The apology of Burmakin VI

Update: An excellent material strongly connected to the contents of yours truly post was expressed in the review of Ernst Mayr’s Darwin’s influence on modern thought from the Scientific American web on November 24, 2009.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=darwins-influence-on-modern-thought-09-11-24

Burmakin:
Your majesty, before you are going to illuminate the profundity of Bodhisattva Vesanntra 's reason in this incredible renunciation of his own children, I do like to know what you want to mean by schizophrenic historicism of our Burmese.

King of Angels: Well, my son. This is what Buddha told your monkeys' pedigree from the very beginning, "No man is angel so there is none who is not a fool" ( ပုထုဇၨန ဥမၸသက)
. The Teacher alerted you the bad need of relentless consciousness of your human tribe's inclination of degenerating into this imbecile, fanatic, irrational mentality from the beginning. All those thousands of years, I have been in frustration to see how your so-called Buddhist tribes have been pounding the universal Dharma of the Teacher into your tribalism, collectivism, nationalism, historicism and totalitarianism and eventually into fascism. Your current Burmese military dictatorship and not unusual failures of your sporadic revolutions have been afflicted by all those characters
of the legacy of your irrational reasoning supported by witching yourself with prejudices that you want to justify as self-evidence.

Burmakin: I am not willing to concede your point, your majesty. If men are angels, no government is necessary to rule them. James Madison in the doctrine of Federalist justified the need of a government. He argued that a very difficult problem of a government is to control the people it rules, but a more difficult problem for that government is to control itself. The harmony between people in society and its government is a doctrine of necessity, and a Spirit is necessary as a control device to make the government and people homogeneous. Of course, totalitarianism is wrong indeed and the Burmese totalitarian military government is absolutely on the wrong side of history, however, I find no wrong point in the rule of nationalism and historicism for the security, integrity and the progress towards a sound evolution of a particular society.

King of Angels: Let me explain you step by step, my son. The difference between an evil thought and a saint's thought is not more than just a hair-split in its subtlety of distance. Let me ask you a few questions first. How do you notice the concept of Karma as understood by your Buddhist tribes?

Burmakin: I don't think the popular opinion of Karma that has been shaping the norms about humanity of Burmans has any trace of the original meaning of Buddha. We think Karma as Fate and the definite necessity of pure reason, not a choice or the pragmatic action of practical reason. If this interpretation of Karma is true, there is not any difference between Buddhism and Hinduism, where the former's manifest of destiny is Nirvana and the latter is Bhrama, just the cant verbosity of different expressions of the same perfect morality. Disappointingly, a pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitus, illustrated the concept of Fate as the destiny of humanity in an exactly similar way our Burman tribe currently understands Karma in Buddhism.

King of Angels: In my heaven kingdom at the top of Mount Meru, we have a pagoda only for Buddha's hair in honor of his profound wisdom of understanding causality. However, we don't have any pagoda for the beard of Heraclitus for his elaboration of Fate. What the hell is going so wrong with your Burmese tribal Buddhism? If you are worshipping Buddha's wisdom for Karma as Fate, you are worshipping Heraclitus and, as a matter of fact, you are followers Heraclitus, and not of our Teacher. I am not sure whether you Burmans are Buddhists or actually, you are Heraclitusists.

Burmakin: The fetish for fate renders we Burmans fatality, as it is supposed to be. Nevertheless, we still think that Burmans are different from other races for our destiny of humanity in this aspect. We do hope that we have an ultimate flawless good fate since we do have the privilege to be patriotic in our fighting courage against the evils, we do have the great saintly knowledge in our pursuit of Buddhism for driving away the ignorant reasons, and we are the only race together with Sinhalese people to preserve the universal Dharma of Buddha to illuminate the whole universe time from time; we Burmans stand for this purpose, your majesty, no matter how much we are oppressed and threatened under these fascist military guns. See how we Burmans will revive again for our purpose for building the fraternity of all universal beings in your long life. U Htay Hlaing, a Burmese Buddhist scholar of repute, wrote in Man who will shape the world (ကမၻာကို ကိုင္လႈပ္မယ္႔သူ)
that at the Buddha's era of three thousand years, it is prophesized that every scene of the world is swarmed with all yellow-robed people everywhere. We Burmans will go for this godly fate of the whole heaven world, your majesty. We have a pure reason to be Burmans to be fast and to be strong ( ျမန္လည္းျမန္ မာလည္းမာ) patriotic, nationalistic for our ultimate Buddhist state. I am proud of my race, my nation, my cause and my destiny, your majesty, so are my fellow Burmans. This is the spirit of the age, the spirit of the people, and the spirit of our pure moral reason! Don't ridicule our Burmese national spirit that is for our decent history in your abstract logic, your majesty!

