Tan, for his part, has now stated on the Church’s website that he recognizes that his comments were “wrong” and offensive.” A smart move, if only because such defamation is considered a punishable offense in Singapore. (Frankly, it the move seems as calculated as Tan’s onstage conversations seem scripted.) But the fact remains: an apology was called for, and, in this case, delivered.

So what did “Pastor Tony” say? We’ve got video after the jump.

Here’s are three videos with Tan’s divisive comments on Buddhism and “false religions” in general.

Have comments of your own? Please share them. Perhaps we can help those who might be given to believing what Tan is saying that, in fact, there’s nothing demonic about those who practice in a way so different from his.

See also our coverage on Brit Hume’s comments about Buddhism and Christianity, and the ensuing media fallout. Click here.

Who among us hasn’t asked why war is such a persistent feature of human life? The most common answer is that people make war because society has taught them to make war. In their controversial book, Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World, obstetrician and biologist Malcolm Potts and journalist Thomas Hayden claim instead that warring aggression is built into our species. There are measures we can take, however, to increase the likelihood of peace breaking out instead of war, the authors say, and their prescriptions focus mostly on empowering women.

I talked with Malcolm Potts in his office at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is the Bixby Professor in the School of Public Health.

What experiences led you to explore connections between sex and war?

I grew up in England during the Second World War in an area with several bomber bases. There were all these wonderfully brave young men. We used to see them in church. Their job was to drop bombs on Germany, bombs that would kill women and children. And of course many of them died in the effort. From a young age, then, I asked, “Why do people do this sort of thing?”

When I was older and working as a physician in war-torn areas, I saw the consequences of war firsthand and started asking the question in a more insistent way. As an obstetrician and then a biologist, I also took a strong interest in the evolution of human sexuality, and wrote a book called Ever Since Adam and Eve, which pushed my thoughts forward. They began to link up with the lingering question of why, out of the thousands of mammalian species, only humans and a few others exhibit the behavior known as team aggression, which in its most full-blown form we call “war.”

But wars are carried out by states, not small teams.

War builds on innumerable small episodes of team aggression. Wars are fought by small teams: the crew, the squad, the ten people in the trench with you. The state manipulates and organizes that, but at the level of the individual aggressor it’s still the same basic behavior.

Isn’t violence common in many species?

A lot of animals are violent for all of the obvious competitive reasons, but team aggression, which is a very costly behavior, occurs when teams of adults, almost always males, attack and kill individuals of the same species. It depends on being an intelligent social animal that has a territory and resources to guard and enlarge. For millions of years, it was an adaptive behavior: it gave a man more resources. A man with more resources would attract more sexual partners and therefore have more offspring and pass on more genes, which is what evolution is all about. Evolution is not good or bad; it’s just what works. It gives us some marvelous things, like the human eye, and some ugly things, like the fact that teams of men in the prime of life band together to murder others.

Why in teams?

Originally, the men would have been related to each other, but in the modern world a kinship can be formed through boot camp and other rituals of bonding. In the Gaza Strip, some terrorists were all members of the same football team, so they felt as if they were a “band of brothers,” as Shakespeare put it. Men in the foxholes told William Manchester that they fought not for flag or country, but for one another.

Women don’t do this?

Women will fight very bravely if they or their children are threatened, but we could not find a single example in the whole of human history where women have banded together spontaneously and systematically and deliberately gone out to kill other human beings.

Do women play a part in your theory of the sources of war-making?

Yes. Historically, women would be drawn to men with more resources. We still see this today, most starkly in situations such as poor women who went to Somalia to marry pirates, who were newly and publicly wealthy.

Does your book, then, present a pessimistic view of human beings?

It is both pessimistic and optimistic. Saying we have an innate predisposition to kill our neighbors is a somber hypothesis. But we’re doing it less frequently than we used to, which means we look at the world in a very different way now. Most people will say that the twentieth century was the most violent in human history, but in fact it was probably the most peaceful. If we look at deaths by team aggression against total population size, we’re getting much less violent. Unfortunately we also have many more low-cost technologies, like improvised explosive devices, and many more powerful technologies, i.e., weapons of mass destruction, for killing each other. So there is urgency.

