How to Make a Buddhist Altar for Your Cat

I just moved into a new place. I'd like to put a Buddha altar inside and also in the yard, so naturally I went on the internet. Wikihow is a great site that had a page just for me: How to Create a Simple Buddhist Shrine.

Step one: choose a stable place above head level. Okay, my cats are gonna go for that in an instant. Espeically if they think it's special in any way.

Step two: make a shelf to support the objects. And by "objects" I suppose they must mean "cats."

Three: place the objects onto the shrine. Some recommendations follow about what objects should be placed on the shrine, but you and I know it's all up to the cats as to what they choose to knock to the floor and what they're willing to curl around. Steps four and five are similarly technical, expecially if cats are likely to be involved. They concern choosing specific scriptures or images, but don't address the likelihood of hairballs, shedding or dried tapeworm fragments.

Step six: place offerings such as a bowl of water on the lowest level. This practically guarantees the presence of hairballs, shedding and dried tapeworm fragments on the rest of the altar and increases the likelihood of that special Buddha statue purchased off Amazon being knocked over and broken by a whopping 47 percent.

Steps seven through nine talk about what kinds of offerings are appropriate to make at the shrine, but to me it just sounded like the things I do to try to get the cats to like what I feed them. And I'm pretty sure any attempt at placing a stupa on the shrine would lead to puffed tails, hissing, and vigorous escape leaps. Some things are just too damn weird, or maybe just too New Age, to countenance.

Step ten, the incense: I'd like to make offerings to Buddha, but my cats freak out if I make a flame in the house. Maybe I can make the incense offering inside and then when the cats are asleep sneak into the yard and burn it out there.

I guess I worship cats.

Sex and Delusion

audio journal transcript, driving to work

This morning I was thinking about sex and delusion. Actually, I was thinking about the social construction of sex. I had been reading Maha Boowa’s biography of Acariya Mun (both well-known Buddhist monks in the Thai Forest tradition) and was thinking about how Theravadan monks can’t touch women. Actually, if you think of it, it kind of make sense; if you become a monk at a young age and haven’t had any experience—have I already said this?—haven’t had any experience being socialized with women, being around women in their various roles as people and as different parts of society, when those hormones kick in, you only have one source of information: what your hormones are telling you. That’s never a good thing. We know that.

I could see in that context trying to continue to keep women cloistered is a strategy that kinda makes sense. Whereas if you bring kids up with a more humanistic view of—or with humanistic socialization where people are individuals and not just their social role or gender identity—you would have maybe more awareness of or control over that kind of reaction that’s prompted just by sheer instinct. I say awareness of/control over because I think it’s clearly the awareness part that that helps. Control over is not so helpful without the awareness, cuz then you’re just kind of repressing something by brute force without really examining it.

The reason I say that is cuz two things. I was sitting in mediation yesterday, and this has happened not unfrequently, and just this very kind of antisocial, id-ish type thought would leap into my mind every so often. I’m like, “Wait a second! Where did that come from? I’m not that person! I don’t think like that! Is that what they call the id? I don’t even know if I believe in the id.”

Then I was reading the Acariya Mun biography. The biographer actually mentioned something about kilesas or defilements in that respect, that these things are no joking matter. You really don’t know what you’re dealing with. I forget how he put it, but it made me realize that might be what I’m encountering in my practice.

It did make me think of desire as being partly a social construct. In addition to it actually being an instinctual part of—cuz like the argument for subjugation of women in patriarchal cultures is that men can’t control themselves around women. Which, as we know, is simply that men WON’T control themselves around women and they exist embedded in a social structure which facilitates rape and abuse and violence against women. I’m saying that non-ironically. It seems to me pretty self-evident. You don’t have to be Andrea Dworkin, you don’t have to take things that far. All you have to do is open your eyes.

[Digression into local human trafficking news, psychological manipulation techniques and reflections upon certain bird mating displays]

The same kind of social rituals that go into manipulation and victimization of these people [trafficking victims] are also in another sense erotic. To me, to a lot of people, some of them. That’s completely terrifying. If you don’t know where to draw the line, that is completely terrifying. How do you know where to draw the line?

