While Malatesta was hiding from the police he regularly went to a cafe in Ancona, Italy. He had shaved off his usual beard but he was still taking a risk. Especially as this wasn't an anarchist cafe, but had a variety of customers including the local policeman. The conversations he had in this café became the basis for the dialogues that make up this book. For the first time in English, Malatesta, in his usual commonsense and matter-of-fact style, sets out and critically analyses the arguments for and against anarchism. Translated by Paul Nursey-Bray, this is a classic defence of anarchism that anticipates the rise of nationalism, fascism and communism.
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Errico Malatesta - "At the Café: Conversations on Anarchism"
While Malatesta was hiding from the police he regularly went to a cafe in Ancona, Italy. He had shaved off his usual beard but he was still taking a risk. Especially as this wasn't an anarchist cafe, but had a variety of customers including the local policeman. The conversations he had in this café became the basis for the dialogues that make up this book. For the first time in English, Malatesta, in his usual commonsense and matter-of-fact style, sets out and critically analyses the arguments for and against anarchism. Translated by Paul Nursey-Bray, this is a classic defence of anarchism that anticipates the rise of nationalism, fascism and communism.
Errico Malatesta - "Between Peasants: A Dialogue on Anarchy"
Free PDF download of the classic pamphlet Fra Contadini by the Italian anarchist, Errico Malatesta(1853–1932).
This classically successful text is a simple to read explanation of anarchist ideas in a conversational style. It was first printed in 1884, when it appeared in La Questione Sociale, the paper that Malatesta founded in Florence, Italy.
It is accompanied by an introduction by present day Italian anarchist-insurrectionalist comrade, Alfredo M. Bonanno, who reiterates the practical reality of expropriation and insurrection, and affirms the senselessness of attempting to “update” comrade Malatesta’s great work, which attempts “… to convince the peasant, the worker, the emarginated ‘lumpen’ proletariat reader, of the mechanism of exploitation and repression, of the system of ideological and political swindling, with the aim of pushing them to rebel in the struggle against the class enemies, and ultimately, to insurrection.”
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- Start with the right side (or cover) of the first spread and follow the zigzag pattern to the left page of the next spread.
- Then, at the end of the document, return back up the page ladder in the same zigzag number pattern until you get back to the top with your last page (or back cover).
Here is the total pattern top to bottom and bottom to top right to left.
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Phẩm Giá Con Người theo Bảng Phân Loại của Nhà Nước và Quân Đội Âu Mỹ
Phẩm Giá Con Người theo Bảng Phân Loại của Quân Đội Âu Mỹ
Giá tiền bồi thường "nạn nhân" A phú Hãn do lính Mỹ gây ra:
-11,000$ Mỹ kim cho em bé bị xe thiết giáp Mỹ cán què chân
-15,000$ ---- cho chiếc xe tải khách bị "pháo nhầm".
-106$ cho 8 cái cửa kính của đền thờ bị chấn động bom làm vỡ.
-1,916$ cho một bé trai bị chết đuối trong đường rãnh xe tăng.
-180$ Một dàn lưa leo bị xe tải Mỹ cán nát
-2253$ cho 7 con bò bị máy bay trực thăng nhả đạn.
-1317$ cho 200 dàn rượu nho, 30 cây chùm đào và 1 cái giếng bị lính càn quét.
-4057$ cho một chiếc xe cút kít chở vụn kiếng.
- 2,414$ cho một em bé bị "bắn nhầm" trong cuộc hành quân của lính Mỹ.
-807$ cho nhà cửa bị lính Mỹ đâp phá khám xét nhầm!
Trên đây là một số giá cả "bồi thường an ủi" ĐƯỢC NHÀ NƯỚC MỸ CHO PHÉP THỰC HIỆN cho những "mất mát" của người dân A Phú Hãn do lính Mỹ gây ra- trong cái gọi là CHÍNH SÁCH LẤY LÒNG DÂN (win hearts and minds) CỦA QUÂN ĐỘI MỸ tại A Phú Hãn.
Đây là lá ĐƠN IN SẴN của lính MỸ phát cho Dân A Phú Hãn mỗi khi có "TAI NẠN" do lính Mỹ gây ra.
Tôi đọc bảng giá "bồi thường cao cả" một cách tùy tiện của "chính sách" Âu Mỹ cũng như "tờ đơn xin bồi thường" mà lặng người thở dài.
Cái Phẩm Giá con người, cái nền Công Lý của một cường quốc "dân chủ nhân quyền" đem đến cho xã hội nhân dân A Phú Hãn "TO LỚN" đến thế ư?
Nhưng đây vẫn là "câu hỏi nhỏ". Câu hỏi lớn hơn là Cái Nhà Nước Dân Chủ A Phú Hãn và Giá trị bản Sắc văn hóa Hồi Giáo của họ đâu? Hay cũng ứng dụng cùng một bảng "giá cả" trong sự việc BỒI THƯỜNG MẤT MÁT HẠNH PHÚC và SINH MẠNG CON NGƯỜI?
Quả thật Nhà nước quá TẬN THIỆN VÌ HẠNH PHÚC NHÂN DÂN và Quân Đội thật sự là "cầm súng bảo vệ nhân dân"!!! Ôi ơn nghĩa các "anh chiến sĩ" cao như "đỉnh núi Tà Lơn vậy!!!
Viết đến đây Tôi nhớ lại một cảnh nhốn nháo Tôi chứng kiến, ở Hòa Hưng khu chùa Định Thành, ngõ Hổ Bạch Ân khi một chiếc xe "díp" đầy lính Mỹ có vũ khí chở xác một cô gái "áo dài trắng" nằm "ngất xỉu" hoặc "chết" (không rõ) đến "trao trả cho gia đình cô ta. Không biết lúc đó "gia đình cô gái" này được bồi thường bao nhiêu theo qui định?
Chỉ biết những làng xã vùng quê miền Tây nơi Tôi từng sống cả một năm trời, thì việc bồi thường những mất mát xảy ra hiếm hoi, ít nghe dân chứng nói đến. Chỉ xảy ra và nghe dân bàn tán khi "sự vụ có dư luận lên đến cấp tỉnh" và có khả năng lan về thành phố thôi. Trong mỗi lần có cuộc hành quân của lính Mỹ hay Ngụy hoặc phối hợp Chỉ có gà qué bị mất mát là cả một hạnh phúc... Nhà cửa, vườn tược, mạng sống hay vợ, con gái có bị hiếp hay không mới quan trọng!
Chúng ta không có báo cáo hay thống kê chi tiết về lãnh vực này trong chiến tranh Việt Nam, để biết chi tiết như những sự kiện như hôm nay được các ký giả độc lập ghi nhận tại Afgan và Iraq. Dù "Đạo Luật Bồi Thường"( Foreign Claims Act) có từ năm 1942 "cho phép" người dân địa phương nơi Mỹ chiếm đóng hay hành động được "XIN BỒI THƯỜNG"... Nhưng những gì xảy ra tại Nam Hàn trong cuộc chiến (1950-53) mãi cho đến gần đây mới được phanh phui xét xử cũng cho chúng ta thấy "giá trị thực tế" của "đạo luật" này!!! 
Nhưng "chuyện tại Việt Nam", ta có thể ước đoán theo những vụ như Mỹ Lai, Thanh Phong, Cẩm Lệ... Hoặc "khả tín nhất" theo bút ký "Dấu Binh Lửa" của "đại úy Phan Nhật Nam", thời ông ta còn là một thiếu úy " lý tưởng", có nhận thức lương tâm viết lại, thì người dân mong được sống sót là may mắn rồi, phụ nữ nhiều khi còn phải tự trả tiền, vàng, và "hiến thân" cho lính đôi bên để giữ mạng sống sót.Chương "NGƯỜI CHẾT DƯỚI CHÂN CHÚA"Trích Dấu Binh Lửa (Đại Ngã 1969- 1974)
Sông Tiền Giang mênh mông như bể, chiếc phà lớn chuyên chất ba GMC, vài chiếc xe du lịch, bềnh bồng mang chúng tôi qua sông lẫn với đám hành khách áo quần màu sắc. Họ dồn về một phía, nhìn lũ người gươm đao thật xa cách. Tôi ngồi trên mui tàu thả từng mẩu giấy vụn xuống dòng nước, trí não lãng đãng như bọt sóng.
Đoàn xe rời quốc lộ 4 rẽ về phía phải theo con đường đỏ hướng phi trường Trúc Giang. Qua ngôi trường tiểu học quận, một dẫy quan tài sắp lớp, mùi thây chết bốc lên ngây ngấy. Biệt động quân - tiểu đoàn 41... Nghe nói hình như Tiểu đoàn trưởng hay Tiểu đoàn phó bị chết. Lính ở trên xe xì xầm bàn tán với vẻ thản nhiên. Họ không biết chiến trận đã đến hồi khốc liệt, nên chiến đoàn Dù gồm tiểu đoàn chúng tôi và một tiểu đoàn bạn đã có mặt tại vùng hành quân từ ngày trước. Đến phi trường nơi đặt bộ chỉ huy của khu chiến thuật Tiền Giang, trung tâm hành quân của cuộc hành quân, chúng tôi được lệnh ngủ tại đây để chờ ngày mai trực thăng vận vào vùng hành quân. Tôi chưa được dự trận lớn, nên không có ý niệm về những gay go sắp đến trong ngày mai, bình thản ngủ một giấc yên lặng với kết luận: Trực thăng vận đối với Nhảy dù chỉ là trò đùa, không có gì mới lạ.
Ngày 22, 8 giờ hai pháo đội đặt ở phi trường hướng súng về bãi đáp nhả đạn liên hồi để dọn bãi. Lấy cái chết của phe địch để làm an toàn cho phe mình, luật của chiến tranh quả tàn khốc. Tiếng súng dọn bãi vừa dứt, ba mươi chiếc trực thăng đồng bốc lên một lượt mang hai đại đội 71 và 72 vào trận địa.
Báo cáo xuống bãi tốt, bình yên. Phần còn lại của tiểu đoàn được trực thăng vận tiếp theo. Toàn bộ tiểu đoàn đã xuống đủ, hai đại đội 71 và 73 dẫn đầu đơn vị, di chuyển được mười lăm phút. Súng nổ! Đụng rồi! Đụng rồi... Lính dáo dác, máy truyền tin chuyển lệnh nghe loạn xạ. Phía trước tiểu đoàn súng nổ lẫn lộn, tiếng khô và cứng của ta, sắt nhọn của địch... Đại đội 72 rút lên bố trí về phía phải của đại đội 73. Lệnh cho đại đội chúng tôi lên thật nhanh. Ngang qua chỗ đứng của Thiếu tá tiểu đoàn trưởng, một tiếng nổ thật lớn nháng lửa ngay trước mặt, quả đạn 57 ly nổ ngay khi ra khỏi nòng, người phụ xạ thủ bắn tung ra đằng sau, một bàn tay bị đứt. Ông tiểu đoàn trưởng hét lớn qua màu khói... Trung đội anh chạy ra cái nhà tranh... Truyện "Dấu Binh Lửa " được copy từ diễn đàn Lương Sơn Bạc (LuongSonBac.com)
Như vậy là đụng độ lớn, người bị thương nằm la liệt ở dưới các rãnh dừa nước. Toàn đang đứng trong một giao thông hào chỉ trỏ quát tháo. Phía tay trái nơi xa có tiếng lựu đạn nổ và tiếng hô xung phong. Trung đội tôi ép phải, hướng tiến bây giờ thẳng góc với các con kinh nhỏ, nên chúng tôi chỉ có thể nhảy từng bước thật dài trên bờ kinh, một cái nhảy hụt tôi rơi vào đường mương cùng với hai người khinh binh. Bám cỏ bò lên, xác hai tên Việt cộng nằm tênh hênh, một xác bị banh nát ngực, xác kia nằm sấp, không rõ... Người chết, lần đầu tiên tôi chạm phải - một thây chết của đối phương.
