Rumi on Video

This is a video day I suppose. In these, Coleman Barks and Robert Bly read some Rumi.

Notes on the Bhagavad Gita and Liberation

The Bhagavad Gita opens at the edge of a great battle about to commence. Two armies, poised and ready, face each other across the field. Commanding one side is the Pandava, the five sons of Pandu. The opposing forces are led by the Pandava’s cousins, the one hundred sons of Dhritarashtra. Central to the narrative of the Bhagavad Gita is Arjuna, a son of Pandu; he is the most revered warrior on the battlefield. Arjuna is privileged to have as his charioteer, Krishna the avatar of Supreme Reality, God incarnate.

Arjuna first appears inconsolable and readily shows his distress to Krishna. In the midst of the army arrayed against him, he sees his teachers, the elders of his family, cousins and uncles. (BG 1:34) The parricide is too much for him to bear. “How can we know happiness,” Arjuna asks, “if we kill our own kinsmen?” (1:37) Krishna’s answer is the first teaching in an evolving dialogue with Arjuna. Krishna outlines the indestructible nature of the men on the battlefield. Their bodies in time will inevitably die, Krishna says. Only the cause of their deaths remains a variable. Krishna speaks to Arjuna about the true invulnerable and eternal nature of self: “it is not born, it does not die; having been, it will never not be; unborn, enduring, constant, and primordial, it is not killed when the body is killed.” (2:20) Here, Krishna first indicates a rough outline of the path to liberation.

Arjuna, no longer grief stricken and intrigued by Krishna’s teaching, becomes an inquisitive student. Arjuna’s first questions reveal his doubts and naïveté about attaining liberation. He asks Krishna, “What defines a man deep in contemplation, whose insight and thought are sure? How would he speak? How would he move?” (2:54)

Tantalized by embellishment from Krishna, Arjuna continues to ask for more. “Recount in full extent the discipline and power of your self,” Arjuna requests. (10:18) At the culmination of Krishna’s description of himself Arjuna still asks for more. “Just as you have described yourself, I wish to see your form in all its majesty,” Arjuna says. (11:3) Upon seeing Krishna with his “countless arms, bellies, mouths and eyes,” Arjuna, crushed by Krishna’s true form, at once asserts his devotion toward him. (11:16)

Arjuna’s experience transforms him. Entering his exchange with Krishna as a doubtful and grief stricken man, he leaves reborn and ready for the battle at hand. He affirms that his “delusion is destroyed” and his “doubt is dispelled.” (18:73)

In the text, Krishna describes two distinct stages of liberation. Listing them in the order that they must be accomplished, first he describes personal liberation. Krishna tells Arjuna that “a man of inner strength whose senses experience objects without attraction and hatred, in self-control, finds serenity.” (2:64) In serenity, Krishna says, man dissolves his sorrows and attains sure understanding. (2:65) What Krishna describes are two things, the process and the result: an endeavor and its completion. Personal liberation involves things in the world, perceptual objects, and is an intellectual pursuit. The second liberation is a precipice not traversable by thought. Thought is also a thing. Renouncing desire is not accomplished by the will powered, white knuckle approach. Over the precipice, toward the greater liberation, is “the place of the infinite spirit; achieving it, one is freed from delusion; abiding in it even at the time of death, on finds the pure calm of infinity.” (2:72)

Krishna delineates three distinct paths to liberation: knowledge, action and devotion. The path of knowledge is intellectual in nature. Adherents must relinquish desires in their minds and become content with the selves within themselves. (2:55) Krishna initially upholds this route and those upon it as the dearest to him. “I regard the man of knowledge,” he says “to be my very self.” (3:18) At another point, Krishna places the path of action above the others, telling Arjuna “Always perform with detachment any action you must do; performing action with detachment, one achieves supreme good.” (3:19) Later he states that the devotees of this path are the dearest to him of all. (12:20) The route of devotion is prescribed by Krishna for almost everyone as means to “win the reward.” (9:22) Liberation through this method is available even to the criminal because, as Krishna says, “If he is devoted solely to me, even a violent criminal must be deemed a man of virtue, for his resolve is right.” (9:30) The apparent contradictions in Krishna’s teaching are not easily reconciled but may be rooted in the Bhagavad Gita’s past as a developing oral tradition.