Somehow, some of us figure out where to draw a line. Apparently, it’s possible! Hence, what I say about the institutionalized misogyny being at some level a choice. If it’s a choice, you can become aware of it and you can choose not to do it. If you think that’s worth doing, if you think that women are people, etcetera, etcetera.

This was all in the shower. I thought as an added kind of proof of that idea, of that concept, you have women who for centuries now have been subjugating their sex drive, being non-orgasmic, not being aware of the sexual aspect of their being and suffering the consequences of what happens when you do that. Cuz it’s painful, it’s difficult, it’s hard and it sucks, but if you’re risking your life to project a sexual identity and try to get sexual satisfaction, you’re probably gonna learn how to suppress that.

What men would say is, “Women, they just—they’re non-orgasmic, they’re not as into sex.” I’ve had my guy friends say this to me, ones from older generations especially, but I’m sure lots of younger ones still think it. That’s not the case at all. It’s just that it’s too dangerous to show it, to let it show its face. It will strip you of your freedom, your ability to survive, a lot of that shit.

Yes, in part desire is socially constructed. If women can learn to subjugate their sexual identity in the interest of their sheer survival, then men can learn to control themselves around women and no longer have to project onto women their raging, uncontrolled hormonal impulses and make it out like women are the feeble, tainted, etcetera etcetera sex.

Maybe someone somewhere will start to doubt that any of it is even real.

Of Mind and Memory and Tea Trays

Less than ten people stayed after meditation for the midweek dharma talk. With a small group like that, things are bound to be more casual. Reverend Master told some funny stories about back when the order kept milk goats and he served as goat monk. Then the talk veered toward cheese and started to get rather lively.  Once again, I became aware of how close we were to the local gourmet ghetto. At the last possible second Reverend Master swung the conversation away from the approaching iceberg of an extended consideration of the technical aspects of enhancing melting qualities in cheese and invited us instead to contemplate uncertainty.

After the talk was over, I picked up the tray and started to collect everyone’s tea cups. One woman who had been talking a bit excessively during dharma talk was now standing and chatting with Reverend Master like they were at a cocktail party. I held out the tray to collect her cup, doing the smile and half bow that is the local etiquette. She smiled back and, instead of placing her cup on the tray, took the tray from me. Apparently she wanted to collect the tea cups, so I gave it to her.

(The whole smile and half bow thing is GREAT for those of us who don’t do names. I knew Talking Woman, but had no clue what her name was. She was just another one of us older middle aged white ladies. I know my own name and think of all the other females as Mary. The guys are all Paul. Most post-ceremony potluck conversations I have start out with at least one person saying, “I’m sorry, but I’ve forgotten your name.”)

Talking Woman wasn’t completely familiar with the local etiquette, but so what? If you do a practice, your understanding will develop over time. The exactitudes are not important; etiquette is merely a tool for developing awareness. For instance, last week Mary showed me how to turn on the meditation hall lights. Of course I know how to turn on lights, but being shown how to turn them on for ceremonial observances felt like getting promoted in martial arts.

The moment after I handed the teacup tray to Talking Woman, the entire incident vanished from my mind. I petted the temple cat and went to put on my shoes. Mary was putting on her shoes, too, and we had to cooperate to make use of the limited space by the door. The tea tray incident flickered briefly into my mind again. Talking Woman’s behavior was like that of someone used to receiving things from subordinates. It was easy to imagine situations where those kinds of roles played out. It’s funny how much people’s behavior reveals about their background and character, I reflected, and then forgot about it.

I was buckling my seatbelt when I thought about it again. I knew Talking Woman, but from where? It really was a puzzle. It will come to me in time, I thought. These things always do. She was definitely familiar. Mainly, though, I was thinking of goats and cheese and shipping wax.

Approaching the highway on-ramp a few minutes later, she popped back into my head again. This was really annoying! There was nothing I could do about it until I finally remembered. There’s just no conscious way of intentionally remembering something, after all. You either remember it or you don’t, right? Why did I even care?

I got onto the highway. There were shoes and ships; it was night; I had my tunes playing. Then: I’m going to remember this. Not actually remembering, but the knowledge that I am now in the process of remembering and will soon have remembered. Verb tenses don’t even convey the experience! The fire was lit, the kettle was on the hob and the deep was bubbling. The question of Talking Woman was really nagging at me now. Why did I care? Why was I so sure that I was going to remember?