- Lên đi tụi mày, thằng nào trốn đàng sau tao bắn gãy giò...
Tôi quát tháo cũng ra gì, mấy người lính đi chậm dớn dác tìm lối qua rạch. Họ không nhảy qua được vì mang đồ quá nặng.
- Đ.m... Nhảy qua được không? Thường ngày sao liến xáo quá cỡ, hôm nay lại chậm như rùa.
Tôi chửi mắng om sòm. Trung đội đến bờ làng dừng lại bố trí trông ra cánh đồng trống. Ngồi dựa vào một gốc dừa, tôi thấy mệt vì phải quát tháo quá nhiều, nhớ lại lời chửi tục. Tôi đã thành một người lạ nào đấy. Địch từ phía trái chạy vọt qua, bóng áo đen ẩn hiện đàng sau rặng dừa xanh bên kia cánh đồng. Bắn! Bắn! Trung đội tôi khai hỏa ròn rã. Một vài bóng áo đen ngã xuống. Hơi thuốc súng, hơi bùn lầy, máu người chết xông lên ngây ngấy.
Sáu giờ chiều, tiếng súng phía bên trái, hướng đại đội 71 hoàn toàn chấm dứt, trực thăng tải thương bắt đầu đến, khói màu xanh làm dấu bãi đáp bốc lên mờ mịt làm đặc không gian đang ngã vào đêm, rừng dừa màu xanh thẩm lại. Tiếng súng vu vơ của địch bắn lên máy bay khi tháo lui. Tôi ngồi dựa gốc dừa, mệt mỏi đến tột độ, một tên lính mò lại bên cạnh.
- Thiếu uý ăn cháo gà?
- Cháo gà?
- Dạ, em bắt được, nó còn ấp trứng...
- Thôi mày cho tao quả trứng, tao ăn cháo không nổi.
Khi lính trong trung đội xịt xoạt ăn cháo, tôi đi lui về phía xác hai tên Việt cộng. Tên nằm sấp bây giờ lật ngược lại, có lẽ đấy là cử động cuối cùng của nó trước khi chết. Tôi đặt tay lên da người chết lạnh tanh. Đêm xuống, chúng tôi trải poncho nằm trên bờ rạch, không cởi giày, địch có ý tấn công lại nên phải đề phòng.
Tiểu đoàn tiếp tục truy kích, hôm nay đại đội tôi đi đầu, trung đội tôi dẫn đầu đại đội, chúng tôi đi dọc một con kinh lớn, rừng dừa xanh ngút tầm mắt, thôn xóm trù phú nhưng không một bóng người. Chúng tôi dè dặt từng bước đi.
- Hầm có dấu chân người! Tản rộng ra chung quanh, một người đến xem mà thôi -Tôi ra lệnh.
- Ai ở dưới, đi lên!... Im lặng...
- Lên không tao ném lựu đạn xuống! Thiếu uý, cho em ném lựu đạn xuống. Tên lính hỏi ý kiến.
- Không, mày bắn xuống mà thôi.
Tên lính lanh lẹ bắn xuống một tràn thompson, có tiếng rên khe khẽ.
- Lên không bắn nữa. Đưa tay lên trước...
Tôi nín thở, một chiếc đầu bạc phơ từ từ nhô lên khỏi miệng hầm, ông lão bế một bà lão lên theo. Vừa ra khỏi hầm ông lão chấp tay xá bốn hướng xụt xùi khóc lóc, bà lão nằm vật xuống, ở đầu có một vết thương.
Đến buổi trưa, tôi hoàn toàn kiệt lực như một mũi tên rơi xuống cuối đường bay. Hình ảnh hai mái tóc bạc nhô lên từ miệng hầm, nét mặt hốt hỏang của hai tên địch chưa quá mười sáu tuổi lôi lên từ một đám bèo, một tên còn đang ngậm một búng cơm... Những hình ảnh đó bây giờ cộng thêm cảnh chết cuả hai vợ chồng và ba đứa con ở trước mắt tôi. Họ chết từ ngày hôm kia, khi địch đặt bộ chỉ huy ở khu nhà thờ, người chồng là ông Từ giữ nhà thờ đã đem cả gia đình vào trốn dưới cái bệ thờ Chúa.
Tượng Chúa ngã nghiêng, tượng Thiên Thần vỡ tung tóe, hai bàn tay trắng bằng đất nung lăn lóc trên sàn nhà. Khi tôi cúi xuống nhặt hai bàn tay này thì khám phá ra năm xác chết trên. Họ chết ngồi, hai vợ chồng ngồi sát nhau ôm ba người con trước ngực. Họ chết vì bị sức ép nên thân thể vẫn còn nguyên vẹn, nét mặt in vẽ hốt hỏang. Tôi ra lệnh kéo xác họ ra sân.
Giáo đường bây giờ im vắng, tượng Chúa linh động trong vị thế nghiêng ngã, nắng ở ngoài không rọi vào, không khí nặng nề lạnh ngắt... Tôi ngồi xuống trên chiếc ghế, hỏi thầm...
- Thượng-Đế, Ngài có thật đấy chăng?
Khi tôi bước ra đàng sau nhà thờ, qua khu nhà ở của những người chết, một chiếc áo tím chắc hẳn của cô gái còn phơi phới bay trong gió... Nhìn ra xa, xác cô gái nằm thẳng trên sàn gạch, nắng thật sáng rọi lên rực rỡ. Người tôi ai cắm một lưỡi dao oan nghiệt vào tim, thật buồn. Tôi loay hoay đốt một điếu thuốc. Cái chết qủa bi thảm, nhưng hình ảnh của cô gái nằm chết khi chiếc áo còn bay trong gió vang vang nơi trí não tôi như một tiếng kêu thê thảm không dứt âm. Hai ông bà cụ già, tên Việt cộng trẻ, người cha và người mẹ, họ đã sống, đã chết dù sao cũng có chủ đích, có chọn lựa, cũng đã qua gần hết cảnh sống. Cô gái chết bất ngờ không báo trước, yêu đời như màu tươi của chiếc áo. Tôi choáng váng ngộp thở, người lao đao trong một niềm giận dỗi phiền muộn không cùng.
Đụng lớn, tiểu đoàn lấy được một lô súng đạn, thừa thắng truy kích địch để lùa chúng về quốc lộ 4. Bên trái là sông Tiền Giang, Tiểu đoàn 3 nhẩy dù bên phải làm thành phần chận bít. Tiểu đoàn tôi lùa địch từ đông sang tây. Việt cộng phân tán thành từng toán nhỏ để chạy trốn. Ba đại đội tác chiến được xử dụng để lục soát không chừa một hốc nhỏ. Việt cộng được moi lên từ các ao bèo, bờ lúa, đụn rơm, cuộc truy kích vừa khôi hài vừa hào hứng như trò chơi. Tôi lầm lì đi giữa hàng quân, trận đánh ngày hôm qua, một đêm mất ngủ, cái chết hàng loạt của Việt cộng, những thây ma tênh hênh lăn lóc, tất cả đổ ào xuống một lượt trên tâm hồn hồn nhiên — Tôi ngất ngư như lần đầu tiên uống rượu nhưng đây là cơn say đen. Xua quân đi vào một vườn dừa rộng, tiểu đội bên trái, tiểu đội bên phải, lục soát dọc theo hai con rạch nhỏ bao quanh khu vườn. Tôi đi vào ngôi nhà đang âm ỉ cháy, những chiếc cột lớn lỏng chỏng hỗn độn bốc khói xám...Một người đàn bà áo trắng quần đen tay ôm chiếc lẵng mây trước ngực ngồi im trên nền gạch đôi mắt nhìn thẳng ngơ ngác. Thấy chúng tôi đi vào chị ta đứng dậy, đứng thẳng người như pho tượng, như thân cây chết với đôi mắt không cảm giác. Thằng bé theo tôi cùng cùng tên hiệu thính viên lẻn ngay vào bếp kiếm thức ăn. Tôi đi đến trước chị đàn bà... Truyện "Dấu Binh Lửa " được copy từ diễn đàn Lương Sơn Bạc (LuongSonBac.com)
- Làm gì chị ngồi đây, không biết đang đánh nhau sao?
Im lặng, đôi mắt ngơ ngác lóe lên tia nhìn sợ hãi. Bỗng nhiên chị ta đưa thẳng chiếc lẵng mây vào mặt tôi, động tác nhanh và gọn như một người tập thể dục. Sau thoáng ngạc nhiên tôi đưa tay đón lấy... Hai bộ áo quần, chiếc khăn trùm đầu, gói giấy nhỏ buộc chặt bằng dây cao su. Mở gói, hai sợi giây chuyền vàng, một đôi bông tai.
- Của chị đây hả? - Vẫn im lặng. Nỗi im lặng ngột ngạt, lạ lùng.
- Con mẹ này điên rồi thiếu uý, chắc sợ quá hóa điên.
Tên hiệu thính viên thì thầm sau lưng tôi, mắt nó sáng lên khi nhìn vào những miếng vàng chói trên giấy...
- Vàng, chắc cũng hơn một lượng, lấy đi thiếu uý... Ê! Đi đi.
Tên lính xua tay đuổi người đàn bà đi chỗ khác. Lạnh lùng, chị ta xoay người bước đi như xác chết nhập tràng.
- Chị kia quay lại đây tôi trả cái này... - Tôi nói vọng theo.