Krishna identifies himself as an understanding deity, forgiving of ignorance. He acknowledges that some men devote themselves and sacrifice to other gods. Krishna reproves their ignorance and maintains that the results of their worship still go to him. “I am the enjoyer of all sacrifices,” he says. However, Krishna insists that to attain the highest levels, men must believe only in him. “Finite is the reward that comes to men of little wit,” Krishna says, “men who sacrifice to the gods reach the gods; those devoted to me reach me.” (7:23)

In the Ancient Vedic period, religious practice was entirely concerned with material gain. A religious service was a functional apparatus meant to assure the good fortune of any particular endeavor. During the period contemporary with the writing of the Bhagavad Gita, there was great concern for decidedly non-material gains. The popularity of the text upon its arrival testifies to the shifting interests among its audience. The Bhagavad Gita’s references to the Hindu caste system also represent the shifting beliefs at that time. Krishna’s message is to Arjuna, a man of the Kshatriya caste. Liberation, according to Krishna, is not only an option of the Brahmins as it had been previously. While Krishna endorses the caste system and even claims authorship of it, his directions for attaining liberation are always personal and present. (14:13) He speaks to everyone individually, telling them that they can have a personal relationship with him. Importantly, he mandates that anyone can have that relationship now, in this lifetime.

Krishna contains within himself everything and states that he is the source of everything. All opposites, while remaining juxtaposed in the sensory world, are one within him. This single nature of Krishna transcends the experience of human senses. His momentary nature, whether positive or negative, is entirely dependent upon the viewer. Here, the Bhagavad Gita divines a fundamental human condition and the root of much strife: limited perspective. By the time that Krishna tells us that he stands “sustaining this entire world with a fragment” of his being, he is putting the cold facts to us. (10:42) Krishna might also say, “This planet isn’t much; it has a purpose but not a big one. You aren’t much either but I do have a job for you.” The alluring comparison with the human centered Judeo-Christian worldview is unavoidable.

Krishna takes on numerous personal qualities throughout the text and identifies himself alternately as Vishnu and Shiva. To Arjuna and his warriors, he is known as a charioteer and great hero. At his disposal is the power to manifest in any form. To safeguard the operation of the world, he appears “age after age.” (4:8) As impersonal qualities, Krishna grants himself the paradoxical and chilling designation of “time grown old, creating world destruction.” (11:32) Within his self, everything is contained.

While riling the masses by granting the possibility for liberation in this lifetime to everyone, regardless of caste, the Bhagavad Gita is also an endorsement of the caste system. By claiming authorship for the origin of the four Hindu castes, Krishna gives the system a divine pedigree, making it all but unassailable as a social institution.

When Krishna states his own non-dualistic nature, placing himself beyond opposites, he is describing to all believers the experience of being next to him. He explains that the experience of things as they are without comparisons or opposites is the apex of human experience. Although the conclusion that the penetration of dualism leads to liberation has a rich history on the Indian sub-continent prior to the Bhagavad Gita, that strand of knowledge is all but lost in the Western world.

The Bhagavad Gita represents Hinduism at a relatively late stage. It portrays a religion founded on the cumulative insight of countless contributors. The changing attitudes toward specific spiritual practices in the Bhagavad Gita itself make it seem like the collective work of many authors. However, as the text confusingly shifts its emphasis from one spiritual path to another, its ultimate aim remains the same: liberation.

The page references are to the Bantam Classic edition of the Bhagavad Gita, 2004.