The whole thing unfolded over a 15 minute night drive home. I was playing tunes and thinking about a book I was reading, but the image of Talking Woman’s face as she smiled back at me over a tea tray she almost certainly didn’t want to accept kept rearing its middle-aged head. Where did I know her from? TV? No, it couldn’t be; She wasn’t British and I don’t have a TV. It really couldn’t be TV; it was highly unlikely to be TV. Why was I thinking TV? I let it go again and enjoyed the night drive.

It was TV, I was just going to have to accept that. I could feel the memory approaching. It’s like when you feel like you’re going to have to take a crap soon; I could actually feel the memory starting to emerge. This was not someone I had met in person; I was just going to have to accept that as a fact that some part of me knew to be true, even if my conscious mind was playing catch up.

If it was TV, that means Netflix; Talking Woman was a middle aged white female, and that narrowed the field considerably. What movie had I ever watched in which a middle aged white female smiled the way she did when inadvertently taking the teacup tray from me? I queried my brain.

By the time I got to the highway off ramp near my home, I thought I had the answer. I couldn’t remember the actor or the name of the movie, but I had definitely watched it on Netflix. Once home I was able to find out the name of the movie, look up the IMDB listing and confirm who Talking Woman was. Then I watched the movie again because it really was very well done. Afterwards I realized that if I ever ran into her again it could be tricky. To me she’s that character in that movie, while in real life she’s someone I’ve never actually met.

The mental unfolding of the tea tray incident was rather remarkable. We’re talking about a split second of an interaction which I put behind me as soon as it was over yet still presented some problem that my mind really wanted to be allowed to solve. None of the mental events were particularly volitional and the topic was not of conscious interest to me, but my mind kept worrying away at it like how your tongue feels around the hole a lost tooth leaves behind. The mental sensation of feeling an actual memory coming closer and closer before I actually had it was also quite interesting. It was almost like being able to predict the future, at least in terms of my own mental content;I knew I was going to remember something before I knew what it was I remembered.

House Builder, Thou Art Seen! Well, at least glimpsed.

Integrating Theoretical Approaches in the Study of the Parawhatsit

I was listening to Paratopia Oculus the other day when Jeff Ritzmann mentioned that in his writing he was struggling with integrating the notion of anti-structure he adopted from the works of George Hansen (1) with Greg Bishop’s co-creation theory (2).

Wow, that has got to be some rough going, I thought, even before you add in any element of the supernatural, paranormal or whatever the currently fashionable term is. The reason being that the theoretical underpinnings of the two approaches are themselves at odds. Hansen’s work is based on a type of social theory called functionalism that takes a systems approach to explaining social phenomena. Co-creation theory, to the extent that I understand it, is basically a social constructivist approach focused on how shared understanding creates social phenomena. In the case of co-creation theory, one of the entities sharing the understanding happens to be differently incarnated (i.e., non-human and possibly non-physical), but otherwise it’s straight constructivism.

Why does this matter? All theories put forward for explaining and understanding human social phenomena take certain things for granted. Sometimes these assumptions are explicitly named, but more often they go unrecognized. Moreover, most theories excel at explaining certain types of things but fail miserably at accounting for other stuff; they all have their strengths and weaknesses. In the case of functionalist versus constructivist theories, some of the assumptions they are based on are antithetical, that is to say, completely opposed to one another. Also, the things each theory tends to be good or bad at explaining are wildly different. Trying to integrate functional and constructivist approaches is sort of like mixing oil and water; Jeff Ritzmann has cut himself out a ridiculously difficult task.

But then, salad dressing tastes good. That’s even before you add in the paranormal croutons. If you try to integrate functionalist and constructivist explanations AND make it account for parastuff of various ilks, I definitely want to taste that salad – but I can’t guarantee I won’t snack while I wait for it to be ready.

Because there’s a further question. From a purely theoretical perspective, we still have not resolved the question of whether the stuff of parastuff is OUR parastuff or THEIR parastuff. Hansen’s functional approach seems to suggest that liminality or anti-structure breaches reality enough for an external reality of ontological others to break on through, but doesn’t address how the encounter then goes. Co-creation doesn’t address how the encounter begins, but posits that as it’s happening both an ontological other and a human being participate in shaping the nature and meaning of an event. Then we have Eric Ouellet with his recent book Illuminations arguing that the whole thing can be put down to entirely to human activity, albeit in the form of as-yet-poorly understood psi, or perhaps social psi, activity.