Người đàn bà xoay lại, cũng với những bước chân im lặng, trở về đứng trước mặt tôi nhưng đôi mắt bây giờ vỡ bùng sợ hãi, vẻ hốt hỏang thảm hại làm răn rúm khuôn mặt và run đôi môi... Chị ta còn trẻ lắm, khỏang trên dưới hai bảy, hai tám tuổi, da trắng mát tự nhiên, một ít tóc xõa xuống trán làm nét mặt thêm thanh tú. Tôi đưa trả chiếc lẵng mây, chị đàn bà đưa tay đón lấy, cánh tay run rẩy như tiếng khóc bị dồn xuống. Chiếc lẳng rơi xuống đất, hai cánh tay buông xuôi mệt nhọc song song thân người. Dòng nước mắt chảy dài trên má. Tôi hươi mũi súng trước mặt chị ta:
- Ngồi đây! Tôi chỉ nòng súng vào bực tam cấp. Khi nào tụi tôi đi thì chị đi theo... Tại sao khóc, nhặt vàng lên đi chứ... - Im lặng, chỉ có nỗi im lặng kỳ quái, thân thể người đàn bà cứ run lên bần bật, nước mắt ràn rụa... Từ từ chị đưa bàn tay lên hàng nút áo trước ngực... Không! Không thể như thế được, tôi muốn nắm bàn tay kia để ngăn những ngón tay run rẩy đang mở dần những hàng nút bóp để phơi dưới nắng một phần ngực trắng hồng! Không phải như thế chị ơi... Người đàn bà đã hiểu lầm tôi... Không lấy vàng và bắt đứng lại!! Chị ta không hiểu được lời nói của tôi, một người Việt Nam ở cùng trên một mảnh đất. Chị ta tưởng tôi thèm muốn thân xác và đòi hiếp dâm! Tội nghiệp cho tôi biết bao nhiêu, một tên sĩ quan hai mươi mốt tuổi làm sao có thể biết đời sống đầy máu lửa và đớn đau tủi hổ đến ngần này. Tôi đi lính chỉ với một ý nghĩ: Đi cho cùng quê hương và chấm dứt chiến tranh bằng cách góp mặt. Thê thảm biết bao nhiêu cho tôi với ngộ nhận tủi hổ này... Thê thảm cho tôi, cho những người lính chung quanh vì lính chúng tôi có thể tàn bạo khỏanh khắc, tham lam lén lút nhưng chúng tôi đâu phải là một thứ lính tẩy trên quê hương — Người ngoại cuộc với những tàn phá kinh tởm do chiến tranh này gây nên. Chúng tôi có lòng nào hưởng cảm giác trên xác thân của một người đàn bà Việt Nam trong cơn vỡ nát kinh hoàng thống khổ... Khổ lắm, người đàn bà của tỉnh Kiến Hòa đâu biết chúng tôi không bao giờ muốn huênh hoang, hung bạo trong vườn xanh bóng mát này, chúng tôi đâu có muốn tạo những ngọn lửa oan uổng thiêu đốt căn nhà bình yên như giấc mơ của chị. Và những mảnh vàng đó, thân thể chị đây ai có can đảm để giang tay cướp phá và xâm phạm! Tôi muốn đưa tay lên gài những chiếc nút áo bật tung, muốn lau nước mắt trên mặt chị nhưng chân tay cứng ngắt hổ thẹn. Và chị nữa, người đàn bà quê thật tội nghiệp, cảnh sống nào đã đưa chị vào cơn sợ hãi mê muội để dẫn dắt những ngón tay cởi tung hàng nút áo, sẵn sàng hiến thân cho một tên lính trẻ, tuổi chỉ bằng em út, trong khi nước mắt chan hòa trên khuôn mặt đôn hậu tràn kinh hãi. Truyện "Dấu Binh Lửa " được copy từ diễn đàn Lương Sơn Bạc (LuongSonBac.com)
Quân rút ra khỏi làng, chị đàn bà đi theo chúng tôi, vẫn với những bước đi ngượng ngập cứng nhắc, vẫn đôi mắt nhìn vào khỏang trống không cảm giác. Người đàn bà Việt Nam bước đi trong ngỡ ngàng với hạnh phúc khốn nạn: Hạnh phúc đến chót sau những thống nhục rời rã. Hạnh phúc lạ lùng như chiêm bao thấy thân thể chưa bị xúc phạm!
Quân rút ra gần đến quốc lộ, con sông bên trái đầy thuyền, hỗn độn dòng người chen chúc. Dân của vùng hành quân trốn ra từ ngày trước, tiếng người kêu la vang dội một khỏang sông, họ hỏi thăm tình trạng nhà cửa, người thân thích, người kẹt trong vùng hành quân. Tiếng khóc vang rân... Trời ơi, nhà ông Năm bị chết hết cả rồi bà con cô bác ơi! Tiếng kêu thê thảm như một kẻ đắm đò...
- Lai! Mày đó Lai ơi! - Bà già dưới sông mồm kêu tay ngoắc chị đàn bà theo chúng tôi. Chị ta dừng lại như để nhớ một dĩ vãng, như nhớ một khỏang sống đã đi qua... - Lai! Lai ơi, má đây con...- Chị đàn bà đứng lại xoay người về phía dòng sông... Má! Má!
Tôi thấy đôi môi run rẩy thì thầm: Nhà cháy rồi! Nhà cháy rồi! Chị ta đi lần ra phía bờ sông, cũng với những bước chân của người mất hồn, bóng áo trắng nổi hẳn trên đám dừa xanh.
Tôi cúi đầu đi thẳng, mắng mấy người lính đứng tần ngần nhìn theo người đàn bà: Tiên sư, đi lẹ còn qua phà sớm. Lòng ngập một niềm ăn năn kỳ lạ.
Chiếc phà đưa tiểu đoàn chúng tôi về Mỹ Tho. Dân chúng ra đứng nhìn cảm phục. Đóng quân ở sân vận động, tôi đi lên chiếc cầu hướng về phía Gò Công, dòng nước đen thấp thoáng ánh đèn chảy siết dưới chân cầu đục ngầu như tâm hồn. Đêm tỉnh lẻ đỏm dáng tội nghiệp, tôi đi lang thang, thật lạ ngay với chính mình, gặp Bang ở Biệt động quân, anh chàng nhỏ người nhưng ồn ào nhất trong số mười lăm anh khóa 15 Thủ Đức về Biệt động quân. Bang đãi tôi cơm, tôi chỉ uống được chai bia, xong chúng tôi đi coi ciné, phim The Sun Also Rise, phục Hemingway thì có khi đọc sách, nhưng phim dửng dưng, nhạt nhẽo. Tôi đi về trong đêm khuya, thành phố ngủ sớm, chiếc lá khô bay trước mặt như tà áo của cô gái. Tội nghiệp thay cho một tuổi trẻ, tôi cũng đáng tội nghiệp nữa. Ngày mai chúng tôi về Sài Gòn, ao ước được cởi áo nhà binh trong vài ngày, nhưng đó chỉ là ao ước vì chúng tôi biết rằng Sài Gòn đang có biến động, Phật giáo và Công giáo xua tín đồ ra đường phố. Lần đầu tiên trong đời, tôi biết thế nào là phẫn nộ khi về đến Sài Gòn đóng ở Tổng Nha Cảnh Sát, lãnh một cái mặt nạ để sẵn sàng dẹp biểu tình.
Tháng 8-1964. Kiến Hòa
Người viết đã từng sống một năm trời tại miền Tây (1971-1972), chứng kiến sư đoàn 9 BB ngụy hành quân thế nào. Chứng kiến người dân núp sau phên cửa, tường đất phập phồng thế nào. Chứng kiến VC ban đêm về làng họp dân thâu lúa và tuyên truyền hăm dọa ra sao. Tôi hiểu cái "kinh nghiệm" nào đã dạy người dân quê nói chung, và chị phụ nữ trên hành xử tự động tự hiến gọn lẹ như thế... Cái may mắn hiếm hoi của chị phụ nữ là lần này chị gặp thiếu úy "nhà văn" P.N.Nam... Nhưng lần sau, những lần hành quân sau đó, chẳng ai bảo đảm nó có may mắn như thế hay cũng như những lần trước? Kinh nghiệm nhân thế ai cũng biết "phúc bất trùng lai, họa vô đơn chí", nhất là tại một xã hội đã LẠC HẬU BÁN KHAI còn thêm chiến tranh nữa!
Và hôm nay, người dân làng mạc A Phú Hãn, Iraq cũng cùng chung số phận dưới sự "bảo vệ nhân phẩm hạnh phúc, dân chủ" của đạn bom quân đội Âu Mỹ, của nòng súng quân đội quốc gia dân tộc A Phú Hãn, và sự "che chở đùm bọc" của các giáo sĩ Hồi bản sắc truyền thống !!!
Ôi đời sống con người với hàng hàng lớp lớp "bảo vệ chăm lo" của nhà nước quân đội cảnh sát, tôn giáo đè đầu nhồi nhét... và không ai được quyền từ chối!
Hôm nay quân đội nhà nước Ukraine chẳng đang ĐÒI "bảo vệ" đời sống hạnh phúc của người dân Ukraine đấy ư? Dĩ nhiên bằng chính tài sản sinh mạng của người dân Ukraine!!! Nhà nước quân đội chỉ là cái TÊN và có cái MÕM QUYỀN LỰC thôi!
1-3-2015
nkptc
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An armored vehicle ran over a six-year-old boy’s legs: $11,000. A jingle truck was “blown up by mistake”: $15,000. A controlled detonation broke eight windows in a mosque: $106. A boy drowned in an anti-tank ditch: $1,916. A 10-ton truck ran over a cucumber crop: $180. A helicopter “shot bullets hitting and killing seven cows”: $2,253. Destruction of 200 grape vines, 30 mulberry trees and one well: $1,317. A wheelbarrow full of broken mirrors: $4,057.
A child who died in a combat operation: $2,414.
These are among the payments that the United States has made to ordinary Afghans over the course of American military operations in the country, according to databases covering thousands of such transactions obtained by The Intercept under the Freedom of Information Act. Many of the payments are for mundane incidents such as traffic accidents or property damage, while others, in flat bureaucratic language, tell of “death of his wife and 2 minor daughters,” “injuries to son’s head, arms, and legs,” “death of husband,” father, uncle, niece.
The databases are incomplete, reflecting fragmented record keeping in Afghanistan, particularly on the issue of harm to civilians. The payments The Intercept has analyzed and presented in the graphic accompanying this story are not a complete accounting, but they do offer a small window into the thousands of fractured lives and personal tragedies that take place during more than a decade of war.
The Price of Life
The data that The Intercept obtained comes from two different systems that the U.S. military uses to make amends.
The Foreign Claims Act, passed in 1942, gives foreign citizens the ability to request payment for damages caused by U.S. military personnel. But the law only covers incidents that happen outside of combat situations — meaning that civilians caught up in battles have no recourse.
Since the Korean War, however, the U.S. military has realized that it’s often in its best interest to make symbolic payments for civilian harm, even when it occurs in combat. Over the years, the Pentagon authorized “condolence payments” where the military decided it was culturally appropriate.
Such condolence payments were approved in Iraq a few months into the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, and in Afghanistan beginning in 2005. They soon became part of the “hearts and minds” approach to counterinsurgency. To put it another way, in the words of an Army handbook, this was “money as a weapons system.”
While it might seem cynical to offer token compensation for a human life, humanitarian organizations embraced the policy as a way to acknowledge deaths and the hard economic realities of war zones. Condolence payments are meant to be symbolic gestures, and today in Afghanistan, they are generally capped at $5,000, though greater amounts can be approved.
Payments under the Foreign Claims Act take into account any negligence on the part of the claimant, as well as local law. Douglas Dribben, an attorney with the Army Claims Service in Fort Meade, Maryland, said that officers in the field do research, sometimes consulting with USAID or the State Department, to determine the cost of replacing damaged property — “What’s a chicken worth in my area versus what it’s worth in downtown Kabul?”
Claims for injuries incorporate the cost of medical care, and in the case of wrongful death, the deceased’s earning potential and circumstances. “If I have a case of a 28-year old doctor, they are going to be paid more than we’d pay for a child of four,” Dribben said. “In Afghanistan, unfortunately, a young female child would likely be much less than a young boy.”
