In "The Spiritual Roots of Modernity", David Loy concludes his look at the historical trajectory of modernity by reflecting on the core issue of how we ground our personal identities through socially constructed lack projects. These projects are constructed and understood through symbol systems which help give meaning to our lives. The basic problem here is that this construction is driven by our desire to transcend death, or in Buddhist terms the desire to transcend our immediate insubstantiality (not-self, anatta). This desire, however, is inherently unfulfillable and so the drive to satisfy it is inherently flawed and ridden with false promise. The key point in Loy's piece is that the modern way of constructing these systems does not recognize this deeper existential drive for transcendence. As such, the various "secular" drives of capitalist accumulation, technological development, and nationalism are unconscious of their deeper meanings. When the existential drive for transcendence becomes unconscious, our constructed symbol systems become "perverted" and create a "a constricted world, with other possibilities foreclosed by our blinkered, socially-sanctioned perceptions."

This paper will use Buddhist analytical tools to delve more deeply into how this sort of perception works, how consequent symbol systems become unconscious and how we can become aware of them. From an ideal standpoint, such insightful awareness can lead us to the ultimate goal in Buddhism, the quenching (nibbana) of the driven ego-self and the end of its socially destructive lack projects. From a more immediate standpoint, a basic re-awakening to our constructed symbol systems will allow us to consciously live out existing systems and create new ones which open up the world to less harmful and more just modes of social interaction.

The critical turn in Loy's analysis of our existential lack is delving more deeply into our primal fear of death and discovering it as a projection of the fear of our present insubstantiality or not-self (anatta). This turn goes beyond Freudian psychology to the musings of existentialists like Sartre and Nietzsche on the very emptiness of the human condition. Yet by linking to the rich spiritual tradition of Buddhism, Loy brings out systematic and practical approaches for resolving this lack which were beyond what the existentialists could accept. A critical point here is the relation to systematic practice. For all the glory of systematic processes in the western hard sciences, the western social sciences have failed to develop relevant, systematic experiential methods to work out their philosophical investigations. This lack of a "yoga"1 reflects more deeply on the lack of a clear goal in the psychological and philosophical systems of modernity - that is - is a strong, functional but inherently faulty ego-self the best that modern man can hope for?2 This question reflects back on the crisis of modernity and the unconscious spiritual drive for immortality. Amidst all the important developments in human well-being during the modern era, its greatest failure is its fear and denial to confront our biggest existential questions. What Loy did in this critical turn in understanding is to ask these bigger questions. In doing so, he makes a fundamental shift in perception - from our fixation on death as a physical existential crisis (conventional level, sammuti-sacca) to death as a constantly arising experience of insubstantiality (ultimate level, paramatha-sacca). This shift is precisely what a true religion seeks to do - to talk about life in terms of its deeper meanings. All of the world's great religious teachers and traditions have talked about life on this level. However, the drive for forgetfulness has quickly reduced much of the rich symbolic language of religion to gross objectifications of the mythical worlds of heavens and hells. In this way, the crisis of modernity is merely another chapter in humanity's ongoing struggle to become conscious of its insubstantiality.

This seemingly simple but subtle and profound shift in perception has critical meaning for the way we understand culture and our construction of it. On the ultimate level, culture is the way we attempt to transcend death through symbolically manipulating others in the service of our lack projects. On the conventional level, culture is the realm of human communication, especially religion, art and science. This communication takes place principally through language and symbolization. Therefore, in order to understand the deeper, ultimate meaning of our cultures and societies, we need to see how our conventional use of language and symbols connects to this ultimate level.
The reduction of our symbol systems from ultimate to conventional levels of discourse marks both the modern and post-modern use of language - a reduction which Ken Wilber has called the "Flatland". In scientific representation, everything that can be known exists in the physical universe and can be pointed to and represented in a direct one to one relationship by signs and language. This kind of perception is the great positivism of the modern era which has reduced religions and other aspects of inner meaning to psychological processes and, in extreme cases, to merely physiological processes of the brain. Loy points to this in the Reformation's banishment of God to the remote heavens and the filling of this void by secular symbol systems like nationalism, capitalism, and science. By making the divine king and then the bureaucratic state the highest voice of authority, these secular systems have put religious energies in the service of secular, worldly agendas. Consequently, ultimate, spiritual discourse has had to be conducted through the new language of these secular systems. Though these new languages have allowed humanity to speak in new ways, they have often fallen into old ideological traps which our traditional methods of ultimate spiritual discourse have not been allowed to evaluate.

Post-modernism represents one of these new languages which has been able to expose the old ideological trap of scientific representationalism. Post-modernism showed how language is not purely representational and that the way words are constructed to make systems of meaning is just as or more important than the individual words themselves. On the physical plane, this means that instead of looking at reality in terms of distinct individual components, we focus more on the methods and styles of interaction between ever changing phenomena.3 This emphasis on relationships and inter-dynamics marks a great psychological liberation from the positivistic science of the industrial nation-state which has monopolized our world view for the past two centuries. It has taught us not to accept the Orwellian State of 1984 and to re-value local constituencies based on personal relationship.

This post-modern view resembles the Buddhist one of the interdependent and interconnected nature of the universe, yet the great tragedy of post-modernism has been that it stops at the material level. Reality, as far as we can conceive it, becomes merely a conventional series of processes and relationships, with no individual actors, "real things", or universal values on which to base any common understanding. At its worst, the post-modern standpoint reduces us to a tribalism in which private agendas and concerns override the need for mutually agreed upon communities of interaction and cooperation. Post-modernism has gotten stuck in this deconstruction and is now unable to see that the deconstruction itself is a type of construction. In this way, post-modernism is still very much a Flatland reality which falls into the same old ideological trap that modernism does - one posits a universe of independent entities while the other posits a universe of interdependent processes. Yet either way, there is still no room for any ultimate discourse which can evaluate the meaning of these psycho-physical processes.

The post-modern revolution in language rediscovers in many ways the same ideological traps that the Buddha found 2,500 years earlier and what other great religious teachers have also seen. Shakyamuni was one of the earliest thinkers in history to recognize the fact that language tends to distort the nature of reality and to stress the importance of not being misled by linguistic forms and conventions.4 In this way, "there are merely names, expressions, turns of speech, designations in common use in the world, which the Tathagata (the Buddha speaking) uses without misapprehending them."5 Therefore, we need to re-examine language, and especially religious language, with this understanding at heart. Specifically, this means learning to read and understand language and culture on both the conventional level and the ultimate level. This was done by Loy when he saw that fear of death had more meaning than just the conventional fear of physical demise. Understanding death on the ultimate level, he saw it as the death of ego-self.