We are now very far from CSICOP territory, were everything has an explanation and nothing is not normal. However, that is no reason to give up on theoretical rigor, rules of evidence and meticulous attention to the logic of argumentation. I bow to the unknown, but I do not submit to it. We press on.

I find Ouellet’s theory extremely attractive; it overlaps with several areas of my own education and previous research and holds out the promise of being a powerful explanatory approach. But to me, the most exciting part is the gaping hole it seems to have. If all this parastuff can be put down entirely to as-yet-not-fully-understood human psi or collective psi abilities, WHY IS IT SO OFTEN EXPERIENCED AS AN OTHER? Specifically, as radical alterity – aliens! – not only non-human, but outside known reality – an ontological Other.

If Ouellet’s assumption is wrong, ontological others do exist and we occasionally interact with them. That is totally cool in my book. If his assumption is right, there are certain circumstances under which we define our own experiences as so foreign they can only be understood in terms of an ontological Other; we are in effect creating UFOs, ghosts, poltergeists we occasionally experience; we ARE the plants that speak to us in dreams and visions. Either way you answer that question, I’m in my happy place. In fact, you don’t have to answer the question at all (an answer may in fact be impossible) and I’d still in my happy place, which is the sociology of knowledge.

What kind of boundary work is involved in perceptions of radical alterity? How do we draw lines around what counts as us and what counts as Other? It’s rich philosophical territory and also open to empirical enquiry. How much fun is that?!?!?

Bibliography of Three Books I Have Not Actually Read, Although I May Have Heard Other People Talk About Them On Some Podcast Somewhere: 

1. Hansen, George (2001) The Trickster and the Paranormal

2. Bishop, Greg (2016) It Defies Language!

3. Ouellet, Eric (2015) Illuminations

(I have not figured out blog comments yet so if you want to talk to me you are going to have to remote view my email address.)

Theory of Everything

"Mindfulness. Situational awareness. Control over emotions. Being present. Clear analysis of threat indicators. Adapting to changes in both environment and circumstance. This is how Kali shackles your demons, brings you inner peace, sharpens your focus and gives you control, discipline and purpose."

- Doug Marcaida

Hybrid Dreams, Alien Invasion

I listen to Seriah Azkath's podcast show Where Did the Road Go?

Listened to the 3/18/2016 show with Cutchin and after hearing the hybrid show of 3/5 mentioned went back and listened to that. I have a general idea that talk in ufology about aliens and hybrids inevitably maps onto discourses of race/ethnicity and power. There’s a few people who have floated that idea before e.g. Christopher Roth. Listening to the hybrid show in the context of my current social/political climate, that idea got reinforced.

I grew up in an all-white area and moved to a very multi-ethnic area later in life. Just by living and working there I ended up learning new social skills and knowledge in order to relate to and interact with people from completely different backgrounds. It’s often struck me that people who live in monocultural settings are at a disadvantage when it comes to interacting with more global or multicultural society because they lack those skills, that knowledge or I guess what sociologists might call social capital. It’s not necessarily bigotry or intolerance but just ignorance due to lack of exposure to social others and developing more social skills and knowledge.

Learning about the Native American Holocaust in grad school, one of the things we read about was how tribes kept their culture intact even when all the leaders of the secret/sacred societies were being killed off. Even after all the designated spokespeople for the supernatural had been killed off, a dream might come to someone who was not a member of a sacred society. If it seemed like a good dream, the remaining community would run with it anyway. Kind of a preservation of old ways and adaptation to new realities.

That’s what I was thinking about listening to the hybrid show. (On the physical level all this hybrid nonsense is bullshit, but on the social-emotional level it’s highly significant.) Specifically around the 43 minute mark where the female guest is speaking. Her words are a pretty good description of what it would take for someone from a monocultural setting to open up and adapt to the fact that people radically different from them are also a part of the world they live in. Was she dreaming a dream meant to teach skills for interacting with an other? (By other I mean anything we consider to be other, either socially or ontologically.)