The system is imperfect, however. Residents of remote areas often can’t access the places where the U.S. military hands out cash. The amounts given out, or whether they are paid at all, often depend on the initiative of individual soldiers — usually the judge advocates who handle claims, or commanders who can authorize condolence payments.
In 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union obtained documents detailing about 500 claims made under the Foreign Claims Act, mainly in Iraq. These were the original, often hand-written records of incidents, their investigations, and the military’s ultimate decision to pay or deny the claim. Jonathan Tracy, a former judge advocate who handled thousands of claims in Iraq and then devoted years to studying the system, analyzed the entire dataset and found that the decisions often relied on over-broad or arbitrary definitions of combat situations, and that people who were denied claims were only sometimes awarded condolence payment. Yale law professor John Fabian Witt also noted that “relatively minor property awards for damages to automobiles and other personal property often rivaled the death payments in dollar value.”
“They present it as if it’s very black and white, as though there’s the circle of things we can pay for, and you decide if the incident is in or out of that circle, but that’s not the way it happens,” Tracy told The Intercept. “You’d have two different attorneys doing two different things and [civilians] who’d had much the same thing happen to them would get very different compensation.”
Last year the annual defense appropriations bill included a provision, championed by Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., which instructs the Pentagon to set up a permanent process for administering condolence payments. The measure is intended to prevent the delay and inconsistencies that marred the system in the early years in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to improve record keeping, so that the Pentagon doesn’t start from scratch in each new conflict.
A defense official told The Intercept in an emailed statement that the Pentagon has not yet implemented the provision, but is “reviewing the processes related to ex-gratia payments to determine if there are areas where improvements can be made.”
Marla Keenan, managing director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict, believes that “as the conflict in Iraq and Syria has escalated, they are starting to see a reason for this type of policy to exist. It’s unfortunate how a new context where this could be used is the impetus.”
Finding the Data
The United States and its allies do not tally civilian deaths in Afghanistan. The United Nations only began keeping track of civilian casualties in 2009; using a conservative count that requires three sources for each incident, the U.N. now reports that more than 17,700 innocent Afghans have died in the past five years of fighting, the majority of them killed by the Taliban or other groups fighting the Afghan government and coalition forces.
Looking at compensation paid out under the Foreign Claims Act or in condolence payments is one way to get a window into the damage caused by the U.S. presence. Yet it’s difficult to draw conclusions from the military’s records, which are muddled and incomplete, by their own admission.
Every cache of documents released comes with caveats. For example, The Nation obtained thousands of pages’ worth of records for payments for condolences and other “battle damage” in 2013. Asked for total figures, a military spokesman told the magazine, “I could wade through the numbers to the best of my ability but my numbers would be a guess and most likely inaccurate.”
The Intercept received several years’ worth of recent data on condolence payments from the military through a Freedom of Information Act request. These records come from a military database keeping track of the Commander’s Emergency Response Program, a special pot of spending money for “goodwill” projects.
The database entries are sparse, giving only the basics of who was killed or injured, with no detail on when or how the incident occurred. Location is given only at the province level. Nonetheless, the data represent the Pentagon’s clearest accounting of how much money it spends on condolence payments. (This data does not include “solatia,” which, just like condolence payments, are compensation for death and injury. But they are paid out of a unit’s operating funds, and the Pentagon has said previously it does not have overall figures for solatia.)
According to the data we received, in fiscal years 2011 through 2013, the military made 953 condolence payments totaling $2.7 million. $1.8 million of those were for deaths, and the average payment for a death was $3,426. Payments for injuries averaged $1,557.
Some payments are for multiple people harmed in one incident. For instance, the largest single payment, from 2012, offers $70,000 for “death of a mother and six children.” The largest payment for a single death occurred in 2011, when the father of “a local national” who was killed was given more than $15,000. Some family members received as little as $100 for the death of a relative.
Asked about records for payments made before 2011, the Pentagon directed questions to the press office for coalition forces in Afghanistan, which did not reply to repeated inquiries from The Intercept.
Also through the Freedom of Information Act, The Intercept received Foreign Claims Act data from the Army, which handles Afghanistan for the entire U.S. military. As with the condolence payments, the database doesn’t include the documentation behind each claim. Rather, it shows a quick synopsis, date and amount for each claim filed.
In all, the Army released 5,766 claims marked for Afghanistan, filed between Feb. 2003 and Aug. 2011, of which 1,671 were paid, for a total of about $3.1 million. Of those claims, 753 were denied completely, and the rest are in various kinds of accounting limbo.
This is only a portion of the claims that were actually made and paid. Douglas Dribben, the attorney with the Army office, described the database as “G.I.G.O. — Garbage In, Garbage Out.”
Judge advocates in the field are supposed to regularly update the database with claims received and paid, but spotty Internet access and erratic schedules often made that impossible. Tracy, the former Army attorney, said that in Iraq, he had to enter all the claims he received weekly. In practice, “that never really happened,” he said.
A 2010 guidance for claims officers takes a pleading tone: “We know [claims] payments are not your only mission and the last thing you really want is another report but in all honesty the last thing any of us want is an unauthorized expenditure of funds.”
A more reliable estimate, Dribben said, comes from Army budget data, which reflects the amount of money transferred out to the field to pay claims. The Army Claims Service did not provide that information, but a training guide from 2009 states that for that fiscal year, the Army had paid $1.35 million in 516 claims in Afghanistan, with 202 denied.
The total for Iraq that year was over $18 million; overall, Afghanistan saw fewer and smaller claims than Iraq, because of remote geography and fewer U.S. troops deployed. Prices for replacement goods or lost wages were generally lower, Dribben said.
The claims synopses typically contain missing words, garbled grammar or obvious errors in the various entry fields. Most refer to a “claimant.” Some are entered in the first person. A few dozen have no synopsis at all. Many are completely enigmatic: what happened when “claimant feared soldiers would open fire and panicked?” The claimant was paid more than $3,200.
“Each one took maybe 30 seconds to enter,” Tracy said. “There wasn’t really room or time to put in a narrative.”
The database categorized just 18 payments as wrongful deaths between 2003 and 2011 — very likely an undercounting, Dribben said. The average of those payments was about $11,000; the highest was $50,000, paid to someone in eastern Afghanistan, because “coalition forces killed his father.”
The Intercept’s Margot Williams and Josh Begley contributed research to this report. Eric Sagara, formerly of ProPublica, also contributed.
Photo: Rahmat Gul/AP; Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images
A child who died in a combat operation: $2,414.
These are among the payments that the United States has made to ordinary Afghans over the course of American military operations in the country, according to databases covering thousands of such transactions obtained by The Intercept under the Freedom of Information Act. Many of the payments are for mundane incidents such as traffic accidents or property damage, while others, in flat bureaucratic language, tell of “death of his wife and 2 minor daughters,” “injuries to son’s head, arms, and legs,” “death of husband,” father, uncle, niece.
The databases are incomplete, reflecting fragmented record keeping in Afghanistan, particularly on the issue of harm to civilians. The payments The Intercept has analyzed and presented in the graphic accompanying this story are not a complete accounting, but they do offer a small window into the thousands of fractured lives and personal tragedies that take place during more than a decade of war.
The Price of Life
The data that The Intercept obtained comes from two different systems that the U.S. military uses to make amends.
The Foreign Claims Act, passed in 1942, gives foreign citizens the ability to request payment for damages caused by U.S. military personnel. But the law only covers incidents that happen outside of combat situations — meaning that civilians caught up in battles have no recourse.
Since the Korean War, however, the U.S. military has realized that it’s often in its best interest to make symbolic payments for civilian harm, even when it occurs in combat. Over the years, the Pentagon authorized “condolence payments” where the military decided it was culturally appropriate.
Such condolence payments were approved in Iraq a few months into the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, and in Afghanistan beginning in 2005. They soon became part of the “hearts and minds” approach to counterinsurgency. To put it another way, in the words of an Army handbook, this was “money as a weapons system.”
Click to view interactive graphic.
Payments under the Foreign Claims Act take into account any negligence on the part of the claimant, as well as local law. Douglas Dribben, an attorney with the Army Claims Service in Fort Meade, Maryland, said that officers in the field do research, sometimes consulting with USAID or the State Department, to determine the cost of replacing damaged property — “What’s a chicken worth in my area versus what it’s worth in downtown Kabul?”
Claims for injuries incorporate the cost of medical care, and in the case of wrongful death, the deceased’s earning potential and circumstances. “If I have a case of a 28-year old doctor, they are going to be paid more than we’d pay for a child of four,” Dribben said. “In Afghanistan, unfortunately, a young female child would likely be much less than a young boy.”
The system is imperfect, however. Residents of remote areas often can’t access the places where the U.S. military hands out cash. The amounts given out, or whether they are paid at all, often depend on the initiative of individual soldiers — usually the judge advocates who handle claims, or commanders who can authorize condolence payments.
In 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union obtained documents detailing about 500 claims made under the Foreign Claims Act, mainly in Iraq. These were the original, often hand-written records of incidents, their investigations, and the military’s ultimate decision to pay or deny the claim. Jonathan Tracy, a former judge advocate who handled thousands of claims in Iraq and then devoted years to studying the system, analyzed the entire dataset and found that the decisions often relied on over-broad or arbitrary definitions of combat situations, and that people who were denied claims were only sometimes awarded condolence payment. Yale law professor John Fabian Witt also noted that “relatively minor property awards for damages to automobiles and other personal property often rivaled the death payments in dollar value.”
“They present it as if it’s very black and white, as though there’s the circle of things we can pay for, and you decide if the incident is in or out of that circle, but that’s not the way it happens,” Tracy told The Intercept. “You’d have two different attorneys doing two different things and [civilians] who’d had much the same thing happen to them would get very different compensation.”
Last year the annual defense appropriations bill included a provision, championed by Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., which instructs the Pentagon to set up a permanent process for administering condolence payments. The measure is intended to prevent the delay and inconsistencies that marred the system in the early years in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to improve record keeping, so that the Pentagon doesn’t start from scratch in each new conflict.
A defense official told The Intercept in an emailed statement that the Pentagon has not yet implemented the provision, but is “reviewing the processes related to ex-gratia payments to determine if there are areas where improvements can be made.”
Marla Keenan, managing director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict, believes that “as the conflict in Iraq and Syria has escalated, they are starting to see a reason for this type of policy to exist. It’s unfortunate how a new context where this could be used is the impetus.”
Finding the Data
The United States and its allies do not tally civilian deaths in Afghanistan. The United Nations only began keeping track of civilian casualties in 2009; using a conservative count that requires three sources for each incident, the U.N. now reports that more than 17,700 innocent Afghans have died in the past five years of fighting, the majority of them killed by the Taliban or other groups fighting the Afghan government and coalition forces.
Looking at compensation paid out under the Foreign Claims Act or in condolence payments is one way to get a window into the damage caused by the U.S. presence. Yet it’s difficult to draw conclusions from the military’s records, which are muddled and incomplete, by their own admission.
Sample Afghan claim form
The Intercept received several years’ worth of recent data on condolence payments from the military through a Freedom of Information Act request. These records come from a military database keeping track of the Commander’s Emergency Response Program, a special pot of spending money for “goodwill” projects.
