**

Charlie Rose Show

PBS October 21, 1999

Charlie Rose [C]: I am most pleased to have Zoe Alexander on the show with me tonight. This is a conversation to which I have looked forward for some time. Zoe Alexander is the nonconceptual artist from Seattle who just opened an exhibition here in New York. To very good reviews, I might add. Thank you for coming to talk with me, Zoe.

Zoe Alexander [Z]: Thank you. I am happy to be here. The reviews are pretty dumb. I’m having reservations about the whole thing. I’m not so sure about that term "nonconceptual."

C: Isn’t that what your show is about?

Z: Yes, that’s what it’s called, but I’m not sure that is the best term for it.

C: I liked the room with the photograph of the mother and child, with the music Hush little baby now don’t you cry. What did you call it that?

Z: That was "Holding not clinging." Did you read the note for it?

C: Yes, I have it right here. The work of art in this room at this moment is the neither the visual image nor the music you hear but is the feeling that the child felt at that moment--

Z: Yuck.

C: and that you also can feel right now.

Z: Charlie, I’m not sure I’m much of an artist anymore.

C: There was the musical piece 4’34" . It was like John Cage’s piece 4’33" where somebody sits at the piano for four minutes and 33 seconds but doesn’t play anything. Your’s was pretty much the same as Cage’s except one second longer.

Z: Right. That was stupid. I thought his great work was saying that aesthetic experience is in hearing, or there is an aesthetic experience to be found in simply hearing things no matter how they are structured or not. There is also something beyond or within hearing that also can be recognized, so the idea was maybe with one more second we could recognize it. Now it seems pretty dumb. Might have been better to call it 4’33.000000001" .

C: Hmm. How about 0’0"?

Z: Yes! That’s the idea! That’s better yet! You should perform that, Charlie!

Z: Yes, I used Labanotation to write the score.

C: The notation choreographers use?

Z: Yes.

C: I was sorry I couldn’t stay longer so as to experience that work myself. [laughing]

C: ok, right. Don’t worry. I got it. The title itself changes with the experiencer of the work, of which there is only one person at a time.

Z: Very true.

C: It’s not what viewers see or hear, just as the art from a symphony orchestra in no way includes what, for instance, the cello players look like.

Z:Very true.

C: But what I didn’t get there was your saying the art is not the kinaesthetic sensations of the single viewer but his or her experience of not clinging to those sensations even as they are being produced.

Z: The more you talk about it, the more convinced I am that I am not an artist any more. I might just go back to roofing.

C: Roofing?

Z: Houses. With my father.

C: What did you mean by that note about the massage piece?

Z: I am trying to say there is something to connect with that underlies all experience, or rather, is within all experience, a sort of lucid knowing, but it is obscured by our habits of clutching to pleasant sensations or pains. We tend to think we own them in some way, but that is a delusion. With pain we are clutching even as we try to ameliorate it. Did you realize that the score for the touchestra actually includes movements in which the masseurs are causing pointless pain?

C: Maybe it’s good I left!

[Laughter]

Z: I can do it for you now.

[Slapping sound]

C: Hey! [Laughter] Ouch! That hurt! So what do you mean, not an artist anymore?

Z: A better way to put it is not to be drawing any lines between art and life. Of course, any exhibition involves a sort of pose. But I’m not merely pretending. I’m trying to find words or images for it--

C: Excuse me. For what?

Z: For wide open spacious awareness. The lucid void. And when the words and images appear, ok. But if they don’t appear I’m becoming less driven about that, so that is what I mean about becoming less of an artist. Any of the images I put out seem pretty absurd when I look back on them, like the ones in the show, especially the ones more or less about me. I am simply trying to say that there is something to connect with here. I would be merely posing if I were merely pretending that there is something good to explore. But there really is.

C: Much of your work seems to about personal identity and verges on philosophy, including buddhist philosophy.

Z: Yes.

C: I have been reading about it. So there is a difference between conventional truth and ultimate truth, is that not right?

Z: That is one conceptual scheme. There are others. Everybody starts by recognizing the distinction between how things appear to us and how they really are. Philosophers everywhere recognize this, as does everybody else once they think about it even for a moment. We know the table is a collection of small particles even though it doesn’t look that way. We tend to assume we are dense but there’s no way to make sense of that. And so on. Now in western philosophy there are at least two different ways to think about the role of science here. Science investigates the appearances --after all we have to start with our perceptions -- to try to get at the reality. On one view, Kant’s for instance, science is simply becoming more precise about the nature of appearances ("phenomena") but the real nature of things ("noumena") is going to remain forever unknown to us, or if known, not via science. We can develop intricate technologies to manipulate phenomena but the real natures of things are hidden. The contrasting view, like that of the great 20th c. philosopher Wilfred Sellars, thinks that investigation of appearances --the "manifest image"-- via science actually enables us to get a better and better take on reality. This is "scientific realism." In eastern philosophy, there is a third view that sides with Kant about natural science --it deals only with appearances-- but then it goes on to say that the mind or consciousness or awareness is fundamental in some way--so we can get to ultimate reality through the mind. There is something like that in the west too, in response to Kant. Science is simply fooling around with projections of the mind (conventional reality). There are some interesting issues to discuss about these various positions.

C: Did you say there are only three positions then?

Z: No. On the contrary, there is plenty of room for creativity here. Too often people get stuck debating just using old categories. These are three important views though. They would be associated with dualism, physicalism, and idealism in that order, and only very roughly.

C: Go over that again. Kant’s view is dualist?

Z: Not exactly, or rather not only the dualism about mind and body, but more generally, a dualism of phenomena and noumena, that is, between appearance and reality. There is an unbridgeable gap. This is something like the buddhist two truths idea where you have the distinction between ultimate and conventional truth. On the other hand, scientific realism tends to assume that the world is physical and can be known: physicalism. So the gap is bridged by assuming the primacy of the physical. Then, on the third hand, many of the meditation-based traditions would assume the ontological primacy of consciousness, a type of idealism -- which means reality can be known wholly by means of inward exploration. This is very rough and general, Charlie. For instance, there is no reason a scientific realist has to be committed to physicalism. And some buddhists do not dismiss the ultimate reality of the physical world. There are many permutations, like in western philosophy when Marx stood Hegel on his head.

C: Groucho?

[Laughter]

Z: Him too. And don’t forget Curly and Mo!

C: Did you know they were brothers in real life?

Z: Really? I didn’t know that! -- Larry too?

C: No, I don’t think he was. By the way, I never understood what it meant for Marx to stand Hegel on his head.

Z: I think he meant Hegel needed to do some yoga. Doing the head-stand, you let gravity work for you.

C: No, seriously.

Z: I think it was because Hegel took Absolute Spirit as fundamental with all physical and historical and personal phenomena being the play of Absolute Spirit.

C: and Marx?

Z: Took physical reality, matter, our physical needs as human beings, how we get food and other things we need, the forces and relations by virtue of which things get produced, and so on--all of this is fundamental in his way of thinking.

C: Where do you come down on all this?

Z: I am a grouchy-marxist-buddhist-scientific-realist. I do yoga too. Ever tried the calf-rope tie-down?

[laughter]

C: no, really.

Z: Really. You should try it.

C: Even grouchy?

Z: Yes. Even my sense of humor often is a form of anger--or so I have been told. At this point I guess I’d want to emphasize that there simply is no reason to assume that there is any incompatability at all between natural science and whatever we can know about consciousness. I just lose interest right away if somebody is dogmatically presupposing one of the two poles as traditionally characterized by materialism or idealism; or if one is announcing they already know something about what we cannot know.