Death as the demise of the ego-self is explained in the Buddha's teaching of Dependent Origination (paticca samuppada). When the mind splinters reality into a subject-object duality and the posited subject ("I") clings and attaches to a perceived object ("out there"), there occurs the birth of an ego-self. Due to the insubstantiality of the conditions of this subject-object duality, there naturally occurs a dissolution of the born ego-self experienced as an existential angst, lack or death. Ironically, this very teaching of Dependent Origination has also suffered at the hands of Flatlanders who interpreted the birth and death of the ego-self conventionally in physical terms drawn out over previous, present and future lifetimes. This interpretation of Dependent Origination and a conventional reading of karma have helped to formalize the concept of reincarnation within Buddhism. This would seem to be at odds with the foundational concept of not-self which denies the substantially of a self that could reincarnate over multiple lifetimes.6 This controversy, however, leads us into just the kind of discourse which lies at the heart of this whole modernity dilemma - that is, arguing over the essential nature of reality.

The modern and post-modern movements were initially transformative injunctions which provided new insights and undercut previous dogmas. Yet in the existential angst to discover that final solution to our mortality, they both have become hardened ideologies in the same manner of their predecessors. The history of humankind's struggle for truth is then not the battle between good and evil, between transcendent wisdom and world affirming faith, between material prosperity and spiritual insight, but rather the slippery task of having fresh insights and ways of perceiving the world reduced into stale, stagnant and oppressive systems of ideology and dogma. The Buddha's teaching of the Middle Way is one of a number of great moments in human history where a fresh perspective on the world penetrated through a stagnant and oppressive culture to provide liberation to a large number of people. The power of Shakyamuni's insight was how he directly confronted this problem of what Loy calls idolatry - "trying to become real by completely identifying with something in the world as the source of our power." The teaching of not-self not only exposes the idolatry of our identities but of our ways of thinking about our identities. "The Buddha had no theory to be declared other than he had put an end to all theories, and all proclivities towards them."7 In this way, the Buddha was careful to avoid disconnecting ultimate discourse from conventional living by refusing to answer metaphysical questions which he felt had no practical use.8

When the gods seek a monk who is thus liberated in mind, they cannot find any basis or foundation [such as a philosophy or ideology] for consciousness (vinyana). What is that? Such a monk, I say, is untraceable here and now. So saying and proclaiming, some ascetics and brahmins falsely accuse me, "the ascetic Gotama is one who leads astray; he teaches the annihilation, the destruction, and extermination of an existing being." That is what I am not and do not teach. Both formerly and now what I teach is suffering and the cessation of suffering.9

The essence of the Buddha's teaching, or rather demonstration (desana), is to do away with the world of dualistic concepts and to root all intellectual insight in practical living. An insight is only as "truthful" as the consequence it can create. In 16th century Europe, modern scientific rationalism was exactly what that society needed after centuries of stifling Christian dogma. In the 20th century West, post-modernism has been just the right medicine after centuries of stifling rationalistic, mechanistic utilitarianism. What a Buddhist insight brings to the world which has run aground on these two now stifling ideologies of modernism and post-modernism is not another ideology to replace them but a means to resolve the tension between the two by slipping through a Middle Way.

The shift in perception which enables us to see the deeper and ultimate level of our existential drives for substantiality exposes the problem of language. Language is the lens we use to perceive and to create the world around us. From a Buddhist standpoint, language arises with perception (sanya-khandha), the third in a group of five "aggregates" (khandhas) which constitute the whole of a human being. Perception as sanya-khandha is the capacity of mind to categorize and label, and to evaluate (right/wrong, good/bad). Perception has a simple labeling level and then a more complicated evaluating level which is connected with memory and mindfulness. Perception marks the fuzzy area between the awareness of physical senses and the compounded mental processing of the mind. Traditionally, Buddhism has viewed this mental processing as a delusive filter which arises out of the self-other dualism of the ignorant mind. Throughout Buddhist history, we find appeals to ending this mental concocting and to the "true" experience of reality that is beyond (or perhaps before) words and concepts - the untraceable consciousness of the liberated monk as the Buddha spoke of.

Once again, however, we find ourselves on the slippery slope of theory and ideology. Does this mean that enlightenment, the extinguishing of our existential lack, is the absence of thought? If so, this is the kind of nihilism which Shakyamuni refuted, and so we must look again more deeply at the crux of the issue. As Loy remarks elsewhere, "If we understand words/thought as a filter that needs to be eliminated in order to experience things/the world more immediately, we reconstitute the problem of dualism in the means chosen to overcome it....The point is not to avoid discriminating thought but to liberate it."10 In just such a way Shakyamuni qualified the five khandhas in terms of delusion by referring to them as "aggregates affected by clinging" (upadana-khandha).11 Thus we have another clue in trying to unravel this problem of lack. Whether it is death, not-self, language or perception, the key notion of the Buddha is not the problem of these "things" themselves but rather our tendency to cling and attach to them.12 Clinging and attachment (upadana) avoid the fear of our immediate insubstantiality by postponing it into a fear of future death. Clinging and attachment blot our perception and use of language, turning insight into dogma.

In Dependent Origination, we come face to face with perception and how clinging transforms our perception of the world into the daily lack of experiencing existential birth and death. Perception arises at perhaps the most critical point in the Dependent Origination process. This is the point of Contact (phassa) where our psycho-physically conditioned consciousness (vinyana) arises when a sense organ (nama, five sense media + mind) meets with a sense object (rupa).13 As a consequence of this Contact, both feeling (vedana-khandha) and perception (sanya-khandha) follow.14 Not only basic perceptions such as colors and tastes arise here but also deeper existential perceptions arise such as the sense of things being substantial (atta) and enduring (nicca). These perceptions are deeply ingrained in us over time both genetically and by social conditioning. From the standpoint of Dependent Origination, this is due to the multi-processing of its internal feedback system in which the experience of ego-self birth, death, and suffering (dukkha) as lack re-condition ignorant ways of perceiving the world.

Aging & Dying (jaramarana) Concocting (sankhara)

Ignorance (avijja) forms the basis for the perception that we truly exist as independent ego-selves (atta) with a consistent, unchanging (nicca) essence. These are what the Buddha considered as perverted perceptions (vipallasa sanya). These deeper perverted perceptions form the basis of a secondary level of perverted perceptions. Principally, this can involve misperceiving ultimate levels of discourse as conventional ones. For example, we understand death as merely the physical demise of the body in the future, because since we perceive our ego-self as an independent (atta) and lasting (nicca) entity, we cannot fathom how it could "die" any other way.