The database entries are sparse, giving only the basics of who was killed or injured, with no detail on when or how the incident occurred. Location is given only at the province level. Nonetheless, the data represent the Pentagon’s clearest accounting of how much money it spends on condolence payments. (This data does not include “solatia,” which, just like condolence payments, are compensation for death and injury. But they are paid out of a unit’s operating funds, and the Pentagon has said previously it does not have overall figures for solatia.)
According to the data we received, in fiscal years 2011 through 2013, the military made 953 condolence payments totaling $2.7 million. $1.8 million of those were for deaths, and the average payment for a death was $3,426. Payments for injuries averaged $1,557.
Some payments are for multiple people harmed in one incident. For instance, the largest single payment, from 2012, offers $70,000 for “death of a mother and six children.” The largest payment for a single death occurred in 2011, when the father of “a local national” who was killed was given more than $15,000. Some family members received as little as $100 for the death of a relative.
Traffic accidents were among the most common claims under the Foreign Claims Act.
Also through the Freedom of Information Act, The Intercept received Foreign Claims Act data from the Army, which handles Afghanistan for the entire U.S. military. As with the condolence payments, the database doesn’t include the documentation behind each claim. Rather, it shows a quick synopsis, date and amount for each claim filed.
In all, the Army released 5,766 claims marked for Afghanistan, filed between Feb. 2003 and Aug. 2011, of which 1,671 were paid, for a total of about $3.1 million. Of those claims, 753 were denied completely, and the rest are in various kinds of accounting limbo.
This is only a portion of the claims that were actually made and paid. Douglas Dribben, the attorney with the Army office, described the database as “G.I.G.O. — Garbage In, Garbage Out.”
Judge advocates in the field are supposed to regularly update the database with claims received and paid, but spotty Internet access and erratic schedules often made that impossible. Tracy, the former Army attorney, said that in Iraq, he had to enter all the claims he received weekly. In practice, “that never really happened,” he said.
A 2010 guidance for claims officers takes a pleading tone: “We know [claims] payments are not your only mission and the last thing you really want is another report but in all honesty the last thing any of us want is an unauthorized expenditure of funds.”
A more reliable estimate, Dribben said, comes from Army budget data, which reflects the amount of money transferred out to the field to pay claims. The Army Claims Service did not provide that information, but a training guide from 2009 states that for that fiscal year, the Army had paid $1.35 million in 516 claims in Afghanistan, with 202 denied.
The total for Iraq that year was over $18 million; overall, Afghanistan saw fewer and smaller claims than Iraq, because of remote geography and fewer U.S. troops deployed. Prices for replacement goods or lost wages were generally lower, Dribben said.
The claims synopses typically contain missing words, garbled grammar or obvious errors in the various entry fields. Most refer to a “claimant.” Some are entered in the first person. A few dozen have no synopsis at all. Many are completely enigmatic: what happened when “claimant feared soldiers would open fire and panicked?” The claimant was paid more than $3,200.
“Each one took maybe 30 seconds to enter,” Tracy said. “There wasn’t really room or time to put in a narrative.”
The database categorized just 18 payments as wrongful deaths between 2003 and 2011 — very likely an undercounting, Dribben said. The average of those payments was about $11,000; the highest was $50,000, paid to someone in eastern Afghanistan, because “coalition forces killed his father.”
The Intercept’s Margot Williams and Josh Begley contributed research to this report. Eric Sagara, formerly of ProPublica, also contributed.
Photo: Rahmat Gul/AP; Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images
Was Gandhi an Anarchist?
Was Gandhi an Anarchist?
Josh Fattal
Visionary promoted decentralized, direct democracy as key to peace; power resides in the individual and in self-rule
Anarchy is about abolishing hierarchy. According to the original, Greek meaning of the word, Anarchy stands to create a world where there is no separation between the rulers and the ruled — a place where everyone rules themselves. (An-archy in Greek means without rulers.) An anarchic vision of society is nonviolent, self-managed and non-hierarchical, and Anarchist thinkers hold dear to the ideal of democracy — rule by the people. They suggest political confederations of local organizations; a “commune of communes” was how the 19th century Parisians Anarchists articulated it. Anarchists seek to dissolve power instead of seize it. Therefore, they seek a social revolution instead of a political one. The social revolution throws into question all aspects of social life including family organization, schooling, religion, crime and punishment, technology, political organization, patriarchy, environmental concerns as well as others. Anarchists are identified “as enemies of the State,” because they do oppose the existence of a hierarchical, top-down State.
Mohandas Gandhi opposed the State. The State is the military, police, prisons, courts, tax collectors, and bureaucrats. He saw the State as concentrated violence. “The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence.” Gandhi recognized that the State claims to serve the nation, but he realized that this was a fallacy. “While apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, [the State] does the greatest harm to mankind.” [1]
According to Dr. Dhawan, Gandhi was a philosophical Anarchist because he believed that the “[the greatest good of all] can be realized only in the classless, stateless democracy.” [2] While Gandhi advocated democracy, he differentiated between direct democracy and western democracy. Commenting on the parliamentary system, Gandhi says, “If India copies England, it is my firm conviction that she will be ruined. Parliaments are merely emblems of slavery.” [3] He had no more appetite for majority democracy of America, “It is a superstition and an ungodly thing to believe that an act of a majority binds a minority.” [4] By centralizing power, western democracies feed into violence. Thus, he thought decentralization was the key to world peace.
In Gandhi’s view all the political power that was concentrated in the State apparatus could be dissolved down to every last individual. He stated “Power resides in the people, they can use it at any time.” [5]Reiterating the idea of Anarchy, Gandhi said, “In such a state (of affairs), everyone is his own rulers. He rules himself in such a manner that he is never a hindrance to his neighbor.” [6] Gandhi had no illusions about the enormity of the task, but he took it on anyways. He believed that by reforming enough individuals and communities, society at large will change. Gandhi’s concept of swaraj elucidates the connection between the individual and society.
Swaraj translates into “self-rule” or “autonomy”. For Gandhi, every individual had to take steps towards self-rule in their lives; then India would naturally move towards self-rule as a nation. Gandhi insisted, “Everyone will have to take [swaraj] for himself.” [7] He continued, “If we become free, India becomes free and in this thought you have a definition of swaraj. It is swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves.” [8]
Gandhi angered some of his cohorts by extending his notion of power and swaraj to the history of colonization. While acknowledging the British Empire’s cynical intentions in India, he places the responsibility of the disaster of colonization on the Indian people. “It is truer to say that we gave India to the English than that India was lost... to blame them for this is to perpetuate their power.” [9] Because power resides in the people and they can only lose it by relinquishing their own power (often through coercion by others), petitions to the government get a new meaning with Gandhi. “A petition of an equal is a sign of courtesy; a petition from a slave is a symbol of his slavery.” Gandhi will petition the government as an equal and he used love-force to back himself up. “Love-force can thus be stated: ‘if you do not concede our demand, we will be no longer your petitioner. You can govern us only so long as we remain the governed; we shall no longer have any dealings with you.’” [10]
The principle of swaraj ultimately leads to a grassroots, bottom-up, “oceanic circle” of self-ruling communities. In 1946, Gandhi explained this vision:
But Congress did not disband after independence in 1947. Gandhi recognized that there would be a national government, and his anarchic, oceanic circle would not yet be possible. Nevertheless, he used the terms of nationalism to move towards the ideal of Anarchy. He advocated for a minimal level of State organization to fund some education programs and to promote his economic concept of trusteeship. Hence, Gandhi was a compromising Anarchist.
To Gandhi, ideas were worth having. He defended his vision of Anarchy in India on this point, “It may be taunted with the retort that this is all Utopian and, therefore, not worth a single thought... Let India live for the true picture, though never realizable in its completeness. We must have a proper picture of what we want, before we can have something approaching it.” [15]
By trying to understand Gandhi’s worldview, certain questions jump out with contemporary relevance. First off, what is our culturally appropriate “utopian” picture of America or of the communities in which we live? Secondly, what practical steps can we make towards swaraj amidst the current global empire? Finally, if Gandhi is right that all power resides in individuals, and that power is derived from an “indomitable will” than how do we reclaim the latent power within us, both individually and collectively?
Anarchy is about abolishing hierarchy. According to the original, Greek meaning of the word, Anarchy stands to create a world where there is no separation between the rulers and the ruled — a place where everyone rules themselves. (An-archy in Greek means without rulers.) An anarchic vision of society is nonviolent, self-managed and non-hierarchical, and Anarchist thinkers hold dear to the ideal of democracy — rule by the people. They suggest political confederations of local organizations; a “commune of communes” was how the 19th century Parisians Anarchists articulated it. Anarchists seek to dissolve power instead of seize it. Therefore, they seek a social revolution instead of a political one. The social revolution throws into question all aspects of social life including family organization, schooling, religion, crime and punishment, technology, political organization, patriarchy, environmental concerns as well as others. Anarchists are identified “as enemies of the State,” because they do oppose the existence of a hierarchical, top-down State.
Mohandas Gandhi opposed the State. The State is the military, police, prisons, courts, tax collectors, and bureaucrats. He saw the State as concentrated violence. “The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence.” Gandhi recognized that the State claims to serve the nation, but he realized that this was a fallacy. “While apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, [the State] does the greatest harm to mankind.” [1]
According to Dr. Dhawan, Gandhi was a philosophical Anarchist because he believed that the “[the greatest good of all] can be realized only in the classless, stateless democracy.” [2] While Gandhi advocated democracy, he differentiated between direct democracy and western democracy. Commenting on the parliamentary system, Gandhi says, “If India copies England, it is my firm conviction that she will be ruined. Parliaments are merely emblems of slavery.” [3] He had no more appetite for majority democracy of America, “It is a superstition and an ungodly thing to believe that an act of a majority binds a minority.” [4] By centralizing power, western democracies feed into violence. Thus, he thought decentralization was the key to world peace.
In Gandhi’s view all the political power that was concentrated in the State apparatus could be dissolved down to every last individual. He stated “Power resides in the people, they can use it at any time.” [5]Reiterating the idea of Anarchy, Gandhi said, “In such a state (of affairs), everyone is his own rulers. He rules himself in such a manner that he is never a hindrance to his neighbor.” [6] Gandhi had no illusions about the enormity of the task, but he took it on anyways. He believed that by reforming enough individuals and communities, society at large will change. Gandhi’s concept of swaraj elucidates the connection between the individual and society.
