuation of belief.  Here's a key graf:

This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.

If you survey the literature (and I’d recommend books by Newberg, Daniel J. Siegel, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Jonathan Haidt, Antonio Damasio and Marc D. Hauser if you want to get up to speed), you can see that certain beliefs will spread into the wider discussion.

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

    My peculiar critique - peculiar, that is, to my interest in ancient Chinese thought - would be: why label these ideas as "Buddhist?"  They may be Buddhist, to some degree, but they are also to be found in other systems of thought, particularly Confucianism and Taoism.

     Take those first two points, for example: self is relational and morality is inborn.  This is right out of Mencius.  For example:

We are, by constitution, capable of being good....That's what I mean by good.  If someone's evil, it can't be blamed on inborn capacities.  We all have a heart of compassion and a heart of conscience, a heart of reverence and a heart of right and wrong.  In a heart of compassion is Humanity, and in a heart of conscience is Duty.  In a heart of reverence is Ritual, and in a heart of right and wrong is wisdom.  Humanity, Duty, Ritual, wisdom - these are not external things we meld into us.  They're part of us from the beginning, though we may not realize it.  Hence the saying: "What you seek you will find, and what you ignore you will lose."  Some make more of themselves than others, maybe two or five or countless times more.  But that's only because some people fail to realize their inborn capacities.   (11.6)

     The "we" here is not confined to any particular cultural or national group.  Mencius means all of us, anywhere in any historical time period.  It is an argument about universal human qualities.  Barbarians, uncivilized people who do not realize their inborn capacities, can learn to be good.  They can learn to express their innate moral sensibilities.   And those notions of Humanity and Duty are all about social selves: individuals  embedded in social relationships.  Indeed, the self, from a Confucian perspective, is literally meaningless outside of its social context.  As the context develops and changes over time, as we move from one set of relationships and duties to another, the self, too, changes.  The self is social and dynamic.

     And take that last line of the Brooks excerpt above: God is "...the unknowable total of all there is."  If a Taoist read that phrase, she might say, "that's not God, it's Tao."  And so it is.  Transcending boundaries is what Taoism is all about, as is accepting the infinitude of Way.  The love part is a bit more difficult, since Chuang Tzu might ask us to reduce our emotional attachments to life generally, but there is certainly the possibility of joy and happiness there.

     In any event, my point is simple: it's not just about Buddhism.  I suspect Brooks' invocation of Buddhism simply reflects a certain ignorance of ancient Chinese thought.  Americans just don't know enough of it to bring it into these kinds of conversations, even when the reference is obvious.

     Oh well, I guess I have a lot of work to do in my calling to bring ancient Chinese thought into modern American life.

     And one more thing.  I think, for the purpose that Brooks has created here, Confucianism and Taoism might be better references than Buddhism.  They provide most of what the was searching for in the Buddhism reference but without the additional matter of reincarnation, which I suspect, the neuroscientists might question...

UPDATE: Commenters have raised the question of a Mencius bumper sticker to raise his visibility in the US.  It's a branding thing.  Well, here's an image; we might have to spice it up a bit, but it's a start:

In Sympathy for the people of Sichuan

     It is difficult to respond to a terrible tragedy on the scale of what is unfolding in Sichuan.  Unlike Burma, there is no hard political edge here, just awful human suffering.  So, I turn to Tu Fu (Du Fu), the poet.  In a volume of some of his poems that I keep on my desk there is a section titled "Chengdu," consisting of verses written when he lived in and around that city.  Since Chengdu is near the center of the current disaster, I thought a poem from there might be appropriate today.  There is sadness in many of Tu Fu's poems, but I tried to find one that had a bit of uplift to it, something to focus our attention on survival and appreciation for small things:

Morning Rain

Sounding cold dawn skies, steady winds
Tatter visions of cloud over the river.
Ducks take refuge along the island.  Among
Thickets, swallows find shelter from rain.

Huang and Ch'i both refused an emperor,
Ch'ao and Yu an empire.  A cup of wine,
A thatched home - that I am here as today's
Flawless morning passes gathers me in joy.

    Let's hope that the people of Sichuan will soon find joy again in another morning.