From these deep fundamental misperceptions based in Ignorance, we create an identity and world around us to solidify and perpetuate the ego-self. This is what Loy showed as the projected world of our lack creations. In Dependent Origination, this marks the next stage in the arising of Craving (tanha) and Clinging (upadana). In Clinging, especially, the Buddha explains in detail the kinds of things of which we make immortality projects. Firstly, there is sense clinging (kamupadana) in which we make sensual objects the focus of our lives and activities. Secondly, there is ideological clinging (ditthupadana) in which we make views, beliefs, theories and ideas the focus of our lives and activities. This kind of clinging helps to support and rationalize the immortality projects we create out of sense objects. Thirdly, there is behavioral clinging (silabbatupadana) in which we make rules, rituals and methodologies the focus of our lives and activities. Again, this kind of clinging creates methodologies by which to enact and validate the feelings and ideas which come from the first two. Finally, there is ego-self clinging (attavadupadana) in which we form a hardened sense of ego-self as the focus of our lives and activities. This last level is the core form of Clinging of which the other three are expressions coming together to form one grand immortality project that is our ego-self (atta).

Once Craving and Clinging have affected our perception, Existence (bhava) and Birth (jati) arise. As opposed to the physical birth of a person or being, this Existence and Birth refers to the maturation of the ego-self. On a conventional language level15, this birth has been understood as rebirth in one of the six realms (hell, animal, hungry ghost, warrior, human, and gods). On an ultimate language level, these heavens and hells are the quality of life we experience every day. For example, when we think and act like an animal (re: food or sex), we are Born (jati) in the realm of animals - here, right now on earth. What is important to see is that this event of Birth occurs very often, perhaps numerous times in one day.16 The Buddha taught that once we get involved in any kind of Craving and Clinging, it is pretty much a foregone conclusion that we will experience the Birth of ego-self. Therefore, on this micro level, the immortality project manifests in the growing development of an ego-self which plots, plans and schemes about how to become more real and to avoid death.

It follows that anything born eventually must grow old and die. This is a simple truth that one doesn't have to be a Buddhist to see. On the level of ultimate language, we can see this Death (jaramarana) as the fickleness of life, as the inability to sustain any state of satisfaction - a delicious meal is finished; a sunny day ends; a meeting with friends is over. Every time the Buddha discussed this kind of Death, he followed with the experiences of "sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair", that is, the experience of dukkha. Still understood from conventional language, Buddhism may then appear as something negative by positing that life is just a mass of suffering. Yet this state of dukkha is more principally linked to our outlook on life rather than life itself. With a perverted sense of who we are, independent ego-selves, we compound the inevitable difficulty of physically growing old and dying by making some vain attempt to escape it (i.e. through immortality projects).

The sticky part of the issue is to somehow see how this whole process is one tangled knot of string - that what we often hold onto as a precious source of well-being is rather a clung-to belief (ditthupadana) which reinforces our lack - that this lack which we hope so desperately to rid ourselves of is something that we secretly cherish, for it is constituted of all that we consider to be fundamental to our being. In Dependent Origination, the Buddha unraveled this knotted ball and thereby devised and taught a practical solution through committing a voluntary act of death in the suicide of the ego-self. This is the truly heroic act of real sacrifice found in all great religions and encased deep inside the heroic dramas of our cultures. Once the spiritual death of the ego-self occurs, physical death ceases to be an all consuming preoccupation which drives us into neurotic forms of worldly escapism.

The teachings of Shakyamuni, and Buddhism in general, are characteristically noted for their detailed attention to the personal level and not for their in-depth discussion of social phenomena. The agenda of modern socially engaged Buddhism has been to draw out these personal teachings to the social and cultural level. Whether one accepts this exercise depends on one's view of Buddhism and tradition in general. However, if one considers this socially engaged Buddhist exercise as inauthentic, then one might consider how authentic one feels about the cross breeding of Taoism and Buddhism which created Zen; or about the validity of the Pali Suttas which were not put into writing until 500 years after Shakyamuni's demise and then lost in the original language. Certainly, there are those who consider all of these as inauthentic. Such debates about authenticity tend to lead us into the blind alley of ontological debate ad nauseam and away from the practical quest of "the cessation of suffering". Furthermore, as noted above, if Buddhism is to have any relevance for a world about to take on the challenges of the 21st century, it must be able to dialogue with contemporary thinking and methodologies. Although this paper may at times seem to idealize Buddhist teachings over other ways of looking at the world, my intention is to bring to light some of the radical injunctions of Buddhist practice. I feel these injunctions have tremendous potential to assist this greater exercise of resolving the conflicts that are arising in this era of high modernity.

From this vantage point, I will attempt to extend this process of Dependent Origination to the cultural level. The process is not a simple one to one transference in which we graft the personal terms of Dependent Origination onto a cultural landscape. There is something dynamic, as Freud noted in his psychology of mass behavior, when individuals come together to form a group or community. This dynamic was not lost on the Buddha who actually did extend his explanation of Dependent Origination to include social phenomena:

Listen Ananda, through these conditions depending on feeling there is craving, with craving as condition there is searching; with searching as condition there is acquisition; depending on acquisition there is decision making; depending on this decision making there is lustful desire; depending on this lustful desire there is attachment/infatuation; depending on this infatuation there is possessiveness; depending on possessiveness there is stinginess; dependent on stinginess there is safe guarding; and depending on this safe guarding the are the taking up of stick and sword, quarrels, disputes, arguments, strife, abuse, lying.17

This dynamic perhaps accurately reflects the turmoil that Loy described in early 17th century Europe which culminated in the Treaty of Westphalia and the birth of the modern nation-state; or alternately, moderns fighting over consumer items at a store sale.

When we look at perverted perception (vipallasa sanya) on the cultural level, we can deeply penetrate the nature of a society where a mass of people are spellbound and controlled by some grand religious, political or economic power (and of course the great unspoken power of gender). Although the following examination is not complete, it is an attempt to extend Buddhist conceptions to meet contemporary issues, such as structural violence.