Swaraj translates into “self-rule” or “autonomy”. For Gandhi, every individual had to take steps towards self-rule in their lives; then India would naturally move towards self-rule as a nation. Gandhi insisted, “Everyone will have to take [swaraj] for himself.” [7] He continued, “If we become free, India becomes free and in this thought you have a definition of swaraj. It is swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves.” [8]
Gandhi angered some of his cohorts by extending his notion of power and swaraj to the history of colonization. While acknowledging the British Empire’s cynical intentions in India, he places the responsibility of the disaster of colonization on the Indian people. “It is truer to say that we gave India to the English than that India was lost... to blame them for this is to perpetuate their power.” [9] Because power resides in the people and they can only lose it by relinquishing their own power (often through coercion by others), petitions to the government get a new meaning with Gandhi. “A petition of an equal is a sign of courtesy; a petition from a slave is a symbol of his slavery.” Gandhi will petition the government as an equal and he used love-force to back himself up. “Love-force can thus be stated: ‘if you do not concede our demand, we will be no longer your petitioner. You can govern us only so long as we remain the governed; we shall no longer have any dealings with you.’” [10]
The principle of swaraj ultimately leads to a grassroots, bottom-up, “oceanic circle” of self-ruling communities. In 1946, Gandhi explained this vision:
“Independence begins at the bottom... It follows, therefore, that every village has to be self-sustained and capable of managing its own affairs... It will be trained and prepared to perish in the attempt to defend itself against any onslaught from without... This does not exclude dependence on and willing help from neighbors or from the world. It will be a free and voluntary play of mutual forces... In this structure composed of innumerable villages, there will be every-widening, never ascending circles. Life will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom. But it will be an oceanic circle whose center will be the individual. Therefore, the outermost circumference will not wield power to crush the inner circle but will give strength to all within and derive its own strength from it.” [11]In apparent contradiction to these ideals, Gandhi battled for national liberation and he expressed a lot of patriotism towards Indian civilization. He redefined the terms ‘nationalism’ and ‘patriotism’ to fit his vision. Nationalism, for instance, meant many different things. Gandhi said, “Every Indian whether he owns up to it or not, has national aspirations — but there are as many opinions as there are Indian Nationalists as to the exact meaning of that aspiration.” [12] Gandhi’s nationalism stood to disband the Congress Party upon independence, “Its task is done. The next task is to move into villages and revitalize life there to build a new socio-economic structure from the bottom upwards.” [13] He also understood patriotism differently than his contemporaries, “by patriotism, I mean the welfare of the whole people.” [14]
But Congress did not disband after independence in 1947. Gandhi recognized that there would be a national government, and his anarchic, oceanic circle would not yet be possible. Nevertheless, he used the terms of nationalism to move towards the ideal of Anarchy. He advocated for a minimal level of State organization to fund some education programs and to promote his economic concept of trusteeship. Hence, Gandhi was a compromising Anarchist.
To Gandhi, ideas were worth having. He defended his vision of Anarchy in India on this point, “It may be taunted with the retort that this is all Utopian and, therefore, not worth a single thought... Let India live for the true picture, though never realizable in its completeness. We must have a proper picture of what we want, before we can have something approaching it.” [15]
By trying to understand Gandhi’s worldview, certain questions jump out with contemporary relevance. First off, what is our culturally appropriate “utopian” picture of America or of the communities in which we live? Secondly, what practical steps can we make towards swaraj amidst the current global empire? Finally, if Gandhi is right that all power resides in individuals, and that power is derived from an “indomitable will” than how do we reclaim the latent power within us, both individually and collectively?
Bibliography
Institute for Social Ecology: online library at www.social-ecology.org
Guerin, Daniel. Anarchism.
Bhattacharyya, Buddhadeva. Evolution of the Political Philosophy of Gandhi. Calcutta Book House: Calcutta, 1969.
Jesudasan, Ignatius. A Gandhian Theology of Liberation. Gujarat Sahitya Prakash: Ananda India, 1987.
Murthy, Srinivasa. Mahatma Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy Letters. Long Beach Publications: Long Beach, 1987
Parel, Anthony (ed.) Gandhi: Hind Swaraj and other writings. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 1997.
[1] Jesudasan, Ignatius. A Gandhian Theology of Liberation. Gujarat Sahitya Prakash: Ananda India, 1987. pp. 236–237.
[2] Bhattacharyya, Buddhadeva. Evolution of the Political Philosophy of Gandhi. Calcutta Book House: Calcutta, 1969. p.479
[3] Parel, Anthony (ed.) Hind Swaraj and other writings of M.K. Gandhi. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 1997. p. 38
[4] Ibid. p. 92
[5] Jesudasan, Ignatius. A Gandhian Theology of Liberation. Gujarat Sahitya Prakash: Ananda India, 1987. pp. 251.
[6] Murthy, Srinivasa. Mahatma Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy Letters. Long Beach Publications: Long Beach, 1987. p. 13.
[7] Ibid. p. 112.
[8] Ibid. p. 73.
[9] Ibid. p. 41.
[10] Ibid. p. 85.
[11] Ibid. p. 189.
[12] Murthy, Srinivasa. Mahatma Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy Letters. Long Beach Publications: Long Beach, 1987. p. 40.
[13] Jesudasan, Ignatius. A Gandhian Theology of Liberation. Gujarat Sahitya Prakash: Ananda India, 1987. p. 225.
[14] Parel, Anthony (ed.) Hind Swaraj and other writings of M.K. Gandhi. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 1997. p. 77.
[15] Ibid. p. 189.
Zen Anarchy
Max Cafard
Zen Anarchy
Zen anarchy? What could that be? Some new variations on the koans, those classic proto-dadaist Zen “riddles”?
What is the Sound of One Hand making a Clenched Fist?
If you see a Black Flag waving on the Flagpole, what moves? Does the flag move? Does the wind move? Does the revolutionary movement move?
What is your original nature — before May ‘68, before the Spanish Revolution, before the Paris Commune?Somehow this doesn’t seem quite right. And in fact, it’s unnecessary. From the beginning, Zen was more anarchic than anarchism. We can take it on its own terms. Just so you don’t think I’m making it all up, I’ll cite some of the greatest and most highly-respected (and respectfully ridiculed) figures in the history of Zen, including Hui-Neng (638–713), the Sixth Patriarch, Lin-Chi (d. 867), the founder of the Rinzai school, Mumon (1183–1260), the Rinzai master who assembled one of the most famous collections of koans, Dogen (1200–1253), the founder of Soto, the second major school, and Hakuin (1685–1768), the great Zen master, poet and artist who revitalized Zen practice.
I. Smashing States of Consciousness
This is what all the great teachers show: Zen is the practice of anarchy (an-arche) in the strictest and most super-orthodox sense. It rejects all “arches” or principles — supposedly transcendent sources of truth and reality, which are really no more than fixed ideas, mental habits and prejudices that help create the illusion of dominating reality. These “principles” are not mere innocuous ideas. They are Imperialistic Principalities that intrude their sovereign power into our very minds and spirits. As anti-statist as we may try to be, our efforts will come to little if our state of mind is a mind of state. Zen helps us dispose of the clutter of authoritarian ideological garbage that automatically collects in our normal, well-adjusted mind, so that we become free to experience and appreciate the world, nature, and the “Ten Thousand Things,” the myriad beings around us, rather than just using them as fuel for our ill-fated egoistic cravings.Zen is also the strictest and most super-orthodox form of Buddhism — and at the same time the most iconoclastic, revolutionary and anarchistic one. The roots of Zen go back to the beginnings of the Buddhist tradition — not to any founding sacred documents or to any succession of infallible authorities, but to the experience that started the tradition: the anarchic mind! Forget the “ism” of Buddhism. It’s not ultimately about doctrines and beliefs. The “Buddha” that it’s named after means simply the awakened mind or somebody, anyolebody, who happens to “have” that kind of mind. And Zen (or Ch’an, in Chinese) means simply meditation, which is just allowing the mind to be free, wild, awake, and aware. It’s not about the occasional or even regular practice of certain standardized forms of activity (sitting and walking meditation, koan practice, being inscrutable, trying to look enlightened, etc.). Equating meditation with silent sitting is something that Zen simply will not stand for! Zen is also intimately linked to the absurd, but it can’t be reduced to doing and saying absurd things, as in the popular caricature of Zen. Zen is not nihilism, but is (like all Buddhism) the Middle Way between hopeless nihilism and rigid dogmatism (does a dogmatist have a Buddha-nature?).
Original Minds
Zen is also the practice of the Middle Way (Madhyamaka) philosophy. In particular, the form called prasangika, the philosophical anti-philosophy of the great Indian sage Nagarjuna (c. 150–250). It’s said that the king of the Nagas, a race of superhuman serpent people, appeared to Nagarjuna and gave him the Prajnaparamita (Perfection of Wisdom) sutras. Western supernatural snakes are sneaky and deceive us with dangerous knowledge, but Eastern ones are compassionate and help us poor deluded humans gain a little wisdom. Awakened by the wisdom he found in the sutras, Nagarjuna went on to demonstrate that all discourse about the nature of reality is nonsense. Actually he showed that it is nonsense, it isn’t nonsense, it both is and isn’t nonsense, and it neither is nor isn’t nonsense. Then he showed that everything he just showed isn’t true. Actually that it is true, it isn’t true, it both is and isn’t true, and it neither is nor isn’t true. Then he showed that all this stuff he just showed about truth is nonsense, etc. etc. We could go on but you get the point. Zen practitioners got it, and decided to create their own unique ways of using words and concepts to destroy our illusions about words and concepts.Going even further back in history, Zen’s origin can be traced back to the time that Shakyamuni Buddha went to Bodhgaya, sat down under the Bodhi Tree and invented meditation. Of course he didn’t really invent it but that’s as good a point as any to mark its beginning and we have all those fantastic statues to remind us of him sitting there. You can almost hear the giant sucking sound as the void begins to swallow everything up! Anyway, Zen is the meditation school, so its very name points back to that experience.
Another event that’s sometimes seen as the origin of Zen (can’t something have several origins?) is Shakyamuni Buddha’s famous Flower Sermon at Vulture Peak. A huge throng assembled to hear his Buddhaship’s profound words. Many of them must have been desperate for an infallible guru to save them from all that angry karma snapping at their asses. But all he did was silently hold up a flower before the teeming multitude. (If you think this lousy article is a disappointment, imagine what they thought!). But a single person, Kashyapa, smiled, showing that at least one person got it. That there’s nothing to get! This could also be looked upon as the point at which irony entered the history of thought, a tradition carried on fiercely by Zen, but much neglected by later deadly serious spiritual and political tendencies, including the most radical and anarchistic ones.
How Empty Is It?
Most of the time when the Buddha did sermons he did talk, but he tended to emphasize that all things — including his own words and concepts — are empty. What he meant by that is that like everything else they’re empty of “inherent being” or substantiality. They’re nothing but a lie “in themselves.” The truth is always elsewhere — his words and everything else can only be understood as inseparable parts of an interrelated web. This web is often pictured as “The Jewel Net of Indra,” an infinite expanse of gems, each one reflecting the light of all the others. We distort the interconnectedness and interdetermination of the entire infinitely — faceted Intergalactic Net when we abstract separate objects and egos from it.This is a very radical teaching. Blake had the same idea: that if the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear as it is: Infinite. The Heart Sutra, which is one of the most important Buddhist texts and is recited daily in many monasteries, shows the revolutionary implications of this idea of deep interrelatedness (dependent origination or pratitya-samutpada), the idea that all things open into the infinite.
This sutra says that all dharmas, the constituents of all beings, are “marked with emptiness,” and that “in emptiness there is no form, nor feeling, nor perception, nor impulse, nor consciousness; No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind; No forms, sounds, smalls, tastes, touchables or objects of mind; No sight-organ element, ... No mind-consciousness element; ... no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance ... no decay and death, no extinction of decay and death... no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path... no cognition, no attainment and no non-attainment.” [HS 91, 97, 113] It’s pretty much no nothing, and this destroys the basis for everything, including all the most fundamental tenets of Buddhism. The central teachings, the Four Noble Truths of Suffering, the Cause of suffering, the Cure for suffering, and the Way to effect the cure are all undermined, because here is no suffering, no causality, no cessation, no way!