C: So you don’t like any of the three positions you mentioned.

Z: Actually each of the three general positions can approach phenomena with an open mind, but the emphasis they give things influences future research and thought.

C: For instance?

Z: How empirical investigation of consciousness through meditation connects with the scientific study of the world. Here is where the general philosophical positions can be most obstructionist insofar as people might not even think to investigate the connections. If from the outset one is precluding the validity of either natural science or inner investigation, then I would definitely argue against that. And, of course, most people everywhere would tend to take one or the other of those two positions.

C: One of which two?

Z: Natural science and meditation. They both are magnificent sources of knowledge and insight about the world and ourselves. But people tend to go to one extreme or the other. This is understandable because neither science nor meditation can be done well without some investment of energy and time.

C: Zoe, can you summarize the two positions?

Z: The two positions are: One, the position that natural science of the external world is our primary and ultimate source of knowledge. The position that meditative practices, or more generally, religious practices are fundamental and ultimate.

C: But you think there are just two distinct realms.

Z: Exactly--WRONG! [laughing] Charlie, I really dislike positing two realms or two truths and so on. This table is not exactly what it appears to us to be, but it does exist, it’s just that its existence is dependent upon particles and waves and so forth.

C: so you side with the scientific realists.

Z: I’d like to. But only if they keep their minds open, for instance, about investigating consciousness with the empirical methods from buddhists.

C: Scientists can accept that, can’t they?

Z: Of course. In the past you wouldn’t have found much openness. But that is changing fast. I want to claim that the jhanic states of cultivated concentration are empirically verifiable; these phenomena can be known in experience; they are natural states even if cultivated, and for us how they should be treated as significant facts. Just like the significance of Schrodinger’s equation in quantum mechanics. The important thing nowadays is not arbitrarily to exlude realms of exploration due to overspecialization. Of course even worse than closed-minded specialists are flakes who think they already know what the connections are, when nobody really has a clue.

C: You lost me.

Z: My general point would be that one should enter into these abstract discussions with a light heart. One thing I will say is that it annoys me when anybody gets on a hobby horse and thinks they have some special information that shows that one or the other out of a set of very abstract positions obviously is correct. This goes equally for dogmatic scientists who think they already know the entire scope and limits of science, as well as for the religious enthusiasts who think that blood appearing on John Snides’ paintings of Jesus in his living room in Greenville, Mass, proves that the christian god exists and cares about your hangnail.

C: Wow! Slow down, sister! [laughing]

Z: I’m happy to try to show the problems, if I can, when somebody gets on their hobby horse, but I don’t really have a firm position myself. For that reason, though, I probably tend to side with the scientific realism of contemporary culture, and I do feel that all of the stuff I’m trying to get at in my art and in what I say is completely compatible with scientific realism. If not, I’d like to be shown it, but I doubt if anybody could succeed. I think I could tackle them well before they scored.

C: So you play linebacker?

Z: yes! Funny. --That is correct! No, wait! I’m a safety! Go ahead and grind out a few yards if you want to. But I’m not going to let you score if by that we mean being able to announce you know you’ve got the big picture correct. I will pick off your TD passes. There is just a great deal to explore here. I am sort of in awe, actually, at the great accomlishments of western science. Look at the periodic table of elements, for instance: the order in the basic elements out of which physical things are made.

C: What order?

Z: The elements could just be number 1,2,3... etc depending on the number of electrons. Yet equally I am just staring in awe at the great discoveries in the eastern meditation traditions, for instance, the jhanic states, which by the way also are numbered.

C: how many are there?

Z: Eight or nine, so far as I know.

C: They are discrete, identifiable states of mind?

Z: Yes.

C: How do they relate to brain states?

Z: I don’t know. Nobody knows yet so far as I know. This certainly will be discovered in the 21st century. Perhaps soon. We just know so little about the brain and about how that connects with consciousness, including the jhanic states of concentration and all of that.

C: Is it scientific exploration?

Z: Sure. Why not? That’s my point. With all the profound advances in science and technology, all the new tools, plus the new widespread availability of the traditional meditation practices from Burma and Tibet especially. It is an exciting time to be living!

C: I noticed you seemed excited.

Z: Yes. Why not? But there are powerful forces that work against genuine exploration. Actually Marx is relevant here too.

C: Groucho?

Z: [laughing] Yes him too! Karl Marx pointed out how the relations and forces of production influence consciousness. He thought they condition it completely. I don’t see any reason to agree with that or a lot of his other stuff, but clearly they do influence. To nail it in one sentence, what is relevant to us, even in most personal ways: the world economy is increasingly dependent upon people in economically developed countries not recognizing our own intrinsic happiness, it depends upon our thinking that to be happy there are more things we need to get, to find, to buy, that we still need SOMETHING MORE. And then science and art and even meditation practices can get co-opted by this frame of mind, this powerful habit of thought, so we lose sight, we lose contact with what is precious. I’m not saying junk the whole economic system. Charlie, I’m saying open up the picture so we don’t sell our souls.

C: well, ebay.com won’t let people do that.

Z: They won’t? I thought you could sell anything there.

C: No, it was in the papers. This guy wanted to auction his soul but they wouldn’t let him.--But I thought you didn’t believe in souls.

[Laughing]

Z: Right. I do not. They don’t exist--which is why selling them is so fraudulent. Where is the Justice Department when we really need it?

C: So?

Z: so what?

C: So what is to be done?

Z: about what?

C: About consciousness and the economy.

Z: Here the imagination is so absolutely crucial. Here is where art needs to take itself more seriously -- for seeing alternative ways to live and relate. Both to see possibilities and to be willing to try them. In science and philosophy people might not tend to recognize sufficiently the role of the imagination. Or might assume if it has a role in politics and economics it primarily is thinking up arguments, in figuring out how to develop an argument and defend it. But our imaginations are especially important for refuting superficial views, for challenging institutions and practices that are not working very well. Also personal habits, how we get into patterns that do or did have some purpose but are limiting us. In philosophy the imagination comes more to play in refutation of views that are not working. Coming up with counterexamples. Like playing defense, where you are defending the empty open mind about things that are not obvious. People have differing temperaments, though. Some people prefer having a belief about every little thing.

C: Is that like clinging?

Z: I’m not saying that. Nor am I criticizing that temperament. One might be skilled at estimating the probabilities, given the evidence, and be able to do so on in a very fine way, and then hold the views that at a given time are best supported at that time even if by just a hair. I believe all that is compatible with a not-clinging mind. That would be an offense churning out a couple of yards on the ground each play. Or it is like in political action on the nitty-gritty issues. Actually I want to be on a team that is doing that even if that’s not my role.

C: I take it that the meditation you do is designed to develop a mind that does not cling.

Z: The Buddha talks about this a lot. And I have experienced it enough to be convinced there is something here to explore seriously and to believe that indeed people like the Buddha really are on to something, with specific knowledge and genuine insights including not clinging tightly to a certain idea of oneself.

C: They are enlightened?

Z: Maybe. But buying into a term like that is not a good idea--that term is way too loaded for us because of how it has been used both in the western and eastern intellectual and religious worlds. It can make the whole thing seem irrelevant to me in a way that I do not think it is irrelevant.

C: You are a hard girl to pin down.