On the individual level, we saw how our most deeply ingrained misperceptions of selfness (atta) and permanence (nicca) develop from both genetic and social conditions over time through multiple spinnings of Dependent Origination. These misperceptions condition and taint our interactions with the world at the point of Contact. The interpenetrative nature of this process means that ignorant psycho-physical consciousness (vinyana) at Contact conditions perverted perception (sanya) which then re-embellishes ignorant consciousness and on and on. The result is a kind of "structural violence" in which an "I" (nama) not only misperceives "the world out there" (rupa), but is in turn conditioned and created by this ignorantly perceived "world". The two form a polarity which embellish each other, constricting and narrowing consciousness - that is, we become more and more unable to see (or unwilling to accept) the ways we construct and interact with the world around us.

Just as if two bundles of reeds were to stand, one supporting the other, even so consciousness (vinyana) is dependent on subject-and-object (namarupa), and subject-and-object is dependent on consciousness....Contact on Sense Media, and Feeling on Contact....and dukkha on Birth. Thus is the arising of the entire mass of suffering. But if one of those two bundles of reeds is drawn out, the other one would fall down, and if the latter is drawn, the former will fall down. Even so, with the cessation of subject-and-object, consciousness ceases; with the cessation of consciousness, subject-and-object ceases...(and so on). Thus comes to be the cessation of this entire mass of dukkha.18

If we can begin to first see the "bundles" which make up our various constructions of reality, we can learn to question our ways of perceiving the world. Then by "drawing out" old "bundles", we have the opportunity to access new kinds of reality. Perhaps it will take time to draw out all our acquired bundles, but at least we can begin to consciously choose different methods of perception (for example, exposing ourselves to new cultures and ways of living). The ultimate goal results not in the individual "I" gaining a "pure" vision of "the world", but rather the quenching of this subject-object polarity which conditions ignorant consciousness and perverted perception.
On a social level, this ignorant consciousness is embodied in the great leader (subjective "I") and the great institution (objective "world"). Together, they condition social perception in the form of cultural symbols and language. The great leader and great institution embody the way society perceives, interprets and talks about social reality. This is the fundamental crisis and injustice of most of our cultures which Loy has pointed to. Individuals and societies at large are held within "a constricted world, with other possibilities foreclosed by our blinkered, socially-sanctioned perceptions." The more constricted the symbolization and language is in a culture, the more unconscious is its perversion.

Throughout history, we can consistently see how the ultimate meanings of language and symbols have been flattened into conventional ones for the false transcendence of death. Most of the great revolutions in history have been about trying to widen our perceptions and restore our access to these deeper meanings. They have fought the lack projects of great leaders and institutions who have sought to substantialize their ego-selves through the idolatry of "trying to become real by completely identifying with something in the world as the source of our power." By mediating the symbols and language of the society, they imprison others in the service of their own lack project and convince them that this is also their own lack project. The Buddha's spiritual revolution against Brahminism was about liberating the masses from the lack project of the Brahmin priests. Marx's Communist Manifesto was about liberating workers from the lack project of the owners. Post-modernism has been about liberating people from the lack project of the nation state. The feminist movement has been about liberating us all from the lack project of patriarchs and their "kingdoms", and what remains to be seen is how the consumer will be liberated from the lack project of corporations. In all of these situations, some ultimate level of human meaning (spirituality, livelihood, sexuality) was being flattened and perverted to avoid the fear of insubstantiality which the ego-self dreads.

With the constricted consciousness and perverted perception of egotistical patriarchs, chairmans of the board, prime ministers and popes along with their institutions, the way is paved for the grand immortality projects of history in the form of social Clinging (upadana). This manifests in the control over economic and sexual relationships (kamupadana), the use of ideology (ditthupadana), the enforcement of grand ceremony and ritual (silabbatupadana), and the cult of personality (attavadupadana). The fruition is the Birth (jati) of our great social and cultural institutions - the Catholic Church, the Russian Communist Party, the American Corporation. Yet all of these institutions have quickly slid into Death (jaramarana) and dukkha.

The modern and post-modern revolutions liberative thrust has been in debunking the more personalized forms of structural violence, such as pontiff & church and king & empire. Yet have we been truly liberated? The deep unconsciousness of our secular modern lack projects (consumerism, scientism, and nationalism) dispute much improvement in our condition. Modernism debunked the subjective "I" of our ignorant social consciousness (i.e. pontiff and king), while post-modernism has debunked the objective "world" of our ignorant social consciousness (i.e. church and state). Yet has this led to a liberation in perception? Yes, in that we have been freed from those forms of perverted perception. No, in that the depersonalization of modern and post-modern structures has meant that the social structures of ignorant consciousness have become more unconscious. It could be argued that perception has actually become more constricted and narrow.

The particular flavor of structural violence in our rapidly developing post-modern world is the negligent and destructive anonymity of its social structures. Loy has shown how the papacy, the divine king, and finally the grand bureaucracy of the nation state became increasingly distant, impersonal and corrupt. The extreme depersonalized nature of modern institutions with revolving leaderships exacerbates the lack of personal trust and responsibility individuals feel for these institutions which dominate their lives. This "antithesis of community" creates the kind of indifference and helplessness many people feel today about their lives. Being liberated from church and state has led to a kind of nihilism in that we are left with just ourselves and no community of humanity to share ourselves with. God/Leader/State is an absentee parent and we are single children with no extended family for support. We experience oppression but we can find no oppressor. From a Buddhist standpoint, the oppressor is none other than ourselves - that is, our ego-self and the cyclical power of Dependent Origination to keep spinning and to keep the individual and society entrapped in the catch-22 of creating more perverted culture in the attempt to assure, perpetuate and develop the great missions of each culture.

All great perverted cultures have promised the transcendence of death through their own versions of the civilizing mission. For religious institutions, it is the promise to the faithful that all their obedience (and financial donations) will result in a millennial end of the world sometime in the near but unforeseen future. This promise has been enacted through religious crusades like the Catholic Church's or peasant revolts such as the White Lotus rebellions in China. For the nation state, this promise has been the end of history. Either Communist or Capitalist, the linear path of economic progress will eventually reward all our lavish labors in the secular utopia of the Capitalist leisure society or the Communist classless society. Communism enacted this promise through class conflict and collectivization. Capitalism has brought forth the "age of development" as its great civilizing mission. In all our cultural institutions which project the fear of not-self into a distant fear of physical demise, which engage in Flatland interpretations of ultimate discourse, there awaits an endless treadmill of angst and lack awaiting a release which will never arrive.