King of Angels: OK, my son. Let me ask you more.
What is this spirit? What is this spirit to be a Burman and how can you be certain that you have a pure reason to go for the moral rectitude of the whole world? Make yourself clear that for whom you as a Burmese hero have a reason to serve, the spirit or the people, or the history or the age? What kind of causal connections get you Burmans in this kind of the responsibility matrix as a Burmese race and raise yourself up with your thinking of the master's morality to determine the ultimate fate for all? Are you sure that do other races like Thais that once you defeated in war have just the slave morality to follow the consequences of your brilliant and incomparable actions from the master's morality?

Burmakin: I couldn't explain it in the way of Buddhist thinking about this spirit as Buddhism rejects the essence of a soul or spirit. But I may explain it by following the Hegelian doctrine. This great German scholar, who is the most influential philosopher of the age of enlightenment along with Immanuel Kant, said everything has an essence. This could be reasoned by observing their qualities: for example, it is perfectly reasonable that wood has a quality to float on the water and has the quality to be burnt. Of course, isn't it true that substances and beings have different essences that determine their different purposes? Essentialism guides us to believe that everything reasonable must be real, and everything real must be reasonable. Even Bertrand Russell, who was a giant skeptic, reasoned in his method of logic, that in a phrase like "Bismarck was the first German Chancellor", only German is real and everything else is an abstract. The term Burmese can be reasonable to be real at least. In the same way, the Burmese spirit is real to be reasonable. Can't you reason it, your majesty?

King of Angels: You have the liberty to think in this way, my son. As a matter of fact, the Hegelian doctrine about essence was communicated to Karl Marx for the construction of his theoretical premise of class struggles that annoyed your freedom of human civilization for many miserable years.

In the original philosophy, the beings those are different in their essences struggle for their evolution of the history that is the vigorous spirit for the aim of rationality. In the latter case, Marx, your father of social science, who was a sincere, a very bright pragmatic scientist, thought of the spirit on the materialism side that is economic interest. I don't want to blame their creative thinking in search for solutions of humanity as our Teacher was once before. The fraud lied in their method rather than their personality or intelligence that is to see the phenomenal norms as reality or essence or spirit. Well, my son, if you think there is a reason to believe that history has a life, spirit, reality to move toward something definite, you will be denied of your freedom and your equality for its demand imposing your sacrifice for this historical and spiritual disguise of equality for all.

Burmakin:
Are you intending to say that history is not real and not an essence, your majesty. If history is not real, you are also claiming that these collective bundles, the Burmese nation, the Burmese state, and the Burmese race are also not real; and they don't mean any moral purpose, any purpose for material or mental development or hopefully the benefit of the whole pie of the world, your majesty. Are you leading us to infinite regress of nothingness of reductionism as much your majesty's Buddhist wisdom could fancy it?!!

King of Angels: Well, my son. Every argument conceivable in your human language has an equally valid counter-argument. I just want to say your presumption of the presence of Burmese history, Burmese nation, Burmese state, Burmese race and all your identity thoughts are not real, whenever you need the tools to attack upon this dangerous dogmatism of your violent spirit to justify your self-arrogance, your irrational acts, and induction of wrong methods for the elimination of this Burmese dictatorship, such as the justification of the war, or any irrational heroic sacrifice.

Irrational sacrifice means your claim for your action for the interest of the people, the state, or any collective bundle without accruing any benefit, just adding temerity and stubbornness to the piecemeal of violence and tyranny. In such case, the presumption of your Burmese historical spirit plays an overwhelming role such as you student as a special historical class has the responsibility to shape and lead the history, and you have a cause for the fighting peacock spirit to blood-fight against any unfairness, all leading to legitimizing the existence of your tyrant government, and the stronger justification and relapse of not less worse future totalitarian society than you Burmese are recurrently facing up unless you are enlightened enough to escape from those obsessive indulgences.