Z: What did you say? [Laughter] I am sorry but I am totally trying not to pose. It is difficult though with all the cameras here--

C: I can see that you are trying--

Z: How? But how can you see it?

C: The Cardinals baseball cap. The t-shirt.

Z: That could be part of the pose. At the nanosecond level the ego is so subtle

C: The ketchup on your t-shirt.

Z: What?! Oh God! Is it gonna’ show?

C: They can color it out, or rather, color it in. You’ll be wearing a red t-shirt.

Z: I hope it won’t clash with the cardinal.

C: They can match it. So you were talking, I believe, about our being conditioned to cling to a concept of self, and how one might begin to deal with that.

Z: Not clinging, not holding on so tight. Or perhaps even when there is the attitude of holding on, as in ordinary experience, perhaps just not clinging to the holding itself! So drop the second order clinging to the holding. Ok, that’d mean let clinging, possessing, identifying-with, etc, flow through your life, but consciously not possessing and not identifying with those very attitudes. Or maybe it is enough to do it at the third level -- just cutting in somewhere might be what freedom is. --Wait. Uh, Charlie, I’m just blabbering here. Could you edit this out back before the ketchup?

C: Sure. Where do you want to go?

Z: How about --well, I don’t know. what do you think?

C: Ok. I got it. Cut. [Pause] Zoe, I thought buddhists emphasized reincarnation but you always seem to de-emphasize it.

Z: Yes. Ok. Let’s see. Yes, in my opinion they do tend to focus on that idea a little too much. Of course it was a prevailing idea in the culture in India and so on. But if you focus on it too much I feel it is easy to be retaining too much the tinge of density of self. They try to motivate practice in that way. Of course they tone it down by saying your existence is only conventional anyway. There is a jumble of concepts here.

C: Zoe, do you really know what you are talking about or are you just enamored by the ideas?

Z: Charlie, I do know something about it. I’m sure its not total hype, at least. I have glimpsed it. There is something real going on. I am not necessarily claiming that people can just be transformed by practicing meditation. Yet for me this has been an activity that has opened me up to the beauty of the inner world. It is way more beautiful than artifacts, or rather, more precisely, I think, it is at the heart of beauty in human creations and in our perception of the natural world. My own life is irrelevant. This has been said in various ways for centuries. Look, for instance, at the Platform Sutra by Hui-Neng. He can’t talk about it without telling his own story yet the point is to gesture to vivid experience generally not merely his own. It isn’t visible so I can’t paint it. It is interesting and real. But talking about it means talking about my own experiences. My friend Erin thinks I do sound like I am merely posing. Maybe there is that risk in talking about it at all.

C: Professor Erin Hughes?

Z: Yes.

C: Didn’t J. Gordon Liddy, the poet, accuse Professor Hughes of merely posing herself in her new book? I believe he thinks she is just trying to create a fascinating persona out of Nietzsche or herself or that character in her book, --what’s her name?

Z: Zorathustra.--Well, I think Zorathustra probably is fascinating in a good way. Of course she is erotic and interesting but you have to be a simple-minded Puritan to complain about that. Zorathustra leaps off the page, but she’s not merely ranting and raving, running up and down the mountain like Nietzsche’s guy. She’s ranting for awhile then actually going to raves! [Laughter] What Erin does, I think, is try to exhibit how a certain type of life might be both admirable and possible. --But in any case, it is true. Liddy accuses Erin of posing, and Erin accuses me. By the way, I also accuse him so the circle is unbroken!

C: What did he do?

Z: He plagiarized my M.A. thesis!

C: No!

Z: Yes, it’s true. All of his high-profile stuff about personal identity came right out of my NYU thesis. He added the information about Joe.

C: That seems to be one of his central themes in his campaign for the Governor of Nevada.

Z: Really?

C: Zoe. About Zorathustra. I was wondering something. how does Zorathustra differ from Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?

Z: well, you should have Erin on your show to ask her. But to me, Zora is a lot more interesting than Zarathustra who was so megalomaniacal and self-preoccuppied. Of course it was a game for Uncle Fred --that’s what we call him-- and he had a clear vision of freedom beyond petty preoccupation with beliefs, whether old religious beliefs or new scientific beliefs, but he played it in terms of his own subjective individuality. what Erin does is try to play it to inspire us to become less self-preoccupied rather than more so, to focus more on the reality of relationships and interconnectedness. Actually to appreciate our non-density, to use that term, to appreciate it more fully, so it is more vivid, and so that the comforting, warm side of it appears. I shouldn’t say warm, because she’ll kill me. I mean, the simple, beautiful potential in it. We know this, but tend to go Oh yah, sure, of course, I’ll get to that --but then we don’t get to it.

C: So she writes the shift from the dense self to the interconnected self.

Z: I’m not sure Erin would want to put it that way. I think she prefers a more economic model, to talk about the transition away from a form of capitalism in which the concept of individual ownership is eroded --

C: What?

Z: Charlie, I don’t really understand this. The internet is at the center of it. In the old form, the isolated individual accumulating discrete material stuff was what ran the economy. But the idea of being isolated, for instance, is completely contrary to the new economy where it is way more important to being interconnected.

C: Hmm.

Z: I don’t really know how well it comes across, actually. For me it worked. But of course I know Erin pretty well so I can see her in Zorathustra, so that makes it interesting and personal, for instance, I could see how she is speaking from real, sometimes hard-won experience, and that it was so. Of course some of it she did learn from me.

C: Like what?

Z: All the stuff about meditation, about concentration, the ideal of not clinging, openness of mind equalling compassion, involvement with the world not isolation, sharing rather than simply self-promoting. And of course she can connect with the philosophers just like a linebacker making a tackle.

C: I had the philosopher Elijah Millgram on last week, and he said her book was something like a book by the Harvard philosopher, Robert Nozick, The Examined Life, I believe. With this type of persona-based philosophy, Elijah said, there is a danger of there being too much-- or the wrong kind-- of stake in oneself.

Z: Definitely that’s a danger. I’m not saying she succeeded in all respects. But that’s what the whole thing is about -- self-centeredness --not only if you’re writing in terms of your own experience, but in ordinary life. Self-centeredness at the nanosecond level even when one has resolved to endeavor to help, I mean, even after when one chooses to try to resist frantic self-obsession, well, there it is again all the time! It is so interesting. This is why renunciation is so important.

C: Why?

Z: the pattern of life grounded in consumption, production, entertainment, and so forth is powerful.

C: you want us to renounce our lives?

Z: No! Just look into it. I’m not talking about self-denial, life-abnegation. I think life is amazing and beautiful, everywhere, at the movies, at football games, at Wal-mart.

C: abnegation?

Z: is that a word?

C: I don’t know.

Z: Anway, don’t do that. Don’t do that. Don’t just say no to life! But look into it! Renunciation in the positive, life-affirming sense means making space so that one’s mind isn’t dominated completely by consumption etcetera. It is really difficult to do. Our minds are so amazing --constantly one thing after another. Meditation can be used to make some space, to appreciate the subtlety of conscious awareness.

C: How do you do it?

Z: there are dozens of techniques. One I know is, -- to begin, aim your attention at the sensations in your breath; and then secondly, keep your attention right there in the flow of sensations--sustain it there.

C: In my breath?

Z: yes, pick a spot where the sensations are vivid. At the nose, in the chest, or in the abdomen somewhere. When your attention wanders away and you notice it, include the thought or sound or whatever you were drawn to --include that as an object of meditation for a moment; then aim again back to the breath, sustain it there. That is how you do it.