The Buddha often explained the Dependent Origination process in the opposite direction: with the cessation of Birth comes the cessation of Death, with the cessation of Existence comes the cessation of Birth, with the cessation of Clinging comes the cessation of Existence, and so on until with the cessation of Ignorance comes the cessation of Concocting.19 As we have noted, this is not a nihilism which denies a feeling, caring person and a vibrant, productive culture. It is rather the end of a neurotic ego-self which seeks for satisfaction in subjugating others to its self-centered drives and the end of a culture that imprisons people in a structural violence which serves these self-ish agendas.

Contact is the critical point where the mind and a sense object come together to condition a psycho-physical consciousness (vinyana). It forms the basis for the arising of perception, language and ultimately culture, and thus offers a situation where the meditative aspects of the Buddha's teaching can be used to short- circuit the concocting of immortality projects. As mentioned before, the Buddha taught that once we get involved in Clinging, Birth and Death and dukkha are pretty much forgone conclusions. Therefore, at Contact where our perverted perceptions and unskillful feelings arise, we can turn back from the Birth of ego-self:

When one no longer regards feeling (vedana) as self, or the self as being impercipient, or as being percipient and of a nature to feel, by not so regarding, he clings (upadana) to nothing in the world; not clinging, he is not excited by anything, and not being excited he gains personal liberation, and he knows: 'Birth is finished, the holy life has been led, done was what had to be done, there is nothing more here.'"20

In this passage, we can see that the ending of the perception of selfness ("no longer regards...the self ... as being percipient") is the foundation for Birth becoming "finished". Further, the Buddha balances this by also saying that one does not engage in the other extreme of negating self totally ("no longer regards ... the self as being impercipient"). In this way, he treads the Middle Way again by positing an undefined and unspoken path between extremes, the end of all theories. It is also interesting to note how differently this passage feels when we now read Birth and Death on the level of ultimate language. Perhaps it is true that on the conventional level such a person will no longer reincarnate into another physical existence. Yet we can now see how this person also achieves a state of consciousness in the present life where he/she can no longer be stirred by the fear of insubstantiality. Consequently, he/she has nothing left to run away from, no more immortality projects left to create. "Done was what had to be done" - the only authentic immortality project, the act of self-sacrifice in the killing of the ego-self. "There is nothing more here."

In the above passage, the Buddha gives us a clue as to where the practice of dropping all these perceptions begins. "When one no longer regards feeling (vedana) as self,.......by not so regarding, he clings (upadana) to nothing in the world." At the point of Contact (phassa) where Feeling (vedana) quickly arises and tends towards Craving (tanha) and Clinging (upadana), one can become aware, or conscious, of that Contact and Feeling and understand it as neither "I", "me" or "mine". With such awareness, one "clings (upadana) to nothing in the world." This is where the Buddha's meditative teachings become most important, since by developing meditative abilities through mindfulness with breathing (anapanasati), we are able to suspend the creation of Clinging and Birth.

In terms of culture, seeing the impermanent, dukkha and not-self qualities of our societies means following a Middle Way in addressing structural violence. Revolutions have so often lead to new kinds of tyranny because they believed that replacing old institutions with new ones would solve the problem of structural injustice. Yet as we noted, the Buddha focused more directly on the problematic dynamic of Clinging and ego-self arising rather than the actual container of identity in the five khandhas. Similarly, social reform movements must always critically evaluate social institutions. However, they then must determine what level of change is necessary before compulsively replacing one form of institutionalized lack project for another. Our compulsive fear of the tyranny of personality and distrust of ourselves has led us to mechanize our societies into depersonalized bureaucracies. Yet the fear remains in social structures which separate and regulate rather than unite and cultivate.
Critical evaluation of social institutions has been one of the gifts of the modern and post-modern revolutions. Human rights, Marxist analysis, and feminist critique represent some of the new ways mankind has developed to look at the way we relate to each other and society. A Buddhist contribution to this development is re-opening analysis of the ultimate levels of meaning in our lives. By developing concentration (samadhi) and insight (vipassana), a citizen takes the first step in reclaiming their own lack project from the projected lack project of their culture. This is the crucial first step of personal conscientization which the social revolution seeks. Such conscientization means that individuals examine and evaluate the deeper meanings of the symbols and language of leaders and institutions in order to confront structural violence - a teaching not lost on the Buddha in his encounter with the Kalamas:

The Kalamas said to the Buddha:"There are some monks and brahmins who visit Kesaputta. They expound and explain only their doctrines, the doctrines of others they despise, revile and pull to pieces. There is doubt and uncertainty in us concerning them. Which of these holy monks and brahmins spoke the truth and which falsehood?" The Buddha responded,"It is proper for you to doubt, to be uncertain; uncertainty has arisen in you about what is doubtful. Do not follow what has been heard many times; nor is tradition; nor is rumor; nor is scripture; nor is surmise; nor is axiom; nor is specious reasoning; nor is something that seems good after thinking about is; nor in another's seeming ability; nor is based on,'S/he is our teacher.' Kalamas, when you yourselves know these things are unskillful, blamable, not taken up by the wise, if followed lead to harm, abandon them. Kalamas, when you yourselves know these things are skillful, not blamable, taken up by the wise, if followed lead to benefit, take them up."21

Here the Buddha expands this practice of perceiving ultimate language onto the social level by advising the Kalamas to perceive the teachings of others directly ("when you yourselves know these things..") rather than through the mediation of their rhetoric.

As an individual debunks the lack projects of their culture, he/she then has the opportunity to debunk his/her own lack projects, most of which are culturally constructed. When we use concentration and insight to widen our perception of "reality", we are empowered to create more conscious lack projects. As a work of art still in progress, our lives and cultures may never actually reach the utopian image of a Buddha living in a Pure Land. Yet the vision of such "perfection" may be just the kind of ultimate goal which can empower us. When we are conscious of such a goal and able to read it on an ultimate language level, nirvana and the Pure Land are no longer mythic experiences of far off places. Rather, they are the peace we can experience at any time of the day when Clinging is not concocting Birth, Death and dukkha,22 and they also point to the greater potential for sustained peace within ourselves and our societies.

An increasing awareness of our own lack projects helps to create a lightness and flexibility in our activities. Since we are aware of how our ego-selves tend towards Clinging to forms, ideas and methods, we are able to employ mindfulness at Contact to short circuit the development of materialism, ideology and ritualism in our daily activities. Communities of individuals who tread lightly like this are able to create activities which involve input from all parties as opposed to the singular agenda of a mediated lack project. Such empowered participation creates a feeling of ownership by all parties involved, and when this occurs, the perceived polarity of "citizen" and "state" extinguishes, as does the subjective "I" and the objective "world".