There is no fighting peacock spirit as such, my son; or no such dignity of serving an honorable history of your nation as a Burmese. All those are fanaticism, illusions, and chains that catch you up in the justification of your rumbling irrational conflicts and discriminatory spirits against each other, and bridled your society not from progressing to an open society of humbleness, respect for each other, and curiosity for learning, and awareness of criticizing your own thought and liable wrongdoings.

Let me repeat this important point, my son. If you have a cause of serving the history, you will be prohibited from freedom and reason. Well, my son. What does totalitarianism mean? This is a periodic revolt against freedom and reason. Indeed, totalitarianism means enslavement of rationality, my son. This is the triumph and humiliation of irrationality over rationality, my son. If you are fighting against the Burmese military dictatorship, I want to suggest that please fight for a catholic cause of freedom and reason, not for the irrational causes of those illusive, non-real my Burmese or our Burmese; my Buddhism or our Buddhism; my people or our people, and my utopia or our utopia state. Don't fight this vicious enemy from a very narrow angle of your schizophrenic fame as a historic Burmese student that is not any meaningful contribution to the probability of your chance of becoming an open society; actually any assumption of this peacock spirit is a ghostly regress of your civilization. Fight from the universal infinite angle of freedom and reason, and in both respects, you could be soundly reasonable that a rational being is not given any aristocratic moral advantage over any other for the vindication of his or her cause of an action. A peacock has no right to claim its dogmatic justification of its fight as moral from its status as a special class; but freedom and reason will do my son.

Burmakin:
I come to realize our mistake, your majesty. In fact, in the Ocean of the endlessly open philosophy of Buddhism that negates any definite pattern of causality and deterministic effect, any entity as essence, any phenomenon as essence, and any causal connection as essence, we are thinking everything as real and definite, and indeed, it is a shame that we, Burmese, are paying the lip service of following Buddha's Anatta principle of non-essence. For us, mind is real; so it is, matter is real. Burmese is real, so it is, Burmese's spirit is real; a Burmese revolutionary history is real. A Buddhist is real, so it is a Muhamaddan is real. Everybody is different in their essence and this difference from each other is reasonable, so all these entities and causalities that are reasonable to be different are real. Although realism is to be respected in many instances for its functional connections, we need to be cautious that irrational realism leads to numerous irrational ways of justification of unreal causes, and self-inflict ourselves with the justification of denial of freedom, reason, and equality of fellow beings, that ends with a totalitarian society of our ultimate humiliation.

King of Angels:
Well, my son. This is the shadow of the ghost of the Buddhist universal monarch that is still haunting your society of Burmans. This is also the fancy tale of your Buddhist devolution theory of rise and fall of eons that is still enslaving your Burmese thoughts against freedom and reason, and impelling against any incentive for your progress but only surrendering to fate. This is another illusive historic dogmatism of the spirit of the fighting Burmese peacock, or General Bandoola who was stupid enough to be opulent to be killed under his golden umbrella, and all those kinds of schizophrenic historicism will lead to innumerable relapses of arrogance and violence in your social system, and blindness of your actions. Unless those devil pillars of the wrong arrogant totalitarian thoughts of revolt against freedom and reason are uprooted, I don't see any good prospect of your society in this age of extremely competitive knowledge struggles of civilization and serious need of an open society. I don't want to make any prophecy at this point, as I am the supporter of randomness rather than deterministic certainty. However, the probability is that you might not escape from your prevailing social problems, unless you have humbleness enough for criticizing yourself to see things as much as they really are, for things are never real in their reality.

Nothing in the universe to everything in the universe VI

It was not impossible that we might be the luckiest to inherit Theravadism to discern the nature of truth than any other religion could bestow it. However, the great is the enemy of the good and the good is the enemy of the great. We need to remind ourselves relentlessly that we should not be spoiled religious aristocrats; and neither deform noble universal Dharma of Buddha into a state of tribal Buddhism nor corrupt ourselves into a system of moral tyranny.