C: then what?

Z: Well, look and see. It won’t help much for me just to talk about it.

C: But what is supposed to happen?

Z: Aiming and sustaining the attention with a neutral object like the flow of sensations in the breath creates a sort of seclusion in the mind.

C: Seclusion from what?

Z: From restlessness, sluggishness, aversion, fear, boredom, obsessions with sensual pleasures. It is subtle and real, the beginning of deeper concentration.

C: But to do it you have to renounce ordinary patterns of thought and action; this is why you say renunciation is important?

Z: yes, Charlie, that’s it! That is the positive meaning. This is certainly familiar to us, when we devote ourselves to some project. In fact, concentration is familiar too--but the thing is that it can be cultivated for its own sake. And then with stronger, steadier concentration one can inquire into, investigate, subtle patterns of mind and so forth--

C: And then we might see renunciation unfold in more subtle ways?

Z: Yes! Charlie, that is correct! That is what I meant about being more free relative to patterns of consumption or the patterns of self-centeredness in one’s own mind. The idea is just to look into this for oneself. Just grasping at words and ideas isn’t quite it. It is more subtle than that, yet in one’s mind it is right there. Actually we don’t even tend to notice because we’d tend to dismiss it as boring compared with sensations, thoughts, emotions, with our projects and actions. But I guess the buddhist idea would be that slipping into bright mindfulness rather that staying engrossed with all the objects of consciousness, we find real freedom.

C: So Zora does that--

Z: Yes, Charlie, you are definitely getting the idea. Zorathustra renounces the self-centered patterns exactly where Zarathustra gets stuck. And yet if they arm-wrestled, Zora would win.

C: what?

Z: I just mean Zora isn’t less powerful. She’s not giving an inch in power, even in this world. She can dance too. Actually she does dance, whereas Zara just talks about it.

C: Did you see Susan Wolf’s review where she claims that Professor Hughes is actually writing about you?

Z: No!?

C: yes. Then Louise Antony wrote a letter to the Times saying Hughes is trying to warn you about your blind spots. To make them vivid for you.

Z: Wow. That’s weird. Those philosophers must have a lot of free time. I’ll read it again from that perspective. I’d actually seen her in Zorathustra, I’d not seen me so much. But as human beings we all have a lot in common. Not only human beings. Sometimes a focus on the idiosyncratic helps make vivid what we have in common.

C: Like what?

Z: Like the "self clinging" frame of mind. Nietzsche had the idea of freedom, but he still got stuck. His persona exaggerates his own self. His discourse about the "will to power" is fundamentally about ego. That’s where she differs most.

C: I have always admired Nietzsche’s myth of eternal recurrence--living so that I’d be willing to repeat every moment infinitely many times.

Z: Yes, that maybe is Zarathustra’s main idea. -- it combines the values of living fully in the moment and yet doing so for the sake of an infinite future as well. It is Uncle Fred’s alternative to Kant’s categorical imperative--

C: What was that again?

Z: You should be able consistently to will that the principle behind any of your actions be a law of nature, so that anyone in similar circumstances would necessarily do it. Its pretty abstract.

C: But Nietzsche said to be willing to will this action infinitely.

Z: it isn’t as abstract. And it doesn’t connect in any way with some other world or some other life. The kingdom of heaven is within you.

C: Yes.

Z: Yet his myth keeps the spotlight focussed unflinchingly on me. I totally agree that the idea can be inspiring--not to stop short, not to play it too safe. Who would want to be single-mindedly saving for retirement again and again and again?

C: right. [Laughter]

Z: The spotlight is on oneself, on one’s own will and action. I believe the buddhist idea of reincarnation can be re-formulated to put the spotlight elsewhere so that there is an equally inspiring vision which is not so self-centered. Also not just a myth.

C: What is not a myth?

Z: The alternative picture.

C: So you do believe in reincarnation after all?

Z: No, actually, I do not. That’s not what I meant. Maybe it happens, I really have no idea, but I certainly am not expecting anything like that. But suppose it were true. All that would mean is there are some special causal connections between me now and events later on, events that are part of a series of mental events downstream from me-- various memories, for instance, or actions based on my current intentions and decisions. If there is no reincarnation, these special relationships-- the ones that provide personal identity across lives -- will not exist. But, Charlie, there still are going to be some causal relationships between me now and future mental events in various people and other animals. My actions have real consequences down stream. And it seems to me that this can be as meaningful as if there were personal survival of death. And no matter what happens to me at death --I do assume that I go out of existence -- there will be effects of my current actions still happening. This is the real world. This is not merely a myth. Actually these are trivial points. But they need to be noticed more clearly.

C: So we survive sort of like in the worms that will eat our bodies so what we eat now has an effect later?

Z: No Charlie!! That’s not--

C: Sorry. [Laughter] Settle down. What did you mean then?

Z: That’s not it at all. Getting eaten by a worm is nothing at all like personal survival. But influencing somebody in some important way is very much like how your deciding to do something now later results in your doing it. And those types of relations --the relation between deciding now and doing it later --this is all that there is personal identity through time. I am assuming we are not dense. True, the relations constituting personal identity are different from influencing someone, but nonetheless all are relations between mental events.

C: Relations between mental events? What do you mean exactly?

Z: Charlie, suppose some kid a hundred years from now, it’s 2099, is looking at some old videos on the internet and he comes across you interviewing somebody, and there is something about your own generosity and intelligence and curiosity and open-mindedness and good humor that inspires him in some way. It could seem like a small thing at the time, but let us imagine his seeing you on the video turns out to be a big deal for him. He decides to stay in school, or to run for office. It could be a pivotal event for him. The causal tie between you and Carlos, let us call him, is a real-world relationship. That sort of thing happens, it is the essence of education, of human culture. And I am abstracting just a bit in saying it is a relationship between mental events, yours now and his then. Granted there is certainly not enough of a relationship to get you survival as Carlos-- but why want that? That strikes me as weird anyway --

C: Right. Me as Carlos watching the old videos.

Z: --and yet the point is that since we’re not dense all your being reincarnated as Carlos would mean is that there would be enough of the right kinds of causal relationships between you now and Carlos then. That is, if Carlos were a reincarnation of you, Carlos might be able to remember the interview on the video as he watches it. Yet it seems to me that your influencing Carlos to stay in school, the way you did it indirectly in the story I told, well, that is more meaningful and interesting than any sort of survival story would be.-- I mean, big deal if he can remember the interview. So what? Its BEING INSPIRED by it that matters.

C: yes, that matters. Just being inspired--

Z: --If we were dense, then your influence on him would be much less like your survival then in fact it is. When we see the world this way, and how we are not dense, we can see that the natural intense concern I have about my own future really can generalize quite easily to include 15-year olds living in 2099 who might very well be influenced in some way, possibly very indirectly, by what I do now. And not simply being on tv. Perhaps something I do while I am taking out the garbage. Am I talking too fast?

C: Maybe. [Laughter] It’s ok. you’re doing fine. So we give meaning to life by thinking this way? Almost like surviving in our children.

Z: Yes, sort of, but not exactly. That is meaningful, and beautiful. From another angle, my life continues my mother’s because of the chain of influence. And it is sobering too, of course, because if we are careless or evil that gets passed on too--

C: --how sexual abuse of children is passed on from generation to generation in some families.

Z: Exactly. But whether it is good or evil, ugly or beautiful, it really isn’t survival. The idea of thinking in terms of surviving in some way in those people we influence almost is as bad and stupid as doing it in the worms who will eat our corpses.