Although the above may seem too utopian, it is an attempt to re-envision an ultimate goal which our Flatland modern and post-modern societies lack - modernity posits some fuzzy far off image of total economic development and technological efficiency while post-modernity rejects any possibility of a commonly held vision for a world of disembodied flux. Many of the failures in modern development have not been due to a lack of intelligent reflection on social conditions. Rather, ultimate questions of how more possessions and more knowledge bring deeper existential satisfaction are not confronted since economic, material and educational development are almost exclusively defined and guided by modernist impulses. Material and statistical improvement is taken as end in itself, as happiness itself, rather than as a means to creating happiness. If spiritual and religious groups can find ways to be comprehensible to those in these modern bureaucratic systems, an essential gap may be bridged in the current modern dualism of individual and social transformation. Re-inhabiting the Flatland means bringing back human values and the conscious search for ultimate meanings. Then, we might be able to realize an economic and technological development which helps to fulfill our deepest existential questions.

Thus far, I have attempted to show how the practices of concentration and insight offer subtle but significant ways to alter our perception and release ourselves from individual and cultural lack projects. For certain, they are not the easiest of practices. Even Buddhists like the Japanese Pure Land masters felt such meditative practices were unrealistic for the average citizen. Consequently, they developed what seem to be unorthodox Buddhist approaches to liberation through faith. Theravada Buddhism, meanwhile, has used the more orthodox approach of virtuous action or moral discipline as the gateway to the ultimate dimension of meditative concentration and insight. Therefore, in actually beginning practice, we might start from more the conventional and then work more deeply into the subtle, ultimate levels of practice.
In this post-modern world of sound bites, cellular phones, and head spinning media, most of us have rather frayed concentration abilities for stepping back from perverted perception at Contact. In this way, we all have developed strong abilities in creating Birth and Death. This intimate experience with Death (jaramarana) and dukkha actually provides a very powerful manure for growing something healthy. By debunking the creator God, the divine King, and the bureaucratic State, the modern and post-modern revolutions have increasingly thrown people back into themselves. As discussed above, this introspectiveness can be a healthy development for throwing off culturally concocted lack projects.

Yet it is this very activity of questioning and doubting that has driven post-modern man into a dark corner where the light of a higher truth does not exist. By banishing the ultimate to the unconscious, modern culture has deconstructed itself into a meaningless physiology of mechanical processes. A crisis of faith seems to have occurred when our societies are focused on the quick transient highs of consumerism. Here in Japan, more and more young college graduates have become nihilistic as once stable and guaranteed jobs dry up. Meanwhile, economic experts continue to rebuke traditional values of frugality by calling for more spending now and less savings for the future. Is this the apex of the modern vision - a kind of frivolous and irresponsible preoccupation with short term pleasures? Without constructively facing the religious and the more ultimate levels of meaning, our humanity has run aground on materiality and the conventional.

This seeming dead-end is again where a religious standpoint can aid the modernist project. The strength of modern and post-modern intellectual analysis needs its complementary function in the intuitive power of faith. The concept of faith has, of course, become problematic since its conventional meaning has come to dominate its ultimate meaning. Conventionally, faith has become almost a dirty word in terms of a "blind faith" in which a priest, guru or religious institution mediates the religious experience of an individual by convincing them to believe in the teacher's perception of reality.

The Buddhist term for faith, saddha, however, has sometimes been interpreted as confidence.23 Saddha as confidence is a "faith" backed up by the power of critical inquiry (yoniso-manasikara) and developed through virtuous action (sila).24 In teaching Dependent Origination, the Buddha described a completely different progression from the one mentioned above - one not of ego-self birth (samudayavara) but of the extinction of the ego-self (nirodhavara). In this progression, saddha gives rise to joy (pamojja), concentration (samadhi), letting go (viraga) and ultimately nirvana, the death of death itself.25

For those who take comfort in the clear rationality of Buddhist philosophy and meditation, it might come as a shock to find within one of the Buddha's core teachings "faith" as the linchpin towards transformation. A deeper exploration of the meaning of faith and this term saddha may, however, lead us to something important missing in traversing this path. The Buddha generally began with saddha as the first step in coming out of Death and dukkha. However, we can also find instances in which virtue (sila) and systematic reflection (yoniso-manasikara) form the beginning of this progression.26 Instead of arguing over which of these entry ways is more authentic, I would suggest that we look at how faith (saddha), virtue (sila) and systematic reflection (yoniso-manasikara) interpenetrate and actually form a single multi-faceted aspect of practice.

In this way, saddha should be regarded as part of a larger process of quenching the ego-self. Standing alone and isolated, faith is more prone to the flattening of conventional language in blind faith. However, integrated with systematic reflection and virtue, saddha becomes not a mediated experience of perverted perception, but rather a practically minded experience of deep insight. In all of the great world religions we can find these three elements of confidence (saddha), virtuous conduct (sila) and systematic reflection (yoniso-manasikara), though often lost, like Christian meditation, under years of conventional Flatland tyranny. The skillful use of Christian or Muslim faith or the skillful use of western scientific reflection may also form components of the path towards enlightenment (nibbana). In this way, the Buddha's teachings represent a non-exclusive and naturally existing method of spiritual cultivation which respects and does not demand the abandoning of our particular cultural tradition. This is the deeper, ultimate level meaning of religion.

In Dependent Origination, the experience of Death and dukkha not only reconditions ignorant consciousness and perverted perception, but may give way to an experience of faith. Similarly, as the deepening alienation and angst of post-modern culture throws us back into ourselves, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the constricted perception of a life spent acquiring consumer durables. Suffering is the fertile ground for new forms of awareness since its painful nature pushes us to question how we perceive the world. Sometimes this questioning ends in a nihilist negation of the world. However, just as often it recreates a moment of concentration and insight. The experience of suffering can expand consciousness and thrown us into a place of clearer perception into the way things work. This insight gained from the experience of suffering leads to the experience of saddha - that there can be an end to the suffering and a new way of experiencing the world. From such insight and saddha, the energy for action arises.

What the world's great religious traditions offer to this naturally arising experience of suffering-insight-faith-action are ways to validate the insight, temper the faith and focus the action. These traditions, practiced in an authentic way, guide the slippery work of deciphering the concocting power of the ego-self and avoiding its power to create new lack projects. In the way the subjective "I" and the objective "world" form bundles which mutually support ignorant consciousness, concentration with insight and a multi-faceted practice of faith mutually support the resurrection of ultimate levels of meaning. When the ultimate is made conscious again, we re-inhabit the Flatland.