When the founding fathers of America came to Philadelphia in 1787 for writing the Constitution of the United States, most of them were from the upper wealthy aristocrat class. Most of them evidently had bias to make the fundamental and supreme laws that favored the interest of the class of aristocrats. John Jay, who was one of the brilliant writer- philosophers of the Constitution, wrote to George Washington since he was acquainted to the sensitivity of the circle of the affluent merchants of New York," the better kind of people will be led, by the insecurity of property, the loss of confidence in their rulers, and the want of public faith and rectitude, to consider the charms of liberty as imaginary and delusive." Washington who had already been in frustration about mob's behavior of Shay's rebellion made his comment, "we are apt to run from one extreme to another".

However, the Constitution of the United States had not become a device for tyrants or a superior rule of aristocrats even if the federated government is granted very strong executive power to quell either rebellion or separation of a state from the union. What made America not descend into a huge tyrant country of the West lied in the conscience of founding fathers, who were fully alert of the fallibility of human behavior. Gouverneur Morris, who was close to holding the extreme aristocracy, said to Congress, perhaps for giving self-lecture to control his prejudices, "Wealth tends to corrupt the mind and to nourish its love of power, and to stimulate it to oppression. History proves this to be the spirit of the opulent." It is not uncommon that possession of a wealth of Buddhist literature raises our violent spirit to be opulent and exerting oppression over other disenfranchised religious concepts in our dogmatic society. It was personal conscience, self-control, or self-awareness that rendered the difference to make the US laws of Constitution possible one of the most prominent movements in civilization of Western democracy and the opportunity for freedom of thought in the spirit of mutual interest and coexistent progress of the parties. When there is strong propensity of uprising of mobs if liberty is fully exercised, there is also strong tendency of oppressing of the haves over the have-nots if democracy or monarchy is fully exercised. The middle way, a device to control human corruptibility, was observed by founding fathers of the United States that was to exercise checks and balances of state parties over one another. The parties of the US require mutual frustration as well as harmony to arrive at some degree of agreeable truth in their practice of democracy. In politics, the tool is rigorous checks and balances; in scientific study, the tool is nit-picking validation to prove that a proposal or theory is, perhaps with some or many exceptions, might be true.

Our deadlock of the progress of knowledge of Burmese and Burmese Buddhism as well has entrenched its roots when we started to ground truth with Buddhism without any check and balance or any validation method. Then the two extremes have been popularized in our society, diametrically opposite situations of the extreme of liberty vis-à-vis extreme of tyranny. Very few people may have noticed the middle way of checks and balances since the majority accepted these two polarized ends that Buddha was sure to reject: one extreme end was irrational religious dogmatism and another extreme end was irrational moral relativism. Both extreme ends were extremely dangerous to humanity since the former was legitimizing the reign of tyranny and another end was legitimizing chaos of anarchy. Whenever a revolution was done, either one or another of these two extreme mind-sets displayed their utmost character to oppress another counterpart without getting a middle-ground compromise. When we tried to throw away tyranny, we always came to end as Hobbes' the state of nature where an individual or a smaller group could be terminated at arbitrary will by another group of bigger force so that people need to submit to any form of government, therefore, tyranny is to be accepted by men in the state of nature as their fate of the minimal worst. In fact, the real outcome is the maximal worst for "power tends to corrupt and ultimately corrupt into complete dominion of the ruling class to utter destruction of other classes". Both the acceptance of irrational tyranny and the exercise of irrational liberty are matched with our two extreme views of irrational religious dogmatism and irrational moral relativism. In politics, we never have reached the middle ground between tyranny and liberty. Similarly, in Buddhism, it is very likely that we are still missing the middle way as we have no awareness of using the tool of reason for checks and balances of our moral ego-centrism and moral relativism. It is the simplest understanding that almost every Burmese Buddhist is missing. Every Burmese Buddhist is taught that mindfulness is a priori for wisdom. Notwithstanding, few observe self-control as mindfulness; and reason as the road to wisdom or identical end with wisdom. Every Burmese can intuitively understand that wisdom is the way to truth. Notwithstanding, few could notice a very strong Buddha's teaching of Upanisa Suttra that expressed wisdom comes out of ignorance.If ignorance is always the start, it is only the tool of reason that we could resort to progress to another step of wisdom or in fact, another lesser ignorance. The dead and dangerous end is not unusual prevalence in our society of Burmese Buddhists who assume the start or little start as the ultimate and supreme end as they have never been in the tradition of using the tool of reason to criticize their fallibility of knowledge.

(To be updated)