C: So what are you saying?

Z: Maybe the whole idea of surviving is hyperinflated because of the ways in which we tend to assume density of self. I think there is a deeper point which is simply to abandon the projects of seeking meaning or immortality or any kind of continuation for me -- or even seeking happiness or gratification of any kind.

C: You mean just accept meaningless?-- You recommend nihilism?

Z: No, on the contrary. But finding meaning and purpose in terms not focussed so much around the concept me -- especially, of course, when we’re assuming the dense, substantial, separate entity that just does not exist. So downplaying questions like, Will I survive death? What will happen to me? Am I happy? Given the immensity of things, whether or not I am happy isn’t that big a deal anyway.

C: So you are talking about oneness and interconnectedness?

Z: Yes, I guess. I almost hate to admit it because those ideas had absolutely no meaning for me when I simply assumed density of self: Oneness? Like two people merging? How could that be? Who would want it? But the point is that we are not dense so we don’t have to try to be interconnected--we already are essentially interconnected. It just is the nature of things, and yet we can appreciate this fact more fully than we may tend to. But we don’t really do anything to create interconnectedness. And we can’t really stop it either. When Kurt Cobain killed himself that might’ve influenced some kids although he surely didn’t want it to.

C: How can one appreciate it more fully? Isn’t it really different from ordinary outlooks?

Z: First, I’m not totally sure it is so different. Many people do not live self-obsessed. They labor for some cause, or for their children, even in ways that hardly seem to make sense if they were simply calculating their own self-interest. One thing I’m doing, then, is explaining why what we often do makes sense. Working selflessly for things other than one’s own narrow well-being can make more sense if we’re not dense than if we were.

C: But, still, we are usually self-centered.

Z: Yes. well, in the religious traditions I think you find agreement. There is something better than self-centeredness. This definitely is common ground among many if not all the various meditation traditions, even when they differ in their practical techniques and in their metaphysical and cosmological beliefs.

C: What is the common ground?

Z: They are all saying that there is something better than self-centeredness.

C: Meditation works to decrease self-centeredness?

Z: Maybe it can. For instance, appreciation of nondensity and of essential interconnectedness is not a once and for all thing to do. If we are conditioned to assume essential separateness, then simply stopping can help us get oriented to the facts. We move in and out of seeing and feeling things with clear vision about this. It can be practiced, the slight subtle shift in one’s mind from (a) preoccupation with a dense self, one’s own security and safety, the image of oneself, approval for self versus (b) seeing nondensity, emptiness, interconnectedness, and feeling safe and secure in those facts. One doesn’t have to practice this with eyes closed etcetera. Perhaps the best opportunities are when things are most difficult, for instance, when one has been treated unfairly --to use those moments as an opportunity to observe the mind and its possibilities -- or when one is burdened by many irksome responsibilities. To see one’s mind clearly in those moments. To shift to greater freedom right there in the midst of things, rather than merely wishing for escape. It is a sort of on the spot renunciation of density, flowing into a more open free way of being.

C: Your sentences strike me as possibly grammatical, but I do not know if you are making sense!

[Laughter]

Z: Well, it is as real as blood, Charlie. So meditation practices can help. On the other hand, one also can wonder about the role of specific methods. Some teachers like Krishnamurti sort of took the Nike approach: JUST DO IT! He seems to have thought that practicing meditation techniques too often is counterproductive because it just deepens it.

C: Deepens what?

Z: Self-centeredness, greed.

C: Really? How does it do that?

Z: I don’t know. I surely don’t claim to have all the answers here.

C: so there are many differing techniques and methods, right?

Z: That is correct. There are lots of approaches.

C: what you told me about aiming for the breath --that is only one approach?

Z: Right. Like I said, there are dozens of different objects that can be used to deepen concentration. I believe, though, that the aiming and sustaining activities function in the just the same way, whether one is aiming and sustaining with the breath, or with a pattern of repeated thoughts, like a mantra, or a visualization, or chanting, or whatever.

C: Can prayer do that?

Z: yes, sure. Actually I am quite certain that meditation can be as selfcentered an activity as anything else. I believe it also can be transformative, but it isn’t necessarily so. Here is where I believe one’s motivation is important. In buddhist practice one is encouraged to ground one’s efforts in bodhicitta: the wish that one’s practice be truly beneficial to the world. I do find that is most helpful and just wonderful. It is like a simple decision to orient one’s effort in a certain way. And why not? So the question of motivation is always salient. And one can summon it, develop this simple wish or intention to be beneficial in the world. I mean, practice to develop the attitude itself.

C: To create it?

Z: Maybe create it, or maybe simply to open up to it. --Simply open up to it. I wouldn’t know how to argue for this but I do believe that this attitude naturally flows from consciousness itself. To live for life. Think of alternatives: being devoted to death, harming, one could do that. You could consciously cultivate hate in your mind.

C: That’d be weird.

Z: so ugly. But one could do it. One could set about to cultivate hatred. The point is to see the significance of one’s motivation. Or one just might want to be numb. Or not quite numb but just distracted enough by tv etc so that one doesn’t really feel very much.

C: That could be a type of fear there.

Z: True. We might be afraid that if we really opened our lives to the pain of others that we just couldn’t bear it. We know life is difficult. Wow, Charlie, you know everywhere we look there is just such vast suffering, disappointment, agony.

C: I believe Professor Hughes discusses these points,

Z: Where?

C: when she argues for what she calls the basic moral precepts.

Z: I have to admit I didn’t read that part of her book very closely yet.

C: Maybe you should.

Z: Well I have talked with her about it many times. Actually I think she might be using some of my ideas.

C: She’s plagiarizing you?

Z: Yes. I also had that in my thesis.

C: Oh, hmph·, you’re pulling my leg now, aren’t you?

Z: Uh-huh. How long is this interview?

C: we’re doing fine. -- So what about the basic precepts?

Z: If one is genuinely wishing to be a truly beneficial part of the world, as most people do, wanting to be on the side of kindness not hatred, then paying attention to the universal basic moral precepts flows pretty smoothly. You’re not going to violate anybody’s basic rights.

C: But what are they? what are the precepts that are supposed to be universal?

Z: It is simple. They are few in number and pop up everywhere we look. There are some simple universal moral precepts, and in my opinion they are not relative to cultures. I agree with Erin.

C: Like what?

Z: ok. Look first at the ten commandments from the Old Testament. Do you have a Bible here?

C: Is the Oxford Annotated version ok?

Z: I guess. -- Ok, so here it is. Deuteronomy chapter 5. Verse 7: You shall have no other gods before me.

C: Wait. You’re not going to read the whole thing are you?

Z: Yes, I think so. Stay with me. Charlie. I’ll leave out some of it. 8. You shall not make for yourself a graven image blah blah blah 11. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain blah blah blah 12. Observe the sabbath day, to keep it blah blah blah 16. Honor your father and your mother. 17. You shall not kill. 18. Neither shall you commit adultery. 19. Neither shall you steal. --

C: Ok. By the way, do you think the Queen of Sheba--

Z: 20. Neither shall you bear false witness against your neighbor. 21. Neither shall you covet your neighbor’s wife; and you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s. Ok.

C: Ok, fine.--Do you think the Queen of Sheba--

Z: What?

C: Henry Louis Gates told me the Queen of Sheba probably got the Ark of the Covenant with the original tablets from Moses in it--

Z: Wasn’t she one of King Solomon’s lovers?