The arising of virtuous action (sila) out of the experience of suffering-insight-faith is something that has already begun in the modern world. The post-modern debunking of the nation-state, mechanistic science and corporate capitalism has helped lead to the development of "alternative" culture. Non-governmental and non-profit organizations, civil society groups like food cooperatives and environmental watchdogs, alternative communities based in religious or humanistic ideals are all examples of these attempts to actively resolve the crises inherent in the modernistic project. What can Buddhism contribute to this work?

As a discipline concerned with ultimate questions, it might seem that Buddhism does not have much relevant to offer the mechanics of a new economic paradigm or of a truly egalitarian democratic system. However, as any individual discipline needs to be empowered to participate actively in the creation of a just society, Buddhism and other religious faiths need to be rehabilitated in the eyes of distrustful modern rationality. Pushing the religious out of the public sphere and confining it to private consumption does not free society from religious issues. Rather, it represses them and leaves them to individuals and individual groups to work out on their own. Instead of keeping the public safe from the irrational dictates of religion, this banishment is rather a cop-out on the very difficult but essential task of creating a common public spirituality which still honors diverse religious traditions. The rise of small cults into mass movements and warfare created by religious fundamentalism are clear examples today of this neglected responsibility.

Religion is a society's conscience. It helps to decide what is morally right and wrong on a conventional level, and to connect our daily activities to the meaning of life and death on the ultimate level. In the way that concentration and insight helps to monitor our perception of reality, a healthy and vibrant religion helps to monitor our perception of culture and society. One of the specific ways religions can perform this role and support the creation of a common global spirituality is by updating their interpretations of virtuous action (sila) for the post-modern world.

In orthodox Buddhism, this virtue has been interpreted as the strict maintenance of codes of discipline, such the 227 rules for monks and 311 for nuns. For lay followers, it encompasses the 5 rules (pancasila) of abstaining from 1) taking life or killing, 2) taking what is not given or stealing, 3) committing adultery or other forms of sexual misconduct, 4) speaking falsely or lying, and 5) abusing intoxicating substances. Yet a narrow definition of sila in terms of simply discipline or morality falls into the same trap as interpreting saddha simply as faith.

In a similar way, the modern rule of law which developed with the rise of the nation-state serves as a regulator of selfish human appetites.27 As Loy notes, based on fear and a lack of trust in others, individuals are not empowered to act pro-actively with personal responsibility. We become entrapped in the structural violence of an abstract and depersonalized modern legal system which does not work to develop positive behavior. When we look at the modern ideal of a free and democratic society in the United States, we see that it has one of the highest percentages of a population in prison in the world. Further, the fact that 70 percent of this prison population consists of people of color, half of them being Afro American,28 illustrates the irrational racism of this purportedly rational modern system. As consumer culture blossoms in greed and delusion, the laws pile up in an attempt to regulate these out of control social defilements. With no ethic towards creative benefit, almost everyone winds up committing one crime or another.

In the same way that an informed faith becomes a kind of confidence, an informed morality becomes a kind of virtuous action. Such virtue is practiced intelligently and systematically in that it sees beyond the surfaces of "being good" or "following the rules". This aspect reads into the ultimate language of virtue and avoids Clinging to rules (silabbatupadana) as another form of immortality project. Furthermore, this virtue is not just intellectually calculating, but is also informed by the deep heart of compassion. This is the energy and power of true faith (saddha) in which we act virtuously not out of our own self centered drive for purity, but out of a strong confidence that practicing virtue benefits others through non-harmful ways of living. Thus the five basic sila can be turned around into positive action so that they become 1) seeking to preserve and support life, 2) practicing generosity in material form and time, 3) promoting and supporting healthy and responsible relationships, 4) developing deeper connection with our own selves and with others, and 5) consuming substances which promote health and awareness.29
From this kind of personal virtuous action, we need to examine how our once personalized and now depersonalized social systems can embody these human values of virtue.

1) Abstaining from Taking Life & Preserving and Supporting Life involves working for the bio-diversity of our planet and human cultures which is being destroyed by abstract, depersonalized structures. It also involves supporting proper political leadership and institutions which hold the ultimate means for abusing immortality projects though killing. Such virtuous action thus involves creating a non-violent culture through opposing the proliferation of armaments and the improper use of media to stimulate violent tendencies.

2) Abstaining from Taking What is Not Given & Practicing Generosity and Simplicity involves opposing corruption and the centralization of the control of resources. Unaccountable centralized resource control such as in world lending bodies like the IMF, international banks, and large corporations violates the spirit of democracy and deprives most ordinary people the empowerment, participation and feeling of ownership in their daily lives. The gift economy which is based on human relationship and generosity (dana) should have equal footing with market economy values such as efficiency, speed and certain benefits of anonymity. Material simplicity is an essential value which supports the first precept of supporting bio-diversity through less consumption while not depriving others of their share of resources.

3) Abstaining from Sexual Misconduct & Promoting Right Relationship involves not only opposing the exploitation of women and supporting women's empowerment, but opposing other forms of inter-relational exploitation such as racism and classicism. Proper relationships extend from our inner relationship with ourselves outward towards our family, our relations, our community and ultimately the sentient natural world around us. Proper relationship also involves re-valuing life stages from birth to maturity to old age to death and commemorating them in meaningful ways with other loved ones.

4) Abstaining from False Speech & Developing Deeper Correspondence within Ourselves and with Others involves opposing exploitative media. When media resources are concentrated in a few large multi-national corporations which are tied to the military industrial complex, media becomes an integral way of supporting the lack projects of the militaristic nation-state and the profiteering corporation. This precept also involves creating proper education which means empowering people to understand ultimate language and to interpret religion and art on their own terms. This involves the development of proper mentorship where teachers are neither forgotten nor worshipped. The Buddhist concept of spiritual companion or guide (kalyanamitta) offers one progressive model.

5) Abstaining from the Misuse of Intoxicants & Transforming Substances to Promote Health and Awareness involves opposing consumerism and supporting the mindful consumption of all goods whether they be material or mental. This precept reflects back on the first and second precepts in that by practicing a simple lifestyle of consumption, we practice generosity and support the diversity of life on this planet. Such simplicity touches on the spiritual practice of renunciation which involves not only the effort to be disciplined in our desires but the freedom experienced in living lightly, and further, the ultimate meaning of having things let go of us, like false perceptions, and even life. Renunciation reflects an ease in letting go because of the great fullness which we experience when we have quenched the insatiable energy of lack.