Human beings present a huge contrast. We can be extraordinarily self-sacrificing, loving, and empathetic, but at the same time so violent. It seems we’ve had to evolve a sort of switch we flip to make it possible to dehumanize other people. We inherit predispositions built deep into our nature, such as a predisposition to learn language. I shouldn’t be surprised, then, that our brain has frameworks of aggression buried deep within it.

Are you saying that we have to make war? We can’t help ourselves?

No. We don’t have to do it, but I think we will more effectively deal with our violent nature if we understand it as a universal attribute from the evolutionary history of our species rather than an aberration.

So, just because a predisposition developed over a vastly long period of time because it was adaptive doesn’t mean it is permanently adaptive?

Indeed. As conditions change, it may become less adaptive, and that is certainly what I believe about war. Team aggression at the level of killing has no purpose now, but it emerges nonetheless. The evolution of our bodies is very slow, so something that took tens of thousands of years to evolve is still there to be dealt with, even after it has no seeming purpose. It’s helpful and enlightening to look at where we’ve come from in evolution. Then we can better define the things we don’t like, and ask whether we can do anything about them. We can only do that if we’re honest about where they’re really coming from. For example, if we persist in the naïve idea that all violence is culturally determined and we obscure the differences between men and women, that’s not going to get us anywhere.

So, what is going to get us somewhere?

Well, I know it sounds simplistic, but nonetheless it’s important for men to have healthy outlets for this behavioral predisposition. It must be respected. Team sports have all the elements of bonding and aggression that are the key elements in war. Also, doing activities together like climbing a mountain can draw on the same impulses. The mountain is the enemy. It satisfies some of the same urges. Yes, there are dangers, but they are more controllable than the dangers of real war, where a lot of people get killed.

What about the role of women?

It must be said, without being vulgar, that human sexual behavior is very asymmetrical. A woman has only a few pregnancies in a lifetime, whereas, all things being equal, a man could have hundreds of children in a lifetime. Gestation and child-rearing give women an inherent orientation to long-range decisions. Also, men are evolved to take risks and be territorial. Women lived in the territory carved out by men. They benefited more from in-group cooperation and social stability than out-group hostility. As a result, they tend to take a longer view and to seek consensus. As we said in the book, “If evolution provides the poison root of warfare, it has also supplied an important antidote. We overlook women’s powerful evolutionary heritage at our collective peril.”

What is that antidote?

For one, empower women with education and more opportunities and thereby also increase the number of women leaders, the number of women in parliaments and legislatures.

How do reproductive rights play a role?

We must have energetic efforts to support reproductive autonomy. When women can control their own fertility, family size begins to fall. As family size falls, education and development increase, as does the advancement of women’s role in society. Throughout the world there is plenty of demand for family planning on the part of women, but the evolved male drive to control female reproduction often stands in the way. Male theologians, male legislators, and conservative male doctors create and maintain the barriers to family planning. All in all, then, energetic efforts at empowerment of women will mitigate the effects of the warring nature we have inherited. Peace breaks out when women have more control over their bodies and more influence in their societies.

You can learn more about Sex and War at the author’s website or by viewing a video of a presentation by them at Ask a Scientist on FORA.tv.

Not caught by distractions, forms, not sucked into inner dreaming, we are the open gate, open threshold of both eyes settled in a serene gaze, not trapped by the world, nor away from it. Looking at nothing in particular, we are looking at everything.

Below is today’s Sit-A-Long video. Remember: recording ends soon after the beginning bells; a sitting time of 20 to 35 minutes is recommended.

The Shambhala Sun offers the inspiration of loving-kindness from the best Buddhist teachers. And now, in honor of Valentine’s Day, you can get True Love and Real Life—a lovely, downloadable digital book—when you order a subscription for you, or someone you love.

Explore love and relationships with today’s leading spiritual voices inspired by Buddhist wisdom. Just click here to order.

And all of this life and world can be known too as sacred, a jewel, with not one thing to add, not one thing to take away. Perfectly just-what-it-is.

But we have to be very cautious here, not misunderstand … Saying that there is “no place to go, no destination” does not mean that there are not good and bad paths to get there! Saying “there is nothing that need be done” does—not—mean there is nothing to do. Saying that “nothing is in need of change” does—not—mean that “nothing is in need of change.” 