Then I listened to the Ouellet episode and realized it could be argued that the displaced social tension of a numerically diminishing white majority in a culturally shifting North America and Europe could be a springboard for generating hybrid dreams. From a white point of view, the aliens are definitely invading.

It all makes sense! It's in the data! 19.5

Co-Creation and Psychosocial Theories of the Paranormal: Part I

Introduction

Co-creation and psychosocial theories are two approaches that have been suggested to explain paranormal phenomena like UFO sightings or other unusual experiences. Of the two, psychosocial theories have a bit more of an established pedigree and cachet of scientific legitimacy. Co-creation has been less explicitly articulated and can in some ways be seen as a subset of psychosocial theory. Part One is a critique of psychosocial theories. Part Two will push on into the unknown territory of co-creation theory.

Part I

Psychosocial theories hold that paranormal phenomena can be explained by individual psychological and social context variables operating in various combinations. However, as Jerome Clark notes, paranormal phenomena usually involve two different things: an event and then someone’s experience of that event. Often psychosocial theories are used to explain away events by explaining a person’s experience of the event in terms of psychological and social variables. However, psychosocial explanations are not required to be so hardline. For example, one can remain a materialist, posit the reality of some sort of anomalistic event and then focus one’s study on people’s experiences of the event. This kind of psychosocial agnosticism can be a quite scientific way of going about things; it is a good path for people who may be unsure about the nature of anomalistic events or who downright believe in psi, ghosts, UFOs or whatever but want whatever research they do to be valid.

The problem is that while psychosocial approaches can leads to a better understanding of how variables like personality and culture shape our experience of anomalistic events, they leave unaddressed the anomalistic event itself, which tends to be what we want to know about. On the other hand, when faced with truly bizarre stuff going on, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to separate out the effects of our own shocked perceptions and activated cultural filters from what the “real” event is? The long and the short is that while psychosocial theories are often invoked to dismiss the reality of an actual anomalous event, that’s due to the predilection of the researcher, not the logic of the theoretical approach.

Psychosocial theory is a sort of abbreviated multidimensional or multiphasic theoretical construct that is often invoked when people struggle with conceptualizing complex system phenomena. (1) It’s in this sense I say that co-creation is a kind of subset of psychosocial theory. With respect to hardline psychosocial theory, co-creation of an event/experience might be shaped, for example, by interactions between individuals or conflicts within an individual between their sense of personhood, status and/or role. They may operate by means or mechanisms that are not always well understood or visible (e.g., emerging social tensions expressed as witchcraft accusations) but are ultimately knowable. However, a non-material, ontological Other (2) is not involved.

On the other hand, with the agnostic flavor of psychosocial theory an ontological Other might or might not come into play. If it does come into play, it will be stipulated on the basis of individual or sociocultural beliefs. In these cases the Other is not thought of as having agency, existence, or identity. It will be thought of as something that people believe has agency, existence and identity and by so believing make real in human terms – hence the idea of co-creation. We’re now much closer to admitting the reality of our beliefs, at least as they affect this life, but still on comfortable enough terrain for science, that delicate flower, to grow.

However, the theoretical notion of co-creation, at least as far as I understand it, goes a bit beyond where psychosocial theories go. I will make an analogy to the difference between the academic fields of anomalistic psychology versus parapsychology. Both study the same phenomena; anomalistic psychology studies paranormal experiences assuming paranormal forces do not exist, while parapsychology assumes the existence of something called psi and tries to understand how it operates.(3)

Co-creation theory, as articulated by Greg Bishop and several other interesting thinkers, assumes the veridicality of anomalous events and of ontological Others as individual actors involved in such events. This will be discussed briefly in Part II.

 NOTES

(1) I’m thinking specifically of Showalter’s book Hystories, a paper by Vallee and someone else that I’m too lazy to dig out right now, and the Marwaha and May presentation at the 2015 Parapsychology MOOC.

(2)  i.e., Alien. In my opinion, the word alien is increasingly being used to mean ontological Other rather than any specific entities associated with the extraterrestrial UFO hypothesis and/ or Stan Romanek.

(3) Simmonds-Moore PowerPoint from 2015 Parapsychology MOOC