C: I think so. One of those kings.

Z: I hear she kisses pretty well.

C: What?

Z: Uh, nothing.

C: Anyway. She went back to Africa after their fling but her son born by Solomon or whoever went to look for his father and then returned with the Ark. So it has been in Africa all this time.

Z: Wow.

C: Probably Namibia.

Z: Wow. The Queen of Sheba is my hero!

C: Ok.

Z: Wasn’t it odd how Gates goes to Africa and claims to discover all this stuff, like the great library in Tunisia--

C: why is that odd?

Z: because it has been there all along! Its like saying columbus discovered america!

C: Oh.

Z: Did you want me to go on with what I was saying or were you trying to stop me?

C: I’m not sure, actually --maybe we should get back to discussing your art.

Z: Most people aren’t interested after I mention the ten commandments. They think --well we already know about that. But usually they’ve got a blind spot here.

C: This is sort of a surprise, Zoe. I’d been warned that the main problem with you would be to get you to keep all your clothes on and now you are reading me the Bible.

Z: Who said that?

C: But now you are trying to preach the ten commandments to me. Are you in favor of posting them in schools as well?

Z: No! Absolutely not! At least not all of them, that’s sort of where I’m going with this.

C: A legislator in Colorado has introduced a bill requiring a minute of silence every morning plus putting the ten commandments on the wall. It is his solution to the kids killing each other in school.

Z: A minute of silence might not hurt. But the ten commandments is from just one religious tradition. That violates the constitution. That is clear-cut. But I am saying something different. I am saying there are universally shared moral precepts. Do you want me to continue?

C: Well.

Z: Oh come on. Don’t be such a chicken.

C: ok. [laughing]

Z: Ok. Look next at the buddhists. In theravadan buddhism you have some 200+ rules for monks, but when you look at the guidelines for lay people you find SOMETHING VERY SIMILAR to the nontheist part of the Ten Commandments. There are a ten forms of "crooked behavior" as follows: killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, plus four forms of crooked verbal behavior --lying, malicious speech, harmful gossip, frivolous speech-- plus the crooked mental behaviors of coveting, the wrong view that one’s actions do not have consequences, and thoughts of harm and cruelty to self or others. All of these crooked behaviors are to be avoided.

C: What is frivolous speech?

Z: Tellling jokes, I assume.

C: So that’s wrong? What’s wrong with that?

Z: Nothing. I’m not saying anybody got it completely right. What I’m pointing out first is just the overlap in the two lists. Obviously there are differences, the main one being that the Buddha was an atheist whereas Moses was a theist. Ideas about God definitely are cultural not universal, which is the danger of equating morality with religion--

C: If God is dead, then everything is permitted--

Z: --which is ridiculous. When Nietzsche said that his main point was simply the assumption that basing morality on God inevitably leads to nihilism. In any case, that’d be my point. Ideas about God definitely are cultural not universal.

C: And for the buddhist?

Z: for the buddhist, the general moral precepts are not treated as having been given by any external agent who sits in a position to judge, punish, and reward; but instead they are conceived as an essential element in the maturation and purification of mind. As such they are more like goals than commandments. Failure to observe them will have consequences such as distractedness, insecurity, instability, plus, they say, there will be problems in future rebirths-- this is due simply to the general nature of things, but it is not because one is being punished in some way for failure. So the Hebrews and Buddhists differ big time in general outlook.

C: yes.

Z: But my point here is that even given the huge differences in world view, there is a striking similarity in the content between the nontheistic part of the Ten Commandments and the layperson’s precepts in the theravadan traditions.

C: What exactly?

Z: Not to kill, steal, lie, engage in sexual misconduct, or be covetous. This is at the core of the idea of universal human rights. Of course, there also are differences in interpretation, for instance about killing or about what sexual misconduct amounts to. But the similarity in content should not be discounted. That’s my point here.

C: What is the difference about killing?

Z: In the Bible, and in how the commandment Thou shalt not kill has been interpreted generally by Jews and Christians and Muslims, the Commandment not to kill means primarily not to kill one’s friends and neighbors, but it is ok to kill strangers, and of course animals of other species do not count at all. Jesus may have tried to change some of that, of course, but generally it didn’t change. For example, even the nonviolence of Martin Luther King’s political action owes more to Ghandhi’s Hinduism than to Jesus’ admonition to turn the other cheek.

C: how can you factor out the influence of his Christian upbringing?

Z: ok, good point. I don’t really know about that.

C: How do the buddhists interpret the precept not to kill?

Z: In the buddhist traditions the precept not to kill means to try not to kill or even harm any sentient beings at all. But that is a difference in scope.

C: Ok. I do see the similarity in those two traditions. But you’ve only looked at two. How does this establish anything universal?

Z: ok. Let’s continue. Speaking of Hindus, then, look in the Yoga Sutras by Patanjali who lived in the second century C.E. The Five Restraints (called yama) are: abstinence from injury this is ahimsa--the term Gandhi made famous meaning nonviolence-- on their list we also find veracity, abstinence from theft, continence, and abstinence from avariciousness. It is the same list, Charlie!

C: is that list historically independent from the buddhists?

Z: Good question! I don’t know. I asked Stephen Phillips the same question and he didn’t know either.

C: Who is he?

Z: An analytic philosopher in Texas who is studying Indian philosophy. He is really interesting. Anyway Patanjali’s list is from a Hindu tradition that was in competition with the Buddhists in India for a long time. The Buddha, you know, actually was rebelling against a lot of traditional values in the India of his time. He was a rebel. All the same, perhaps this list was derivative in some ways from the buddhists.

C: Ok. That’s three traditions.

Z: Charlie, I could keep going here and I will if you want me to list some more; but let’s shift the burden of proof for a moment. I claim that one needs to give care so as to avoid killing, stealing, lying, and sexual misbehavior. The three traditions we’ve considered so far put covetousness on the list too. So don’t be so greedy either. And I’m claiming that the collective wisdom of the species tends to endorse these basic precepts. Now I would like to invite you to show me even one counterexample, a human culture that does not encourage serious attention to one’s action in these four or five areas. Actually, I am claiming that the core respect for basic human rights is universally encoded.

C: So despite all the differences you see common ground.

Z: The core shared idea is simply not to harm. Those could be posted in high schools without violating the separation of church and state, since I am claiming that core is not a religious thing but a human thing.

C: But the proponents of posting all ten of them say the same thing.

Z: Well, they are wrong, as I already showed you. But no cultures disagree about the core, not to harm. Please exhibit the counterexample if you disagree.

C: Uh--

Z: Even Nietzsche recognized this smack dab in the middle of his radical skeptical critique of morality.

C: Recognized what?

Z: all human cultures universally endorse this idea "not to harm". I brought it along to read in case this came up:

That’s p. 169 in Walter Kaufmann’s edition of On the Genealogy of Morals. The core idea is not harming and it is applied in precepts covering the general types of activities I mentioned. Cultures share the list of topics covered even though they differ in the specific norms.

C: But I think most people would regard them as trivial, almost childlike--

Z: I agree this is not earthshattering news, in fact that is my point. What is childish is taking any particular cultural set of them as universally applicable. That is why the ten commandments shouldn’t be posted in schools. People have the intuition that there is something universal here, but they mistakenly tend to equate it with some religion or some set of cultural norms. They are well-intentioned but it is a serious mistake, and that is what is naive. Equally mistaken and naive is mindlessly rejecting the whole idea of morality, or thinking it all is just some arbitrary cultural construction.