As a white, American male living in urban Japan, the context of this paper is mostly the western experience of modernity with a dash of global post-modernity thrown in. Having lived both in Thailand and Indonesia, perhaps I also have some small appreciation for those living more on the margins of this cultural experience of modernity. Any beneficial perspectives from the above ideas, I think, must be considered with this in mind. I say this since I feel that in coming to an overall grips with our crisis of identity in the globalized 21st century, we must begin by examining the modern experience through the particular histories of our own cultures.
Without the specific context of our own cultural experience, we will not have the grounded and contextual understanding for creating practical and valuable solutions. By learning from westerners about the roots of modernity, from Asians and southerners about the fundamental colonial nature of modernity, from women and people of color about the irrational justice of modernity, and so on, we may collage together a larger understanding of what is happening to us in these times.
On the other hand, if we construct our understanding from the heavens of intellectual abstraction, we will end up with an ideology (ditthupadana) by which to save the world from its lack by creating more lack - thus losing sight of the central focus of "suffering and the end of suffering". For all that the modern age has brought us in harnessing the higher abstract powers of the mind, this tendency towards abstraction has also been one of its great problems. The nation-state and corporation are both examples of grand abstraction freeing individuals to pursue certain aims yet also tearing people away from the kinds of personal contact that make life real and meaningful. Therefore, in the globalized world of blurred cultural and national barriers, we should all learn to become conscious of where we stand. Then, by making our beliefs and commitments known in the beginning, we may work together from a ground of understanding in order to live our lives together as community - in our homes, neighborhoods, nations, or planet.

NOTES:
1 Wilber, The Marriage of Sense and Soul : Integrating Science and Religion (New York: Random House, 1998), 111-14.
2 Loy, David Lack and Transcendence: The Problem of Death and Life in Psychotherapy, Existentialism and Buddhism (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1996), 69-70.
3 Wilber, The Marriage of Sense and Soul , 124-31.
4 K.N. Jayatilleke, The Message of the Buddha (London: 1975), 33.
5 Digha Nikaya, Potthapada Sutta : States of Consciousness, 9:53 (i.202).
6 For an analysis of this "flattening" of the teaching of Dependent Origination see Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, Paticca samuppada : Practical Dependent Origination (Nonthaburi, Thailand: Vuddhidhamma Fund, 1992)
7 Nanananda Bhikkhu, Concept and Reality in Early Buddhist Thought (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1971/86), 49.
8 Majjhima Nikaya, Culamalunkya Sutta: The Shorter Discourse to Malunkyaputta, 63 (ii.426-32).
9 Majjhima Nikaya, Alagaddupama Sutta : The Simile of the Snake, 22:36-38 (i.140).
10 Loy, Lack and Transcendence , 114.
11 Majjhima Nikaya, Culavedalla Sutta : The Shorter Series of Questions and Answers, 44 (i.299).
12 For a critique by the Buddha on clinging to language see Majjhima Nikaya, Aranavibhanga Sutta : The Exposition of Non-Conflict, 139:12 (iii.234-35).
13 The Buddha described the arising of Contact (phassa) as, "Dependent on the eye (nama) and forms (rupa), eye-consciousness (vinyana) arises. The meeting of the three is Contact (phassa). With Contact as condition, there is Feeling (vedana)....Craving (tanha).....Clinging (upadana) .....Existence (bhava).... Birth (jati) ....Aging&Dying (jaramarana), sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair. Thus arises the entire mass of dukkha." Samyutta-nikaya, Nidana-vagga (vol. 2), Nidana-Samyutta (chap. 1), Gahapati-vagga (5), Sutta 5.
14 Elsewhere, the Buddha describes this same arising of Contact as leading into the arising of the rest of the khandhas of feeling (vedana), perception (sanya) and mental formations (sankhara). Majjhima-nikaya, Madhupindika Sutta : The Honeyball, 18:16 (i.111-112).
15 Buddhadasa Bhikkhu dedicated much of his teaching career clarifying the difference between ultimate or Dhammic language and conventional or People language, see "Two Kinds of Language: Everyday Language & Dhamma Language" in Key to Natural Truth (Bangkok: the Dhamma Study and Practice Group, 1988).
16 Buddhadasa, "Two Kinds of Language", 29-30.
17 Digha Nikaya, Mahanidana Sutta : The Great Discourse on Origination, 15:9 (ii.58-59).
18 Samyutta Nikaya II. 114.
19 Majjhima Nikaya, Mahatanhasankhaya Sutta : The Greater Discourse on the Destruction of Craving, 38:21 (i.264).
20 Digha Nikaya, Mahanidana Sutta : The Great Discourse on Origination, 15:32 (ii.68).
21 Anguttara Nikaya, Kalama Sutta, III. 65.
22 Buddhadasa Bhikkhu talks of the experience of mini-nibbana in daily life in Nibbana for Everyone (Chaiya, Thailand: Dhammadana Foundation, 1996)
23 In Pure Land Buddhism, the idea of faith is well developed in the term anjin (established mind) and sanjin (three minds), both which refer to a faith that is deep in the confidence of realization.
24 Phra Prayudh Payutto, Buddhadhamma : Natural Laws and Values for Life, trans. Grant A. Olson (Albany, NY: State University of New York SUNY Press, 1995), 200-223.
25 Payutto, P.A., Dependent Origination : The Buddhist Law of Conditionality, trans. Bruce Evans, (Bangkok: Buddhadhamma Foundation, 1994), 85-97.
26 for sila, Anguttara Nikaya v. 311 and for yoniso-manasikara, Digha Nikaya, Dasuttara Sutta: Expanding Decades, 34:2.2 (iii.288-91).
27 For an analysis of how modern law developed out of the Papal reform of the 11th century see Berman, Harold Law and Revolution : The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983).
28 Dunlap, Louise "Walking for Change : New York Prisons and Beyond" Turning Wheel : Journal of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship Fall, 1999.
29 see for example, Thich Nhat Hanh, For a Future to Be Possible : Commentaries on the Five Wonderful Precepts (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1993).

Jonathan Watts
Fellow - Jodo Shu Research Institute, Tokyo, Japan
Coordinator - Think Sangha
e-mail: jonaomi@ari.bekkoame.ne.jp