Saying “we are already Buddha” is not enough if we don’t realize that, act like that! Click through to watch today’s talk, and to “sit-a-long”:

Simple, exaggerated example …

Perhaps a fellow sits down to Zazen for the first time who is a violent man, a thief and alcoholic. He hears that “all is Buddha just as it is“, so thinks that Zen practice means “all is a jewel just as it is, so thus maybe I can simply stay that way, just drink and beat my wife and rob strangers“. Well, no, because while a thief and wife-beater is just that … a thief and wife-beater, yet a Buddha nonetheless … still, someone filled with such anger and greed and empty holes to fill in their psyche is not really “at peace with how things are” (or he would not beat and steal and need to self-medicate). In other words, he takes and craves and acts out anger and frustration because he does not truly understand “peace with this life as it is” … because if he did, he would not need to be those violent, punishing ways.

If the angry, violent fellow truly knew “completeness“, truly had “no hole in need of filling“, “nothing lacking” everything “complete just as it is” … well, he simply would not have need to do violence, steal and take drugs to cover his inner pain.

You see … kind of a self-fulfilling Catch-22.

Thus, our “goalless sitting” in Zazen is –not– merely sitting on our butts, self-satisfied, feeling that we “just have to sit here and we are Buddha“. Far from it. It is, instead, too-the-marrow dropping of all need and lack. That is very different. Someone’s “just sitting around” doing nothing, going no where, complacent or resigned, giving up, killing time, is not in any way the same as “Just Sitting” practice wherein nothing need be done, with no where that we can go or need go, for all is faced ‘head on’ and energetically as already whole and complete … even while we realize that the choices we make in life have consequences, that how we choose to walk the walk in this life, and the directions we choose to go, do make a difference!

For this reason, through our Zazen practice, we can taste that each second of life is a perfect arriving, there is no place to go or to which we need go. Yet, we have to know that, despite having ever and always already arrived, we keep living nonetheless, and how we do that is very important. The choices we make have consequences. So, if someone were to think I am saying, “All you need to do in Zazen is sit down on one’s hindquarters, and that’s enough … just twiddle your thumbs in the ‘Cosmic Mudra’ and you are Buddha” then, respectfully, I believe they do not get my point. But if they understand, “There is absolutely no place to be, where one needs to be or elsewhere where one can be, than on that Zafu in that moment, and that moment itself is all complete, all-encompassing, always at home, the total doing of All Life, Time and Space fully realized” … they are closer to the flavor.

Then, if they rise up from the Zafu … sensing that they are “Buddha” … and thus try to act in life a bit more how a Buddha would act, they get the point.

Zazen seeks no change, needs no change, is complete and whole … and that realization works a revolutionary change.

But saying “there is nothing in need of change, we are always whole and completely who we are” … does not mean that there is not much about us in need of change to allow us to live well! (Zen teachers talk out of both sides of a no sided mouth! ) We can live seeing life from both angles… as complete, yet sometimes with much perhaps to repair … as all paths the same, but with some that lead off a cliff … at once.

Does that make sense … in a Zenny way?

(Oh, and a reminder … We will have OUR 4-hour MONTHLY ZAZENKAI SITTING via NETCAST this weekend, which everyone can join from home LIVE or by the REAL TIME, ANY TIME recorded version, no different from the LIVE sitting. Information is at this link.)

Below is today’s Sit-A-Long video. Remember: recording ends soon after the beginning bells; a sitting time of 20 to 35 minutes is recommended.

To view all of Jundo and Taigu’s SunSpace posts, including earlier installments of Zazen for Beginners, click here.

To subscribe to the RSS for the “sit-a-longs”, and be notified of new postings, click here.

In this new Shambhala Sun Audio clip, the author of The Complete Tassajara Cookbook talks with Shambhala Sun Associate Editor Andrea Miller about the aesthetics of food, cooking “in the dark,” his relationship with Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, “insipid tomatoes,” and more.

Click through to listen, and to read “Let Your Passion Cook” in its entirety — along with a favorite Brown recipe.

Just click this player to listen:

Download audio file (Shambhala-Sun-Audio-Edward-Espe-Brown-on-mindful-cooking-and-more.mp3)

Or, to download or open the player in a new window, click here.