C: But isn’t the general idea not to harm pretty trivial?

Z: Not if one tries to pay attention to it. It’s not being trivial is why it is a good form of mindfulness practice. If you resolve to try not to kill, for instance, and then a little moth flies out of the cupboard when you’re reaching for the breakfast cereal --ok, then you’ve got stuff happening to be aware of.

C: Like slapping at a mosquito.

Z: Slapping a mosquito, ok, we’re probably genetically programmed to do that in some way, so at least one can understand why its a challenge. But slapping at a little soft fluttery moth just because it flies out to greet you? What’s going on there?

C: Sounds like you may need to clean your cupboard. [Laughter] Of the things you mentioned, lies are probably most common.

Z: yes. People can tell lies habitually. I remember when my art first got some attention and I was being interviewed and one day noticed that I was shading stories about myself. I was lying all the time. I was insecure enough so that I’d change things a bit to try to make myself look better. Small things. I never claimed to have been to the moon or won an Olympic gold medal or anything like that --but just little things where nobody would or could check. Then I realized that was weird, and just stopped doing it. I could sense somehow that lying in those ways was undermining me in a really stupid way. I wasn’t on solid ground.

C: so you resolved not to lie.

Z: Yes. It was interesting.

C: Interesting?

Z: Yah, why not?

C: So you never lie?

Z: Well, sometimes I find myself lying--not just joking, where the other person sees its a joke -- so now and then I do lie in the sense of deliberating creating a false belief. But I resolved to endeavor not to lie, and to do so without calculating in every situation whether it would be best for me to do it or not, or even whether its best overall.

C: it is like a kantian imperative?

Z: Yes, like an imperative just to live that way. To be that sort of person.

C: You were developing to a higher moral stage.

Z: Charlie it wasn’t so much a new level of development. On the contrary, it was reconnecting with something I already knew long ago. That’s why I didn’t just reject what you said about the basic precepts being childlike. They are familiar to us as children. They make sense. What I’ve been saying is they may be childlike but they’re not childish. What is childish is mindlessly obeying some complete set of imposed rules. Or, for that matter, mindlessly rejecting the whole thing. And for me personally, what I’m saying --maybe too much of what I’m saying -- is related to the fact that in resolving not to lie I was simply re-adjusting to something I already knew. I already knew better. I knew better than how I was living, but in the busy-ness of things I’d lost touch with it.

C: I agree we teach children these things, not to lie or steal, but when we get older--

Z: This is exactly how smart and sophisticated people tend to think about these points! Philosophers like Fred Feldman say that about the basic precepts --that they are childlike. We are fond of them because we learned them at our mothers’ knee, but when we get older we have to admit they don’t really hold.

C: But surely there are situations in which one should kill, given the circumstances --for instance, to protect against violent action.

Z: Yes. I agree. I am not an absolute pacificist. All of the core precepts are defeasible.

C: De-what?

Z: Defeasible. There are circumstances in which they can be defeated. That is, there are possible circumstances in which, all things considered, one should act contrary to the precepts. Actually I don’t think these types of situations are as common as philosophers seem to assume. But I agree they are possible.

C: So how could the core precepts be valid if they can be defeated?

Z: It is simply a logical mistake to equate defeasibility with invalidity. A lot of people, including professional philosophers, make that mistake. Nonetheless, they are simply wrong and there are systems of modal logic that make this point crystal clear. A general norm like "Don’t lie" can be valid or true even though there are circumstances in which all things considered one should tell a lie. The general precepts, "Don’t lie," etc can be valid even though they are defeasible, and there is universal agreement about this among human cultures, and we should treat this fact with respect.

C: Still your view still seems a bit naive somehow. I mean, to speak frankly. [laughing]

Z: It’s ok. Say that if you want to say it, that’s fine. I don’t regard that as either an objection or an insult. But please remember that I invited you to exhibit a counterexample if you were going to disagree with me about there being something universal going on here in human cultures. I am not saying this ends any debates about the nature of morality. But until you come up with a counterexample, it seems to me this is a good place to begin to develop a moral theory. --This is what Erin argues, I think. That is, start with the fact that diverse human cultures agree about some basic points. There is a shared list of basic precepts, and the shared list is neither long nor complicated, pertaining as I pointed out to not killing, not lying, not stealing, not harming sexually. Not being so greedy. About whether this is too naive or trivial, I anticipated that question as well since many educated people are way too content to be cultural relativists about this--

C: I didn’t mean--

Z: it’s ok. Along these lines, I brought something else to read. These questions were addressed by Vaclav Havel in a speech he made in Aachen on May 15, 1996. It was printed in the New York Review of Books. Wait a second, I have it here somewhere.

C: Did you realize he is regarded as a sort of buffoon in the Czech Republic these days?

Z: Well, yes. I read about that. Now they have Hollywood so Havel isn’t so chic. Do you want me to read it?

C: well, actually, I’m not--

Z: Oh c’mon. I realize its more challenging than David Letterman rubbing Bruce Willis’ bald head but I thought your show was supposed to be an alternative--

C: Wait a minute, Letterman does more than that. He had Steve Martin on the other night. Did you see it?

Z: no, I missed it. Sorry.

C: Steve was posing as an expert on geography and he had Dave name any states at random and then he told Dave what country it was in.

Z: funny. How did he do?

C: He did pretty well, even got the hard states right. Like Mississippi.

Z: I could see him doing it. That would be funny. Who is bigger, Mr. Bigger or Mr. Bigger’s baby?

C: Uh, I don’t know. Mr. Bigger?

Z: Nope. Mr. Bigger’s baby is just a little Bigger. --Ok, Charlie, now I am going to read this from Vaclav Havel:

C: That’s not how multiculturalism usually is talked about.

Z: Very true. In academia the main impetus has been to create some space for cultures other than the dominant contemporary culture, for instance, to attack the idea that western traditional morality is the only option. Havel’s vision of multiculturalism may seem at odds with this, but only if one fails to make the distinction between core moral precepts and traditional morality.

C: I’m not sure I see--

Z: Seeing that is so essential. If not, there is trouble. One might just dismiss the basic precepts along with the traditional codes that often have been associated with domineering imperialism.

C: But the core not to harm is universal?

Z: Yes. Exactly. But societies have differing specific codes, what I called their traditional morality.

C: Given a history of imperialism and disrespect for smaller cultures, isn’t it important to be aware of the differences?

Z: Yes! I totally agree. Its like Nietzsche put it, this is from the Will to Power:

That’s page 174. But I would say that the main issues can be summarized as follows: there is a "common moral minimum" that as human beings we share, and can agree upon, which boils down to not to harm each other. It isn’t imposed from outside but grows within.

C: But still you have a will to a single morality, to use his words.

Z: Yes, but it is only the common moral minimum, it isn’t an entire way of life. So the project Havel is a separate issue from where dominant cultures have undermined less dominant ones by war and then imposed their own provincial codes.

C: So you agree with Havel there is a common moral minimum to be found?

Z: Jeez! Yes! Please exhibit the matter of fact counterexample if you disagree rather than simply fantasizing about this. People are too easily dismissive about it. What I am trying to get across is something about human reality across vast times and situations. I would be most interested to know if there is even one convincing counterexample to the claim that respect for something like the short list of basic precepts is universal to human societies. Yes, ok, I have heard some odd stories, an African tribe that likes to lie and approves of stealing.

