OPENing Development

Sanjay Pradhan, native of Bihar, India, talks about how global south to south idea inspiration is changing the accountability of development and governance through technology ultimately creating a voice for the underserved in many communities.  This is a clear balance to the north-south 'traditional' development practices championed by the Brettonwoods institutions over the last 60+ years. 

It's Already Happening

I came across Paul Hawken's synthesis in an article by David Loy on Huffington Post.  This is something I've thought about for a long time - How to define a counter-culture movement in order to inspire and educate others that change is happening, and there are so many ways to be involved. Paul seems to do that.

How will you contribute?

Old Video Footage of Nepal

Found this website via Anil ji with clips of old video footage from as early as 1950, when Nepal was first opened up to foreign visitors. 

Sulak Sivaraksha on 'Engaged Buddhism"

"In America and Europe, everyone is very active. But if you become too active, you lose the essence of Buddhism. You only have the Buddhist labels. One must cultivate peace to be compassionate. Without this, what you do, even as an 'engaged Buddhist' is just a lot of activity with no good purpose."

- Sulak Sivaraksa, “In Exile from Siam”

Felix's article on Dr. Ariyaratne and Sarvodaya movement in Sri Lanka
published in Buddhadharma

Buddhism For Development

"Spiritual and economic development should not be separated into two separate realms. In Buddhism, one is not more important than the other. We have a saying, "Nāma-rupa" which means that mind and matter have to go together. Mind affects matter and matter affects the mind. It is the teaching of the Buddha that economic development and spiritual development need to be done alongside each other."  - Heng Monychenda, founder of Buddhism for Development (BFD)


Buddhism for Development, founded in 1990, has been working to create opportunities for monks to engage in social work activities.  Huffington Post published an article by Katherine Marshall (Georgetown) describing the motivation and impact of the organization over the past 20 years.  Here's the full article from the Berkeley Center at Georgetown. 


Thanks, CL, for sending this article!

RSA Animate - The Empathic Civilisation

Assumptions we've created based on our educational, economic, and political institutions may be wrong.  Our identities or where we feel we "belong" has shifted over the course of human civilization based on arbitrary outward situations.  i.e. the "fiction" called the nationstate, religious affiliation, blood ties.

Empathy is the opposite of utopia - there is no mortality or suffering in utopia.  Empathy is based on frailty and imperfections: the ability to show solidarity with other humans, other creatures, and our biosphere.

"Mirror Neurons" are proving empathetic capacity - humans are softwired for belonging, attachment, sociability rather than aggression and selfishness.

Is it possible to extend our empathy to the entire human race?  the other creatures we share this biosphere with?  and the biosphere itself?

To Empathize is to Civilize. 

Water Water Everywhere

Loadshedding is not a mystery to anyone living in the Kathmandu Valley.  It's a daily reality, even during monsoon when the rains come pouring down.  I have often wondered, with so many hydro-power projects established and in the works along the gravity-fueled rivers of the Himalaya, why does the Kathmandu populace suffer with 14 - 20 hours of power-outages per day in the dry winter/spring time?

Journalist Kunda Dixit sheds some light on this issue with these two articles in the Nepali times - White Gold  (2007) and No Light at the End of the Tunnel (2011).  Complications cited are lack of government, political instability, and poor implementation of energy development strategies.  Nepal is often compared to Bhutan who sells 80% of their generated hydroelectricity to India - many see Nepal's rivers as a gold mine when considered from this angle.  There seems to be a leak somewhere, however, as the fountains are hardly able to produce enough energy to support the existing consumption levels in the Kathmandu Valley alone.  The numbers do not seem to add up.

Another mystery linked to this issue is the interaction Nepal has had for years with foreign aid funding hydro-electric projects in the name of development.  Though now a few years old, this short paper by Kundan Pokharel Majagaiya sheds some light on Nepal's dependency but reticence to foreign aid.  

Empowerment

The three yanas, according to Tibetan Buddhism are three stages of one's path to enlightenment. 

Thinking about this, in relation to social engagement and activism, seems one can extract three stages there as well.  When thinking about how social action works with the traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, a context needs to be created to frame 'engagement' effectively. 