To read “Let Your Passion Cook,” Edward Espe Brown’s feature contribution to our new issue, click here. (There you’ll also find a link to one of Brown’s favorite recipes for you to try.)

And for more about applying mindfulness to every aspect of your life, browse our new “Guide to Mindful Living” issue, at newsstands now.

Thanks, as always, for listening to Shambhala Sun Audio.

I just finished reading Nando Parrado’s account of his 72-day ordeal of pain and suffering in the South American cordillera, Miracle in the Andes (2006). It’s an extraordinary testimony of his survival, along with 15 out of 45 people, most of them rugby teammates, after their privately chartered airplane crashes into the side of a volcano en route from Montevideo, Uruguay to San Fernando, Chile and comes to rest on a glacier at nearly 12,000 feet above sea level. Instead of having these members of the Old Christians rugby team play an exhibition game in Chile, the boys—most of them no more than 23 years old—find themselves relying on each other and their most intimate interior selves as they struggle to survive after the Argentine, Uruguayan and Chilean rescue teams have given up the search. Parrado’s observations about the exterior landscape in which he survives impressed me as a geologist. Even more amazing however were his remarks about the interior landscape of survival because to me they resonated with Buddhist thinking about living with suffering.

I’d read Alive (1975), Piers Paul Read’s gruesome and sensational tale of this disaster replete with charges of cannibalism and ostensibly heroic feats, as a high school student in the late seventies; as much as I can remember, it bears little resemblance to the book I just read.  In this book, Parrado details the mountainous landscape that hosts the plane’s fuselage including notes about the appearance of glacial ice, volcanic rocks, sedimentary strata, skin-shredding talus slopes, and house-sized boulders reposing in braided streams.  Even more noteworthy is his deep appreciation of the Earth’s vast scales of geologic time. Parrado writes: “I felt an involuntary sense of privilege and gratitude, as humans often do when treated to one of nature’s wonders, but it lasted only a moment. After my education on the mountain, I understood that all this beauty was not for me. The Andes had staged this spectacle for millions of years, long before humans even walked the earth, and it would continue to do so after all of us were gone” (203). Parrado has the eye of a naturalist. Benefiting from the gift of time more than 30 years after his hardship he describes with poetic accuracy this remote, inaccessible high-reaching cordillera, a terrain that most people will never encounter.

Parrado’s description of this trek to salvation on his own behalf, as well as that of other survivors, hints at the truly remarkable interior landscape to which his trial allowed access:

On the morning of December 8, the seventh day of our trek, the punishing snow cover began to give way to scattered patches of gray ice and fields of sharp loose rubble. I was weakening rapidly. Each step now required supreme effort, and a total concentration of my will. My mind had narrowed until there was no room in my consciousness for anything but my next stride, the careful placement of a foot, the critical issue of moving forward….

I would feel an apprehension of the age and experience of the mountains, and realize that they had stood here silent and oblivious, as civilizations rose and fell. Against the backdrop of the Andes, it was impossible to ignore the fact that human life was just a tiny blip in time, and I knew that if the mountains had minds, our lives would pass too quickly for them to notice. It struck me, though, that even the mountains were not eternal. If the earth lasts long enough, all these peaks will someday crumble to dust. So what is the significance of a single human life? Why do we struggle? Why do we endure such suffering and pain? What keeps us battling so desperately to live, when we could simply surrender, sink into the silence in the shadows, and know peace? (212-213)

Parrado’s depiction of his interior journey resonates with Buddhist approaches to a life of suffering. Central to Parrado’s ability to survive was his emphasis on breathing. More than once he recounts how his reminder to focus on the breath was the key to his survival. He writes:

I drew a long breath and then slowly, richly, I exhaled. Breathe once more, we used to say on the mountain, to encourage each other in moments of despair. As long as you breathe, you are alive. In those days, each breath was almost an act of defiance… Again and again, I filled my lungs, then let the air out in long, unhurried exhalations, and with each breath I whispered to myself in amazement: I am alive. I am alive. I am alive. (233)

What’s more, Parrado exhorted himself to pay attention for he saw that ability as life-saving. In puzzling over whether his survival was an act of God or of self-reliance he wrote:

It was not a God who would choose to save us or abandon us, or change [us] in any way. It was simply a silence, a wholeness, an awe-inspiring simplicity. It seemed to reach me through my own feelings of love and I have often thought that when we feel what we call love, we are really feeling our connection to this awesome presence. I feel this presence still when my mind quiets and I really pay attention. (263)

Parrado described how, by being present for every step and every breath, he was able to survive each moment of pain, loss, and suffering: “These moments bring time to a stop for me. I savor them and let each one become a miniature eternity, and by living the small moments of my life so fully, I defy the shadow of death that hovers over all of us, I reaffirm my love and gratitude for all the gifts I’ve been given, and I feel myself more and more deeply with life.” (262) Though Parrado gives no indication that he studied Buddhist teachings, he sounds as if before the crash he’d been meditating for years. He tells his readers that something in the mountains wanted him to be still: “I gazed at this place: we had upset an ancient balance, and balance would have to be restored. It was all around me, in the silence, in the cold. Something wanted all that perfect silence back again; something in the mountain wanted us to be still.” (188)

In these trying times that to some may feel as difficult as survival in the high Andes, Parrado offers well-tested advice—breathe, pay attention, be still.

For more “Earth Dharma” from Jill S. Schneiderman, click here.

The Good Karma Divorce:
Avoid Litigation, Turn Negative Emotion into Positive Actions, and Get On with the Rest of Your Life

In most cases, divorce is painful for everyone involved.  But in The Good Karma Divorce, Judge Michele Lowrance offers a way to lessen the suffering. With a close-up view from the bench, she has seen many emotional courtroom battles in which couples get caught up in unloading their heartache. Lowrance, a practicing Buddhist, believes that there are two paths that couples can take when ending a relationship: choosing to remain bitter and antagonistic, or opting for soul-searching, which can lead to grace and compassion. Lowrance is like a Sherpa as she guides the reader on a climb toward self-assurance, dignity, and strength. Working with the law of karma, Lowrance explains how acting with understanding and patience can change who you are—for the better. She uses a teaching by the Buddha to sum up her point: “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” Yes, the fiery intensity of a breakup can be overwhelming, but Lowrance’s refreshing perspective can help cool your emotions and heal your heart. — Rebecca Spence

For more about Judge Michele Lowrance’s work, see Barry Boyce’s profile of her on our special “Mindful Society” page.

In “Just Sitting” Zazen Practice, we learn to take life like the weather … Whatever comes, comes.

Thus, we practice sitting on the cushion with energy, dedication and effort … all while dropping all goals, dropping all need to attain, dropping all judgments, dropping all resistance. Each moment on the cushion is complete, sacred, a perfect act, with not one thing to add, not one thing to take away.  What is attained thereby is attaining non-attaining.

And in this way, we encounter a way to live with energy, dedication, striving, moving forward in life … all without need to attain, taking all as it comes. Action and stillness, all at once. No separation from life, just as it is. Each moment of life is complete, sacred, with not one thing to add, not one thing to take away  … even when not as we think it “should be“, even as we work to make better what needs to be made better.

Click through to watch today’s talk, and to “sit-a-long”:

There is no bad Zazen, not even the “bad” Zazen, when the mind is filled with storming clouds of thoughts and emotions. There is no Zazen that is incomplete, even though we turn again and again to letting the thoughts and emotions drift from mind.

There is no bad weather, even the “bad” weather. The rain is just the rain … the sunshine, just the sunshine …  even though we might desire one more than the other. We can put on our boots, seek shelter, even while letting the rain just pour down, sometimes soaking us to the bone. Acceptance, and running for cover, at once!

Likewise, there is no aspect of life that is incomplete, although there are many things about it we may wish to to change, wish were otherwise, must work to repair. Acceptance, and wish for change/working for change, at once!

This is the taste of life … complete even when not as we desire … that we can learn to taste in Shikantaza Zazen.

Below is today’s Sit-A-Long video. Remember: recording ends soon after the beginning bells; a sitting time of 20 to 35 minutes is recommended.

To view all of Jundo and Taigu’s SunSpace posts, including earlier installments of Zazen for Beginners, click here.

To subscribe to the RSS for the “sit-a-longs”, and be notified of new postings, click here.