Divine Warrior House: An introduction to the Bujinkan Hombu and a small portrait of Dr. Hatsumi

The quiet rural town called Noda-shi in the Chiba prefecture, outside of Tokyo is home to the Hombu (main) dojo of the Bujinkan. Bujinkan, meaning “Divine Warrior House” in Japanese, is an association founded by Dr. Masaaki Hatsumi, encompassing nine Japanese martial traditions. Often, it is referred to as Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu. Budo is not readily summed up but may be translated as “the way of war,” or “the warrior's way,” and refers to the ancient and traditional soldiering arts of Japan. Taijutsu refers to physical motions that one learns in training and can be translated as “body movement skills” or “skills with the body, used in warfare.”

The septuagenarian Dr. Hatsumi is a traditional Japanese bone doctor, a recipient of Papal awards, and has been honored by the Emperor of Japan for his cultural contributions to the world. Thousands visit him annually and gather there, in Noda-shi, for weeks at a time to attend his classes, watching and listening and trying to learn about budo and life. But what are they hoping to find there? What is it that this man offers? I have explored this question with interviews from a few who have made this journey as well as with my own insights as an occasional student of Dr. Hatsumi.

On August 10th, 1997, the first day of training in the new Hombu Dojo, which is also known as the Bujinden. Soke (the Japanese title for a lineage head), as Dr. Hatsumi is often referred to by the initiated, said that it would become the belly-button for Bujinkan in the world. The building which is the Bujinkan Hombu is fairly nondescript. It blends into the background of the dozens of rural style Japanese houses. But inside, the view is extraordinary. The walls of this small training hall were lined with all manner of exotic weapons and art, both Asian and Western.

With interest in the experiences of others who had been party to an interaction with and learning from Dr. Hatsumi, I asked for assistance from an internet based forum that is affiliated with the Bujinkan. Most had not gone to Japan but I did receive information from two that had. There is some discrepancy between the descriptions, my own included, of what I have described as the “Ritual of the Hombu.” To one person, Dr. Hatsumi represents something mystical but to another he simply teaches [proficiently] 'fighting' arts. The two interviewees had very different accounts of their experiences in Japan than my own. Neither described any hardship, or confusion. Speculatively, I believe this to be an example of what Malinowski described. The individual often lacks specific knowledge concerning the structures that they live within.

The Bujinkan is steeped in a beautiful and intriguing history, extending over a thousand years. Since Dr. Hatsumi extended his teaching to non-Japanese, it has spread around the globe. The Bujinkan itself has become a sort of second language, facilitating communication around the world despite the barriers of nationalism. It is truly an international organization.

The Hombu Through Geertz: Ritual as Text
(An Exposition of Clifford Geertz's philosophy and works, with examples)

Briefly describing Geertz and his accomplishments is a futile endeavor. He has been acknowledged by some as the most prolific writer in American anthropology. Of his many contributions though, his usage of the concepts, “thick description” and the “document method” stand out above the rest.

Thick description is a methodological ideal. It places emphasis on a detailed and contextualized empirical description that Geertz believed must go before any attempt at generalization. He outlined his views in “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” an essay in his book, The Interpretation of Cultures. There he says:

"The concept of culture I espouse, and whose utility the essays below attempt to demonstrate, is essentially a semiotic one. Believing with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefor not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning."

The document method entails viewing a people's culture as an ensemble of texts which can be interpreted only but not objectively understood. Through interpretation, generalizations are possible but not conclusive results. The “document method” is key to his understanding of interpretation and possibly its antecedent. In The Social History of an Indonesian Town, Geertz frames it:

"In this approach a single naturally coherent social phenomenon, a found event of some sort, is interpreted not so much as an index of a particular underlying pattern, as in most quantitative work, nor yet again as the immediate substance of that pattern itself, as in most ethnographic work, but rather as a unique, individual, peculiarly eloquent actualization—an epitome—of it."

