The Nearsighted Drone

Previous installment: "Modern Applications of the Buddha's Teachings on Love and on the Suffering Attributable to Misperception"

by Jack Lawlor

Drone warfare may reflect an anxious, fearful society deeply out of touch with its highest values, and lost in misperception.

Are we proceeding with an assumption that certain "types" do not deserve to live?

Rather than take the time and look deeply into what we are doing, who we are targeting, and providing rudiments of due process and the rule of law, we are slating growing numbers of people for assassination. Rather than question the saneness of this approach, its morality, its relationship to the rules of engagement in warfare, and how we found ourselves in need to use robot aircraft, we push ahead and set a lethal precedent for other nations.

Rather than learn from the protestations of others who protest the sudden death of so many innocent from within their territory in our pursuit of untried terrorist suspects, we purchase and accelerate the use of more and more drones, never pausing to contemplate the world we will have created once other nations have this technology within a few years.

Despite the optimism of children teaching their parents of how the Buddha met the Jetsons, and despite the pleas of Tolstoy to make what's good and what's whole possible again, our hearts are somehow hardened to the possibility of beginning anew, in wisdom and compassion.

In reliance on technology, we understand less and less, rather than more.

What are the underlying causes and conditions of our suffering, and of the suffering we inflict on others?

How did we get to this place?

Modern Applications of the Buddha's Teachings on Love and on the Suffering Attributable to Misperception

Previous installment:"The Suffering Caused By Misperception"

by Jack Lawlor

Love is a universal message in world religions. Buddhism, however, may be unique among religions in its emphasis on the need to prevent the injury and tragedy caused by human misperception.

Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh urges us to cultivate the following qualities through the engaged, consistent practice of meditation based on mindful breathing in order to live in love, free of misperception in the manner suggested by the Buddha:

1. The cultivation of stopping, or "Shamatha" in the Pali language: i.e., to recognize and let go of compulsions and prejudices which cause misperception;
   
   
2. The cultivation of concentration, or "Samadhi". Everything in our culture encourages distraction and reduces our ability to concentrate, thwarting our ability to understand what is actually going on;
   
   
3. Dwelling in "Appamada", the absence of madness. Once we cultivate stopping and concentration, we dwell in awareness, free of misperception that causes us to say and do things we do not understand;
   
   
4. The cultivation insight, or Vipassana. Once we dwell in concentration, our perception clears, and we can see and understand underlying causes and conditions not only effecting us, but others. We are capable of seeing and understanding things from the vantage point of other beings;
   
   
5. The cultivation of compassion, or Karuna. Once free of our own obsessions and misperceptions, we better see and understand what is going on, how we have an impact on others, and how they influence us, opening the way to compassion; and
6. The cultivation of understanding, Prajna. The practice of compassion deepens our understanding of the radical impermanance and interdependence of all beings, giving rise to wisdom.

There's another set of exercises which Thich Nhat Hahn urges his students to practice when encountering uncertainty and confusion. They might be practiced in U.S. Air Force and CIA drone command posts, safely tucked away thousands of miles from violent operations. Rather than live compulsively, driven by habit energies, Thay suggests that we first take refuge in mindfulness of breathing, and then ask ourselves:

-- Am I sure of what I am doing? If we are not sure, the moral thing to do may be to refrain from action until deep looking and inquiry suggest what we should do or not do;

-- What am I doing? Am I trying my best to do technical read-outs nin my drone's computer and surveillance camera, or am I killing someone who may not even be the person my government has labelled a "terrorist' on the basis of information unknown to me. What am I REALLY doing?

-- Am I giving into habit energy? What tendencies and beliefs have I inherited from my nation, my family, my society? Do I need to question and challenge their resort to violence under these circumstances? Isn't the use of violence at odds with other things I have been taught by the nation, the family, the society I love?

-- Are my acts making it possible for all beings to live, to be their best? In the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, it is believed that all beings have bodhicitta, the heart and mind of love that is capable of manifesting both compassion and wisdom simultaneously, not only for one's own benefit, but for the benefit of all beings. Will my actions injure the bodhicitta in others? If they do, won't my acts cause ever escalating levels of suffering?

Next installment: "The Nearsighted Drone"

The Suffering Caused By Misperception

Previous installment: "The Buddha on Love"

by Jack Lawlor

There is a corresponding side to Buddhist contemplation that cultivates a radical type of wisdom, radical in the sense that its does its utmost to see and perceive the roots of conflict deep in the human heart, and tries to determine which skillful means can be engaged to mitigate suffering.

The following lines from the Collected Sayings of the Buddha, known as the Dhammapada, are illustrative of the Buddhist approach to cutting through confusion and identifying the roots of conflict:

"We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with an impure mind
And trouble will follow you
As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.

We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with a pure mind
And happiness will follow you
As your own shadow, unshakable...

`Look how he abused me and beat me,
How he threw me down and robbed me.'
Live with such thoughts and you live in hate.