And Buddhism is all about the “awakened mind,” right? Tough luck: “no mind!”
Have A Little Compassion
How depressing! Everything’s running on empty, all our goals are pointless, and nothing we say communicates anything! But irony strikes again. Realizing these limits is part of the therapy that we need to escape the real suffering that comes from living in a constantly-disappointing bad-dream world of illusion. A world in which we pretend that what is empty is full, that we (unlike anybody else) can literally do the impossible, and that our own personal ideas are a good substitute for reality. Though neither our suffering nor the ego that we think undergoes the suffering have “inherent existence,” there is a real experience of suffering that hits us when we succumb to these illusions. The dissatisfaction, hopelessness, anxiety and depression that follow lead us to lash out angrily at the world, and to struggle desperately to gain impossible control over it, so we end up inflicting even more suffering on the humans, cats, dogs, door frames and other beings that have the bad luck to stand in our way.So what can we do? Shakyamuni Buddha once said that if you find someone who has been wounded with a poison arrow, the most urgent thing is not to find out who shot the arrow, what the bow was made of, who made the arrow, etc. but to remove the goddam arrow! Every day we observe a world of people walking around with arrows sticking out of their chests. We look in the mirror and see an arrow protruding from our very own skull. Lost in thought, on whatever irrelevantly exalted or distractingly trashy level, we somehow forget to show a little compassion for others or even ourselves and get to work on extracting those arrows.
Zen is about that compassionate action. It’s the way of negation, but it’s also the most positive and practical path imaginable. According to Hui-neng “the spirit of the Way means always behaving respectfully, universally respecting and loving all creatures, without disdain.” [SH 91] If we open ourselves to really experiencing other beings and nature, we can stop dominating and manipulating them, and begin to appreciate and even love them. This bundless care for other beings is expressed in the Shiguseigan or boddhisattva vow that’s recited at the end of zazen (sitting) practice. It begins: “beings are countless; I vow to save them all.” Cross my Heart Sutra and hope to neither be born nor die! If I can’t save trillions, maybe I can at least save a few billion. Zen urges us to aim our anti-arrows very high!
Living In Lotus Land
It should be clear now that Zen is not a form of mere escapism — in fact it’s just the opposite. It does promise an escape — an escape from suffering and the illusions that cause it. But it teaches that liberation from illusion and suffering can only be achieved by a more intense experience of the reality of the world and of nature. Zen, for all its ascetic practices, revels in worldliness. It’s true to the Buddhist teaching that Samsara, the crazy, bustling, dusty world of constant change is itself Nirvana, the liberation that results from complete awakening. Hui-neng says that “Seeking enlightenment apart from the world/ Is like looking for crawfish tails on a nutria.” [SH 23, slightly revised] Hakuin expresses the same idea when he says that “This earth where we stand is the Pure Lotus Land,/ And this very body, the body of Buddha!” [ZW] And contemporary Buddhist poet Gary Snyder says that “the truly experienced person,” by which he means the truly experiencing person, “delights in the ordinary.” [PW 153]In a similar spirit, Hui-neng asks how the legacy of great masters should be “demonstrated and transmitted?” This is pretty important, because Zen is defined as the school of “direct transmission outside the scriptures.” Hui-neng replies that “there is no demonstration or transmission; it is only a matter of seeing nature, not a matter of meditation or liberation... these two things are not Buddhism; Buddhism is a non-dualistic teaching.” Not “transmitting something,” but seeing nature. If we allow ourselves to really experience nature we find that we are not just in it; we are it, though even to say that distorts what we see. That old Jewish lens-grinder who worked so diligently to clarify our sight expressed it accurately: “we” and “it” are both forms of natura naturans, “nature naturing.”
Zen would add, “empty forms.”
Please Identify Yourself
Hakuin says that “it is with great respect and deep reverence that I urge all of you superior seekers who investigate the secret depths to be as earnest in penetrating and clarifying the self as you would be in putting out a fire on top of your head.” [ET 3] I’m sure we’ve all been in that situation and have probably not spent a lot of time weighing our options. Hakuin’s urgent message about the self might really be phrased: “Liar, liar, brain’s on fire!” It’s hard for us to face self-non-knowledge.Should we look for the true self, the real self, the authentic self? Good luck! If you do it you’re in for a big (or more precisely, an infinitely small) surprise. Hakuin says that “if we turn directly, and prove our True Nature,/ That true Self is no-self,/ Our own Self is no-self,/ We stand beyond ego and past clever words./ [ZW]
But if there is no self, why then does Buddhism, and even Zen itself, sometimes talk of a self? According to Hui-neng it’s not because though there is no “little self” there is a “Big Self.” It’s not because though there is no “lower self,” there is still a “Higher Self.” He sticks with the basic Buddhist view, “No Self” (anatta), but points out that “in order to liberate people, the self is provisionally defined.” [SH 125] We can give the self some slack for a while. In the end, though, we have to shoot it down. Dogen puts it as follows: “To study the Buddha is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things.” [GK 36] This is from the “Genjo Koan,” a brief text that is Dogen’s most famous one. We find our self by forgetting the self.
Our enlightenment comes from everything we experience, the Ten Thousand Things. Hit the road!
II. Killing the Buddha: Zen’s Assault on Authority
Some people think that the exalted place in Zen practice accorded to the teacher or master proves that Zen is “authoritarian.” Not to mention that the poor student sometimes gets whacked with a stick. Sado-masochistic authorirtarianism, no less! No doubt Zen can decline into a cult of personality, but it to the extent that it follows its own path of the awakened mind, it is radically and uncompromisingly anti-authoritarian and anarchistic. Neither Shakyamuni Buddha nor any Buddha, Boddhisattva or arhat, much less any master, guru or teacher has the least authority over anyone. As Shakyamuni himself said, we have to “work out our own salvation with diligence” rather than relying on him or anyone else as an authority. No gurus, no saviors. Hui-neng points out that “scripture clearly says to take refuge in the Buddha in oneself, not to take refuge in another Buddha,” [SH 40] and Hakuin echoes this, saying, “Outside us, no Buddhas./ How near the Truth, yet how far we seek!/ Like one in water crying, ‘I thirst.’” [ZW]Open Road
The most sustained and most notorious Zen assault on all forms of authority is found in Lin-Chi, the founder of Rinzai, the most overtly anarchic branch of Zen. For Lin-Chi, “things like the Three Vehicles and the twelve divisions of the scriptural teachings — they’re all so much old toilet paper to wipe away filth. The Buddha is a phantom body, the patriarchs are nothing but old monks... If you seek the Buddha, you’ll be seized by the Buddha devil. If you seek the patriarchs, you’ll be fettered by the patriarch devil. As long as you seek something it can only lead to suffering. Better to do nothing.” [ZT 47] Doing nothing [wu wei] is the famous Daoist concept for natural action, action in accord with Dao, action in which we freely follow our own way and allow other beings to do likewise. Zhuangzi, the great anarchic Daoist sage, compared it to “riding on the wind.”To do this, we have to free ourselves from our heavy load of karma, that is, the mental formations, habits, prejudices, filters of experience that are the poisonous legacy of our past egoistic strivings for domination. A lot of the burden consists of images of external authorities — gods and other higher beings, leaders and experts, teachers and gurus, sacred scriptures and other revered documents — that we use as panaceas to avoid confronting our own experience and solving our own problems. Lin-Chi says “Get rid of all of them!” As Laozi (the great donothingist) said, the wise person can travel very far without taking along any baggage! (Maybe just a roll of old toilet paper!)
So then Zen says we should look away from the world and all external authorities, and turn inward to find our source of authority? Far from it! We need freedom from both internal and external authorities and principles. After all, all those external authorities control us only because they take on the form of a powerful image within our mind. So Lin-Chi says, “Whether you’re facing inward or facing outward, whatever you meet up with, just kill it! If you meet a Buddha, kill the Buddha. If you meet a patriarch, kill the patriarch. If you meet an arhat, kill the arhat. If you meet your parents, kill your parents. If you meet your kinfolk, kill your kinfolk. Then for the first time you will gain emancipation, will not be entangled with things, will pass freely anywhere you wish to go.” [ZT 52] If we kill all these dominating authority-figures (images or figurations within consciousness), then we can experience the reality behind the image, the reality of mind, the reality of beings.
Lin-Chi exhorts the “Followers of the Way” not to “take the Buddha to be some sort of ultimate goal. In my view he’s more like the hole in a privy.” [ZT 76] This (like the toilet paper remark) is a typical Zen comment, and should always be looked upon as is a form of highest praise. The hole in the donut may be relatively useless, but some holes serve a very important practical purpose. Lin-Chi is harsher with boddhisattvas and arhats, who are dismissed as “all so many cangues and chains, things for fettering people.” [ZT 76] The point may beto emphasize the fact that only the free, awakened mind (“Buddha”) is beyond being turned into a new source of subjection and bondage. The Buddha is just the hole through which all the old shit (“die alte Scheisse,” as someone called it) passes when we relieve ourselves of it.
So where should we look as our source of authority. To ourselves, of course — and since there’s no self, that means we should look nowhere. “Do you want to get to know the patriarchs and the Buddhas? They’re none other than you, the people standing in front of me listening to this lecture on the Dharma!” There’s a bit of irony in lecturing the Buddha on the Dharma! But what’s really absurd is all these Buddhas running around looking for gurus to give them the truth. “Students don’t have enough faith in themselves, and so they rush around looking for something outside themselves.” [ZT 23]
Nothing outside, nothing inside.
Stone Buddhas
Another reproach, similar to the charge of authoritarianism, that is sometimes leveled against Zen is that it is ritualistic. Zen sometimes appears ritualistic for the very good reason that it has a lot of rituals. But it must also be seen as the most scathing attack on all forms of ritualism. Hui-neng did the best job of demolishing this distortion of Zen. For Zen, a central problem with rites and rituals is that they easily fuel what Hui-neng calls the “religious ego”: the condition of those “who understand and practice yet entertain a sense of attainment, producing a self-image.” [SH 93] None, he says, can attain “great liberation” as long as they cling to this ego that constantly gazes at itself in a spiritual mirror, admiring all the layers of merit collecting on the sacred self. A consciousness very similar to that of the political militant who glories in possessing the correct line, the sacred sectarian truth.Hui-neng also shows how some people confuse sunyata, the emptiness of all things, including the mind, with the need to turn the mind into a vacant lot. They assume that when all the greater and lesser vehicles are on the road, wheels turning, the parking lot of the mind is finally vacant. But Hui-neng attacks this as the “wrong view” of those “deluded people who sit quietly with empty minds, not thinking of anything whatsoever, and claim this is greatness.” [SH 17] He doesn’t say that this kind of practice is necessarily a bad thing, but rather that we shouldn’t take it for “the essence of Zen” or as an occasion for great spiritual pride at having the emptiest mind on the block. It’s a bit like the well-rounded individuals who do a bit of hatha yoga at the Y, but never suspect that there could be a yoga of diligent study, compassionate action, and selfless devotion.