Geertz would be most interested in a thick understanding of each student's travel to Japan. As an outsider he would not have direct access to their motivations or know what the study of martial arts means to them. He would note, hopefully, that every man and woman in the Hombu dojo has a history. Within each each one is their version of the history of the Bujinkan and its Hombu as well as the history of their own lives. “How will these things combine?” he might ask and “How does their blending manifest as action?” He wold note the differences between Dr. Hatsumi's movement as he tries to teach and the mimicked motions of the students as they try to learn. An interview with Dr. Hatsumi would reveal that he sees martial arts as a vehicle to teach many other things. Dr. Hatsumi exemplifies this point in his own book, Ninjutsu: History and Tradition:

"Ninpo, the higher order of ninjutsu, should be offered to the world as a guiding influence for all martial artists... By experiencing the confrontation of danger, the transcendence of fear or injury or death, and a working knowledge of individual personal powers and limitations, the practitioner of ninjutsu can gain the strength and invincibility that permit enjoyment of the flowers moving in the wind, appreciation of the love of others, and contentment with the presence of peace in society."

The Hombu Dojo is not precisely a Japanese phenomenon, nor one of an entirely Western nature. Instead, it and its students sit precariously between cultural structures. It occupies ground on multiple continents. Every year, hundreds of Westerners flow through the Hombu's doors. Looking at the ritual of going to the Bujinkan Hombu dojo symbolically is an attempt to decode its secret language. The journey is not entirely foreign, not totally alien but also does not lend itself to be described as familiar.

The Hombu Through Bourdieu: The Field of Practice
(Examples and quotations from Bourdieu and his possible view of the Hombu ritual)

Bourdieu was a French sociologist and anthropologist who, after studying philosophy at the École Normale Supérieur in Paris, with Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, did fieldwork among the Kabyle of Algeria. Bourdieu's ideas are often subtle and not easily reified. He weaves a systematic pattern of concepts in order to explain the phenomenological. The result of his work is referred to by him as Praxis or Practice and he defines it as a dialectical relationship between structures, those of the individual and the environment. As these two formations enter into one another, he believed that the individual recreates the structure of the environment but in a modified form.

Bourdieu was highly critical of most anthropological theories. In “A Review of Pierre Bourdieu's Outline of a Theory of Practice,” Gregory Acciaioli tries to understand that work of Bourdieu's. He says that,

"Pierre Bourdieu's Outline of a theory of practice situates itself in opposition to contemporary accounts of society and culture. It attempts to evaluate, and at times to excoriate, not so much a particular form of analysis, but a set of presuppositions encompassing a number of approaches."

Acciaioli notes that in direct opposition to almost everyone in his field, Bourdieu continued his assault in this book:

"Bourdieu takes on structuralism, neo-Marxism, ethnomethodology, symbolic interactionism and symbolic approaches modelled on hermeneutics, for all of them share the presuppositions he wishes to question."

His Esquisse d'une théorie de la pratique, précédé de trois études d'ethnologie kabyle, appearing in 1972, was published in English as Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977). There he introduces the terms of Praxis. These components are: (1) Habitus, denoting a set of dispositions that are inscribed in the body, shaping its most fundamental habits and skills, and transmitting the effects of social power into the person. Habitus thus contains within it both the attributes of power, and those of skill (and thus aesthetics). (2)Doxa, literally opinion denotes a society's unquestioned or often non-questioned truths.

Among the concepts introduced in Bourdieu's later work, social fields are of particular importance. Social fields are arenas for the accumulation of the three forms of capital, and arenas for competition between accumulating actors. The field is the structured place where all action takes place. In it there are positions and interrelation among. Individuals work within these interrelation which are pathways and struggle to meet their aims. One example of the field likens it to a sports field with goal zones, where a game with rules is played. All players have their own individual aims. Some seek to maintain their position (status quo) and others try to improve upon it.