`Look how he abused me and beat me,
How he threw me down and robbed me'.
Abandon such thoughts, and live in love.

In this world,
Hate never yet dispelled hate.

This is the law,
Ancient and inexhaustible."

What do we really know about the people the U.S. government is killing through drone warfare? We know that the drones have accidentally attacked wedding parties and other family gatherings. What imminent harm are those on the drone death list not only intending, but capable of inflicting on our country? Was the threat to our country direct? Were imminent, feasible attacks on the U.S. prevented by drone killings taking place thousands and thousands of miles from the U.S., or do we simply slay tribal leaders who are making the lives of other tribal leaders who are more consistently favorably disposed toward the U.S. more difficult?

Have the people we've slain ever actually harmed us? Is the nation where they reside even capable of harming us? Or is it our government's view of their ideology and their religion that slates people for death? If that is the case, is death by drone justified? Do we simply chose to live in hate?

How much misperception are we suffering from? How far gone are we from what is human, what is sane? What has happened to us?

An elderly Vietnam War veteran approached the microphone during a question and answer period with Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh in northern Mississippi in the summer of 2011, attended by approximately 1,000 people from throughout the American South. The vet very humbly asked Thich Nhat Hanh to recognize that many, many of the young Americans who went to Vietnam as soldiers did not do so to inflict havoc upon the country, but to help the Vietnamese people. He asked that everyone acknowledge that.

Thich Nhat Hanh's response was very telling. He acknowledged the honorable intention of so many of the young Americans who went to Vietnam in such huge numbers in the mid 1960s. But Thay had a request of the American people in return. Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh asked us, as Americans, never, never, to go to war again based on a misperception. Think of how we entered war in Vietnam based on the misperception that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had attacked two U.S. Navy destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. Think of how we entered the War in Iraq based on the misperception that it was brimming with weapons of mass destruction. Think of how we are about to borrow more money from the Chinese to go to war with Iran based on our -- perception or misperception? -- that it is assembling nuclear weapons and is an imminent threat to world peace.

Is there reason to believe that our use of drones is based on any more accurate perceptions of who to kill, remotely, without ever confronting them or providing a chance to speak? Where is the declaration of war authorizing these acts? Where is the rule of law?


Next installment: "Modern Applications of the Buddha's Teachings on Love and on the Suffering Attributable to Misperception"

The Buddha Meets the Drone

by Jack Lawlor

From time to time, we need to experience how what is wise and compassionate is indeed possible.

My family attended a lovely retreat with Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh in 1989 which included not only adults, but also children. As is often the case, Thay ( the Vietnamese term of endearment for "teacher" ) invited the fifteen or so children in attendance to perform a skit one evening after dinner. The children chose the unlikely topic, "The Buddha Meets the Jetsons", which actually proved to be as telling as one of the retreat's many fine Dharma talks. Why? The children at the retreat portrayed 25th century-ish Jetson adults as stressed, overburdened, rather hyper and erratic beings who often ignored what was obvious in front of them and who often were caught in misperceptions of what was actually happening, leading to error and injury.

What the children were portraying so accurately, of course, was their own 20th century parents. It was obvious that the children were very diligent and accurate in perceiving adult behavior. So was the other character in the skit: the 6th century BC time-traveling visitor to the Jetsons, Shakyamuni Buddha -- whose demeanor, depth of character, and attentiveness compared starkly to the distracted, hapless, and overwrought George Jetson. It was interesting to see the Buddha attempt to instruct the Jetson family in such ancient practices as sitting meditation and walking meditation, all based on the primal practice of awareness of the breath. The Jetsons shook, strained and complained loudly about being exposed to this form of teaching, but without question in the skit these mindfulness techniques had their intended effect. The children attending the retreat were, in essence, submitting an optimistic report to us that in the last several days they were -- despite all their previous skepticism -- beginning to see how ancient contemplative practices were having a calming, insightful effect on their parents, who were becoming more open-minded, loving and sane.

Why have we given up on what could be a favorable outcome? Is our cynicism that hard, that deep? Can't we, as Christ urged, become more child-like in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, which according to the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, "is spread before us but men do not see it"? Is there room for robot drones that attack civilians in foreign countries in such a Kingdom, such a world? How did we come to need to use drones in this way? Forty-two years ago I came upon Tolstoy's following description of a boyhood friend and the thrill of the possible, which still challenges me today:

"It goes without saying that under [his] influence I involuntarily adopted his outlook, the essence of which was a rapturous adoration of the idea of virtue, and the conviction that man's purpose lies in continual self-improvement. To reform all humanity and eradicate all human vice and unhappiness seemed plausible enough to us at the time, just as it seemed an easy and uncomplicated matter to reform ourselves, to master all virtues and be happy...

God only knows, however, just how absurd those noble dreams of youth were, or who was to blame that they were never realized...."

Leo Tolstoy, Boyhood. Childhood and Youth

Next installment: "The Buddha and a Culture of Violence"