Reggie Ray writes the following from a Tricycle article considering the concept of Empowerment:


We talk a lot about “empowerment” in the Vajrayana and it is important to understand exactly what that means. To receive empowerment doesn’t mean that someone grants you the power to escape from your life, or to override and control things you don’t like; rather, they help you tap into the power you inherently possess to surrender utterly to your unique life, which is the only gateway in the entire universe through which you can enter eternity.

Reginald Ray, "The Vajrayana Journey is an experience of love, power, and freedom"

The conversation overlaps in the world of development - it is quite popular to talk about women's empowerment, empowering others to take responsibility for their improvement or education, for example.  One can't deny the agency in this word - empowerment implies someone doing the empowering and someone receiving the empowerment.  Is it possible to empower oneself?  In the Vajrayana tradition, no.  In the conversation about the ethics of development, it has become popular to talk about empowerment as the receiver of resources taking responsibility for their own empowerment. 

I am not sure this concept actually works, but maybe is just something to tell ourselves as we attempt to create what we perceive as a better life for people who we perceive are living in poverty. 

Development remains a touchy issue - I don't pose that there are any solutions, actually, only that there needs to be constant questioning as "development" continues to happen in many parts of the world.  

Sulak Sivaraksa at the Garrison Institute's Satyagraha Event

Sivaraksa as one representative articulating one approach to "Engaged Buddhism."  He has had an interesting life filled with jail time and activism.  In this video, he calls says strongly that, "The West has been thinking too much."  This goes along with what Tsoknyi Rinpoche speaks about in many of his teachings regarding the subtle body problem that seems to be manifest in the western experience - too much thinking creates blocks, cultural blocks, in the body.

This is a good video to show in a discussion about the definition of Engaged Buddhism - what is it?  who is engaged or not engaged and how to we figure that out?  But, best to give some context about Sivaraksa's life and where his motivation arises to do the work he is doing. 

RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

Anil showed this in class the other day to highlight the concept of proper motivation in the workplace and to pose the question, "is there a proper motivation in the workplace?" The model presented here which is replicated in many places is -
1. Autonomy
2. Mastery of Skill
3. Purpose

He compared things to the Buddha's life in terms of the 8fold path.

Secret Powers of Time

Past Oriented - 1. past positive - focus on the 'good old times' 2. past negative - focus on regret/failure
Present Oriented - 1. Hedonistic - live for pleasure avoid pain.  2. My life is fated (by religion, poverty) Fatalism
Future Oriented - 1. We've learned to work rather than play, and avoid temptation.  2. Life begins after the death of the mortal body.

shared time perspectives characterize nations ---  culture too?

The Geography of Time - Robert Levine
Pace of Life - Time Perspective - How people divide their experiences into partitions
Time Duration - are you bored?  are you excited?

Different cultures have a different pace of life.

Education? Purpose of school is to make present-oriented beasts into future oriented adults (some cultures make them past-oriented).


Kids need to be in a situation where they feel like they are controling something (video games...)
all of our educational systems are designed toward future-oriented kids, yet, they already know the cultural time perspectives - future-oriented kids succeed in school as we have it set up.  How to teach present-oriented kids?

Kids are totally different than we were - revolution of time.

"Many of life's puzzles can be solved simply by understanding our own time perspective, and the time perspective of others.  Conflict we have with other people is simply conflict we have with each other's time perspectives.  Once we're aware of that, we stop making negative attributions like 'you're dumb' or 'you're childish' or 'you're pig-headed' or 'you're authoritarian'.  It's really the most simple idea in the world."

Malaria In Nepal

One teacher of mine often gives an "Intro to Nepal" talk that includes statements about pre-WWII malaria barrier that prevented the British from crossing the jungly Terai belt of southern Nepal and conquering the Rana regime in control of the Kathmandu Valley for the last 300 years. 

It is common knowledge that one of the first USAID projects in Nepal was the planned eradication of malaria in 1951.  The intended aim of which was to reduce mortality rates in this southernmost region.  Opportunity for hill tribes to move south to more arable, malaria-free land was an unforeseen consequence which leaves more than imprints of hostility on the Madeshi (native peoples) of this Terai area, complicating the constitution-writing process in various ways.