Hui-neng also notes the problem of making a fetish out of zazen or sitting meditation. There are, he says, “confused people who sit in meditation fanatically trying to get rid of illusion and do not learn kindness, compassion, joyfulness, equanimity, wisdom, and expedient skills.” These people are “like wood or stone, without any function,” and “are called nonthinking.” [SH 93] Hakuin learned the same truth from his “decrepit old teacher” Shoju Rojin, who said of the Zen monks of his time: “What are you really like? I’ll tell you. Large sacks of rice, fitted out in black robes.” [ET 15] Sort of like the dummies at the end of “Zero for Conduct.”
Zen offers us a double-edged sword. One edge is the Buddha-killing edge for slaying those Buddhas, patriarchs, traditions, rituals, and revered texts that would enslave us for the name of our own liberation. The other edge is the killing-Buddha edge that cuts in the opposite direction. For those Buddhas, patriarchs, rituals and texts that might enslave us, once slain with the uncutting sword of non-discrimination, can help us annihilate everything else we hold dear.
Nothing is spared in this massacre — Lin-Chi, who said to “Kill the Patriarch if you meet him on the road” was himself a patriarch.
III. The Koan: Entering the Jetstream
Let’s enter the weird world of Mondo Zendo. OK, so what is the sound of one hand clapping? Struggling with such a koan (Japanese), kungan (Chinese), or kongan (Korean) is central to Zen practice, particularly in the Lin-Chi or Rinzai tradition, the lightening-mind school. It’s a daunting task for the beginning student of Zen: hand to hand combat with King Kongan, the million pound gorilla.The Death of Dog
“A monk asked Joshu, “Does a dog have a Buddha Nature?” Joshu said, “Mu!” This great Zen master didn’t seem to know that the correct Buddhist answer is “yes,” since all sentient beings have a Buddha Nature. Shibayama Roshi says that “although literally ‘Mu’ means No, in this case it points to the incomparable satori which transcends both yes and no, to the religious experience of the Truth one can attain when he casts away his discriminating mind.” [ZC 21] But even as he betrays the secret of Mu, Shibayama Roshi tricks the reader. For if “Mu” transcends both yes and no, it will also transcend “any religious experience of the Truth,” which it will brutally murder along with the various Buddhas and Patriarchs thatShibayama says we slay with the Great Sword of Mu. And when we cast away the discriminating mind, don’t we cast a discriminating eye on everything we see, including the works of Mumon and Shibayama Roshi?
Shibayama himself later says that while we are conceptualizing “transcending both yes and no,” the “real ‘Mu’ is lost forever.” [ZC 22] Another monk asked Joshu, “Does a dog have a Buddha Nature?” Joshu said, “U!” Yes! Had Joshiu then decided to come down on the side of spiritual correctness? Not while the sound of “Mu” is still echoing in the background.
Does a dog ever appear in this koan? Give it a bone!
The Resurrection of the Cat
At Nansen’s temple the monks of the East Hall and the monks of the West Hall were arguing about a cat. The nature of their dispute has not been passed down. But who knows? Maybe it was “Does a cat have a Buddha nature?” Or perhaps even more pertinently, “Do mice have a Buddha nature?” Anyhow, Nansen came in, held up the cat, and said “Say something and I won’t kill the cat! If you can’t say anything, I’ll kill it!” None of them could figure out what Nansen wanted them to say, so he killed the cat. Apparently these monks were better at disputing how many fleas can dance on the back of a cat than they were at acting. The next evening, Joshu returned to the temple. Nansen greeted Joshu, telling him what happened with to the poor cat (and to the really poor monks). Nansen asked Joshu if he could have saved the cat. Joshu took off one of his sandals, put it on his head, turned around and walked out. Nansen said, “If you had been there, you would have saved the cat!”Joshu’s action was a totally spontaneous, right? His lightening Zen mind was not disturbed by mere logical reasoning. How Zen it is! Or was there actually an underlying logic? The logic of reversal. To act by not acting. To say something by saying nothing. The sandal’s place is reversed, from the toe to the head. Things are turned heals over head. Joshu puts Nansen in the place of the cat. Where was Nansen’s compassion? Joshu puts himself in the place of Nansen, who has been placed in the place of the cat. Mumon alludes to all these reversals: “Had Joshu only been there,/He would have taken action,/ Had he snatched the sword away,/ Nansen would have begged for his life.” [ZC 109]
Shibayama suggests that the monks were engaging in “speculative religious arguments.” [ZC 110] Something similar to the speculative political arguments of today, though with the internet, political monks from east, west and every other direction can now join together to dissect cats in a million different ways. Albert Low notes that it is said that “the sword of prajna” that Nansen used to kill the cat is “a sword that cuts not in two but in one.” [WG 112] Maybe it should be said that it cuts into none! It’s the magical sword that uncuts!
The blade that uncuts us from the cat, and from everything else.
Yo Mama A Shit Stick
“The Buddha is a Shit Stick.” “Yo Mama a Shit Stick.” The one koan with a clear solution. But Zen never lets us take the easy way out. Let us investigate further.“A monk asked Unmon, ‘What is Buddha?’ Unmon said, ‘A shit-stick!’ (Kan-shiketsu)” (161) There have been a lot of theories about the intriguing question of the exact nature if this famous shit stick. Shibayama says it may have been “a bamboo tool used in ancient China to pick up and take away feces from the road.” [ZC 161] Apparently if you meet the feces on the road you don’t kill it, you carry it away. Get the picture? Catch bullshit at four. Serious Zen practice. Somebody has to do it and very few are interested.
Shibayama says that “for Master Unmon, here, the whole universe was a shit-stick.” [ZC 161] Right, we’ve all had days like that. But no, he means that there is “no room for such an idle distinction as dirty and clean.” [ZC 161] However, as true as this might be it’s also a bit too obvious. Shibayama warns that the koan’s aim of awakening should never be subordinated to the quest for a reasonable or ingenious response. On the other hand, he adds that the shit-stick has “another role to play” that can’t be overlooked: it “roots out any possible preoccupation in the student’s mind such as ‘virtuous Buddha, inviolable holiness’ and the like.” [ZC 162]
Whatever else it might be, the shit-stick is a cure for all kinds of Holy Shit.
If It Ain’t Fixed, Break It
And nothing is fixed! The famous master Hyakujo wanted to find an abbot for a monastery. He put a pitcher on the floor and asked what it was, adding, “Don’t say it’s a pitcher.” Some of the smarter monks came up with smart things to say. Then Isan the cook came up and kicked it over, breaking it. Bingo! Isan got to be abbot. The moral of this story: The urge to destroy a pitcher is a creative urge also. Which doesn’t mean that we can achieve an awakened mind if we kick over a pitcher every time we see one. It’s been done!Commenting on this famous koan, Shibayama says that the “natural and free working flowing out of true Zen spirituality” should never be confused with “unusual or eccentric behavior with a stink of Zen.” (287) Isn’t this true of all behavior that “reeks of anarchy.” How free from arche is it really? Is it free from the arche of reactive rebellion? Is it free from the arche of egoistic accumulation? Is it free from the arche of self-righteousness?
The real problem is not how to kick over a pitcher, but how to tear down that deceptive pitcher of the ego.
The Wisdom of Absurdity
So is it perfectly clear now? Do I have to draw a pitcher? If it’s not, here are two more strong hints from some of our compassionate teachers.Hui-neng, very early in the history of Zen, generously gives away much of the secret of the “inscrutable” responses of Zen. Zen mind is basically dialectic in action, training the mind to practice spontaneously in ones everyday life what some philosophers have merely written about. Notice that Hui-neng recommends an explicitly anarchic method, that is, one that subverts principles: “If people question you about principles, if they ask about being, reply with nonbeing; if they ask about nonbeing, reply with being. If they ask about the ordinary, reply with the holy; if they ask about the holy, reply with the ordinary; the two paths are relative to each other, producing the principle of the middle way.” [SH 72]
The first Western Zen master, Heraclitus, said much the same thing: “The path up and the path down are one and the same.” So if they ask about either path, the “opposite-way” response will show their identity. Hui-neng might have added that if they ask about the middle way, reply with the most radical extremes! So this is part of the sense behind the nonsense. However as truly generous and compassionate as Hui-neng was, he didn’t really give all that much away. He gave away free menus, but he didn’t give away free food. For describing how it works is not the same as releasing the spontaneity of consciousness that allows it to work. It’s still up to us to work out our own spontaneity with diligence.
Another helpful hint comes from contemporary Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh. He says that “the response to the koan lies in the life of the practitioner.” [ZK 57]. The koan is not a puzzle or riddle with one correct answer that the student has to guess. The koan is aimed at evoking, or provoking a certain state (or perhaps anti-state or statelessness!) of consciousness. Thus of two responses that seem formally identical one may be judged perfectly apt, another abysmally wrong, the pretext for a compassionate whack on the head. The koan isn’t a test question (fill in the blank mind?); it’s an opportunity to wake up. Sometimes the sleeper doesn’t respond and needs a good dousing with cold water.
The koan is this wakeup call. Wake up and live!
IV. Last Words
In many of the classic Buddhist and Zen texts it’s important to look at the opening and closing words. Often the parts that seem at first to be peripheral (dedications, salutations, etc.) convey some of the most crucial messages in the entire work. Hakuin concludes his Zen 101 course with two injunctions. First, he humbly begs his students to “overlook once more an old man’s foolish grumblings.” And then he implores them to “please take good care of yourselves.” Thus with his always focused, ever-attentive mindfulness, Hakuin concludes with the essential non-essence of Buddhism and Zen: non-attachment and compassion. [ET 103]So go out and kill some Buddhas, and a have a really, really nice day!
References
- Dogen,“Actualizing the Fundamental Point” [The Genjo Koan] in Kazuaki Tanahashi, Enlightenment Unfolds: The Essential of Zen Master Dogon (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1999), pp. 35–39. [GK]
- Hakuin, The Essential Teachings of Zen Master Hakuin: A Translation of the Sokko-roku Kaien-fusetsu, translated by Norman Waddell (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1994). [ET]
- Hakuin, “Song of Meditation” in D.T. Suzuki, Manual of Zen Buddhism (New York: Grove Press, 1960). [MZ]
- Hakuin, “Zazen Wasan” (“Song of Zazen”), translation by the Rochester Zen Center (Rochester, NY: The Rochester Zen Center, N.D.) www.digitalzendo.com [ZW]
- “Heart Sutra” in Buddhist Wisdom: Containing The Diamond Sutra and the Heart Sutra, translation and commentary by Edward Conze (New York: Vintage Books, 2001). [HS]
- Hui-neng, The Sutra of Hui-neng, Grand Master of Zen, With Hui-neng’s Commentary on the Diamond Sutra, translated by Thomas Cleary (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1998). [SH]
- Joshu, The Recorded Sayings of Zen Master Joshu, translated by James Green (Boston: Shambhala, 1998). [RS]
- Lin-chi, The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-Chi: A Translation of the Lin-Chi Lu. Translated by Burton Watson. (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1993). [ZT]
- Low, Albert, The World: A Gateway: Commentaries on the Mumonkan (Boston, Rutland VT, and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, Inc., 1995. [WG]
- Nhat Hanh, Thich, Zen Keys (New York: Doubleday, 1995). [ZK]
- Snyder, Gary, “On the Path, Off the Trail” in Practice of the Wild (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990). [PW]
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