Between Habitus: the areas that are apparently most free and Doxa: the areas most strictly regulated by customary norms, there lies the fields of practice. The agency of the individual is thereby mitigated by traditional precepts and ritual laws which orient action but do not produce it. The frequent absence of relevant written laws—a product of work expressly mandated to produce a coherent body of norms and ensure respect for its application—implies that a social formulation maintains an intrinsic power to reinforce its dispositions symbolically and functions as a self-guiding mechanism.

It is clear that Bourdieu would be most concerned with the distinction of ideal v. real in the Hombu. Every student has a conception that answers “What is martial arts?” This prescribed conviction is granted to them by forces unseen and completely automatically. This ideal of martial arts, in a Western cinema and television influenced environment, can be very far removed from the real. There is no remaining traditional foundation of martial arts in the West. The value of its practices and philosophies has diminished into virtual non-existence. The bulk of what is known as martial arts comes from television and film, both ripe with creative license and also dubious sources of factual information. Those who have delved deeper discover that there is a sub-level of martial arts Doxa. It is the individual, as Habitus manifest, that discovers this.

Some Notes and Commentary

My insufficient knowledge of Geertz does not allow me to agree or disagree entirely when he describes cultures as "created signs that are behaviors." If this is actually a summation for his thought then its scope is sadly lacking. There is absolutely no proof to this assertion. The possibility, in my mind, remains open to another depiction. Culture is simultaneously developed through transactions between individuals as well as interactions by them with their environment. The environment though is a great undiscovered land. The word itself allows for far more than a mere topographic treatment. Environment includes what may be intangible to some but entirely real to others. To some cultures, the planets are or were the Gods and can influence one's actions on Earth. How can this subtle and also highly contextualized concept figure into an understanding environment when the possibility of divine planetary influence is never accepted? This is not an argument for planetary influence but for possibility.

The scope of this subject did not readily appear to me. I was not prepared for its magnitude nor aware of the impediment that my own experience in Japan and the Bujinkan organization would present. I naively held the view that this same experience would simply allow me have “unique insight.” My own narrow breadth of knowledge however has prevented me from apprehending many things integral to a comprehensive understanding of not only the teachings of Dr. Hatsumi, but of what the Bujinkan represents in the world. With an affinity for Geertz, I see it as a document waiting for an interpreter. Setting Geertz aside, I do not know that the barrier of the interpreter is a final limit. All I can surmise is that this barrier still inhibits me.

Geertz and Bourdieu share some ideological ground. Admittedly, neither may acknowledge it. Geertz's usage of “thick description” is very similar to Bourdieu's “official/practical” dichotomy. If any critique can be leveed against anthropology (and one which either or both of these men may agree); it finds its form in the systematic tyranny of finitude. The belief that the sentence has ended, or that the work is done is an unjustified assumption of dominion over a field of knowledge. No system, whether of interpretation or practice, can accommodate every variable of humanity. Always, one's eyes must remain vigilant for the exotic particle of behavior that was never planned for. Finitude is above all a limitation and every limitation is also a border which has an 'other side'. The other side keeps complete knowledge just past the reach of our fingers, but its lure drives us to always reach further.

Due to time limitations, this paper has been restricted to considerations of Geertz's and Bourdieu's work, examining interpretations of them from other authors. These men are now twice removed and have become, for me, translations of interpretations of the original works. One who reads this paper will take up the role as fourth in line. As the original work disappears into the horizon, so does the possibility of understanding it. Commentary and marginalia are not substitutable for a reading these men in their own words. More critically, a reading of these men's works is not substitutable for an experience in the places they wrote about. One must form their own interpretation of a thing—directly.

Further Reading

Moore, Jerry D. Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004.

Dr. Hatsumi, Masaaki. Ninjutsu: History and Tradition. Burbank, CA: Unique Publications, 1981.

Acciaioli, Gregory L. “A Review of Pierre Bourdieu's Outline of a Theory of Practice”. Canberra Anthropology IV, 1. 1981: 23-51.