However, it seems that USAID was not successful - while malaria is not considered a risk in the higher-altitude areas of Nepal, including the Kathmandu Valley, there still remains risk in the terai belt. 

B&D - Course Content Resources - Thailand and Sri Lanka

Articles that may have relevance to course content....
Trying to develop more of a Theravadin perspective as we move along... starting from the begining (8-fold path, establishment of Buddhist Ethics... Maybe I should have started with that rather than jumping in to Ashoka.  But we can do this in a backward-buildup sort of way)

Susan M. Darlington -Rethinking Buddhism and Development: The emergence of Environmentalist Monks in Thailand.   This article might fit well with the book Greg gave: Socially Engaged Buddhism by Sulak Sivaraksa.

Tessa Bartholomeusz - In Defense of Dharma: Just-War Ideology in Buddhist Sri Lanka.
Also possible to draw more and more context - I need some resources on the history of the conflict rather than just throwing these articles out to the students. 

I need more grounding.  :/

Book Reviews: Socially Engaged Buddhsim

Here are some relevant book reviews that might be good for the course.

Many Voices and Concerns on Kashmir Solution

Peace conference called by two separatist leaders of J & K at the Indian International Center seem to speak about the 'real' issues here.  Ethnic group rights in the process need to be heard - many people are greatly affected by the stalemate in the northern areas.  Neither is willing to give an inch to the other and the 'dialogue' process is at a standstill because credibility of this technique has been lost through eruptions of violence in the past 15 years. 

One of the leaders, Sajjad Lone, proposes trade as a means to build trust and build the economy of the region.  Through this, the region can be unburdened by "the monotony of sovereignty."  He released a document called "Achievable Nationhood," the first of its kind since violence in 1989, at the beginning of Jan 2010.  Is this just the type of leadership that the region is needing to emerge from protracted conflict?

The paper calls for tax-free movement of goods between a united J & K. "Lone's peace formula comes a month after Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf said Islamabad would abandon its claim to Kashmir if India agreed to give the territory autonomy under joint supervision by both countries," says Reuters. 

New Peaks open for Tourism in Ladakh

The Times of India published an article saying which restricted areas are now open to foreigners for mountaineering-type pursuits.  This is going to highly imact tourism in Ladakh.

I wonder if this is India's way to lay claim to previously restricted areas... if J & K state then makes tourism dollars off of peaks in the southeaster corridor of the Karakoram, Pakistan and China cannot very well claim any of that land is belonging to them, can they.  The closer India pushes toward the borders, the more tenuous the situation may get.

Don't know if this is such a good idea, India.
And Ladakh, it's time for you to dial up the sustainable eco-tourism business strategies.  Helena Norberg-Hodge, where are you when we need you!

Gilgit-Baltistan

Historically (? Source) a part of Kashmir (State language is Urdu but linguistics in Baltistan suggest strong connection to Tibeto-Burmese languages as opposed to Persian/Arabic What is the persian/arabic family of languages called?) folks in Gilgit-Baltistan have been under Pakistani rule since 1949. 

India recently made a public claim for the region.  This article verbalizes India's claim that Pakistan is illegally occupying the land there, despite claims from the newly elected Chief Minister Mehdi Shah that the region has no connection to Kashmir.  Elections in November were successfuly administered and CM Shah's win made G/B officially the fifth province in Pakistan. 

India is calling out Pakistan for not addressing human rights violations that have occured in the past few years as the seperatist movement is gaining momentum. 

Watch this region - another example of contracted ethnic conflict where struggle for human rights against oppressive nationalist government is compounded by the fact that many eyes are on the strategic region.  Issues are Karakoram Highway (KKH) for trade with China, Taliban presence in areas north and west of Balitistan, other seperatist movements as a result of central Pakistani government not paying much attention to folks up there - including human rights issues of food and resource accessability, health needs, and education. Read this one about that.

Who's making hunger worse?

“It’s the role of the state and not the level of wealth, that determines progress on hunger,” said Anne Jellema.

Findings from an ActionAid study say that Brazil, China, and India (in that order) score the highest in the study.  US scores 8 out of 100 for eradicating poverty within its borders. Pretty crappy compared to other developed countries.

Economist article commenting on the study and comparing growth rates of the world's three largest developing countries here.