C: Yes! I was going to mention them --I think they are the Ick tribe.

Z: Well, right. But that isn’t your counterexample. They were in extraordinarily difficult and unusual circumstances when they were first studied. The Ugandan government had moved them from their original habitat, and food was scarce. You should look at Colin Turnbull’s book, Mountain People which explains their circumstances.

C: Hmm. Ok.

Z: Under extraordinarly bad circumstances people will act in extraordinary ways. I hate to imagine it, but probably I would too. I saw a lady on tv who had been in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany, and she described how one night she was so hungry she stole some bread from a friend of hers. She said that she never confessed it. She was a beautiful elderly lady. These types of stories are important if we are arrogant about our abilities. But they are not relevant as counterexamples.

C: The stories have to be put in a context.

Z: yes, that’s what I meant. To approach it from another angle consider an alien --a robot, perhaps-- from outer space looking at American tv and going, "wow, look at all the lies!" But making up stories and telling them is a sort of game, for us, in a context in which not lying is accepted as a basic moral precept. So the aliens are wrong if they conclude we accept lying as ok simply because as a matter of fact in the real world Kramer doesn’t live across the hall from Seinfeld.

C: he doesn’t? [laughing]

Z: So if you do suggest a counterexample it will be convincing only if the entire context is spelled out. That is my point here. So --do you have a counterexample, a human culture that does not endorse anything like the basic precepts?

C: Well, what about Ghost Dog? Did you see that one?

Z: The Jersey City samurai?

C: Yes, ok. Let me suggest that one. He went around killing people and stealing cars, yet we ended up liking him.--he was the hero.

Z: That’s a culture?

C: Like 17th century Japan.

Z: I don’t know. Tell me the details about life there.

C: I don’t know either.

Z: Look, Charlie. That sounds like a grim situation, it sounds like war. I saw the movie. Ghost Dog reads a samurai text where the Heart Sutra is being used for warfare.

C: The Heart Sutra?

Z: Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Obviously that can be used nihilistically. It just misses the point insofar as it treats war as normative.

C: Maybe you are naive. So maybe the situation of war is the normal situation for human beings.

Z: Maybe so.

C: But if it is then you might be wrong about the universality of the precepts for humans.

C: Love in quotes?

Z: No. Love not in quotes, real love. Like between a parent and a child. The independence, courage, fearlessness which the samurai cultivates in order to kill--that is to miss the point. It is good to overcome fear, and so forth, but when Ghost Dog gives Pearline--

C: the little girl in the movie

Z: --yes, when he gives her Pearline the books that she carries around in the lunch pail--that connection is more basic for human culture than the nonchalance with which he kills.

C: what point does it miss?

Z: What point does what miss?

C: when you said the formula "form is emptiness, emptiness is form" can be used nihilistically, how Ghost Dog misses the point.

Z: Radical independence and fearlessness can be used to connect, just like Ghost Dog does with Pearline. It doesn’t have to be used to kill and alienate. And there’s no reason why the story had to keep Ghost Dog trapped in patterns of violence; and yet in his movie Jarmusch glorifies the nihilistic application of the code. He mixes the eastern ideas of fearlessness and inner freedom with violence. I see this connected exactly with Nietzsche’s rejection of morality while clinging to th traditional western density of self. We get a self that is alienated, isolated, and might as well shoot things up. Of course, this mix is certainly bound to appeal to contemporary hollywood tastes, perhaps its even obligatory nowadays if you want to make a movie--

C: Zoe, I don’t know how to say this exactly--

Z: what?

C: I had wondered if you weren’t doing something similar to Jarmusch -- taking ancient texts and practices and simply mixing them willy-nilly with whatever you want to -- you know, with your art shows, like the swing dancing piece, all of that.

Z: You should keep that in mind, Charlie. I might be doing exactly the very same sort of thing as Jarmusch. That is true. Trying to get a Hollywood effect. --Maybe so. Maybe its even worse what I am doing because nobody is going to think they could really live like Ghost Dog.

C: But they might think they could live like you.

Z: right. But Charlie you have to decide for yourself how you are living. it’d be really stupid for somebody to say, ok I’m going to live just like she is talking about.

C: So you are not saying that people should live like you?

Z: For heaven’s sake, no!

C: how serious are you then?

Z: I am completely and totally serious. --By the way, what about that counterexample? Do you have any other proposals?

C: yes, I thought of something else. Do people nowadays accept not lying as a basic moral precept?

Z: That is a good question, Charlie. A lot of people lie routinely and casually. For the sake of my argument, let me clarify that I am asking a question about wider cultures, societies. Maybe in the 20th century people are drifting in some ways, not very closely in touch with the core values of our own culture.

C: Not so mindful of the precept not to harm?

Z: Yes.

C: So perhaps there is a new culture coming into existence. One that would provide the counterexample you are seeking.

Z: I’m not seeking it, Charlie. I don’t think there is one or will be one. But as I have mentioned, I’d be most interested to hear about it if there is one or if there could be one. But you might be right. Perhaps because of the influence of skeptics like Nietzsche etc plus the selfcentered consumer culture plus an entertainment industry motivated by pandering to selfishness and violent special effects etc etc maybe our own culture is a sort of counterexample. Do you want to suggest this now for the sake of the argument?

C: ok. For the sake of the argument, yes, I’ll suggest that.

Z: ok. Maybe its not just Ghost Dog then. So you are saying as a culture we do not endorse any basic general precepts pertaining to not killing, not stealing, not lying, sexual misconduct. This would mean that as individuals in the culture we do not generally have any evaluative responses to nonconformity. Maybe you have your own private samurai code or some other thing going, but generally go ahead and kill, rape, lie, steal any way you wish. Nobody objects. Nobody goes "hey wait a minute! Hey asshole! You can’t get away with that!" Of course there might be a few voices crying in the wilderness but generally people are like, "well, like its ok with me. Just don’t take my stuff though"--

C: Well--

Z: Right. We see nazi kids shooting up their high schools and we all go, "well that certainly is an interesting story. --What types of guns? They should make a movie-- Yes maybe if Leonardo DiCaprio grew a goatee and put on a black trenchcoat he could play it"-- We watch the news and think this way but we have no feelings of sorrow or outrage. Is that correct?

C: No, I see your point. People everywhere were stunned and horrified.

Z: That is correct. So you have no counterexample.

C: Well.

Z: Like I said, if you have a counterexample then it will be convincing only if the entire context is spelled out. Do you have one?

C: uh, no. But probably if you look in books or consult with sociologists --

Z: Don’t give me that sort of fuckin’ goddam academic runaround Charlie. I am way more serious that that.

C: Sorry. Uh, please watch your language --I mean, please, at least for the show.

Z: Ok, sorry. But look. Even Nietzsche admitted he didn’t have a counterexample even as he was fixing to challenge the edifice of conventional western morality. Yet he seems to have thought he had reasons to think he could see through the wisdom of the species. Liddy is quite wrong to equate Nietzsche with Hitler, but it must be granted that they do have something in common --they both thought they were really special. All I’m asking is, if you don’t have a counterexample then you should agree at least provisionally that the project that Vaclav Havel proposes could be interesting and important. Erin is just going one step further than Havel and saying, Look! The common moral minimum is right under our noses. It is something like the list of core precepts, which basically equals not to harm. One aspect of multiculturalism should be and can be appreciation for this common ground. On the other hand, cultures can differ drastically in many ways, and no cultures should be imposing their entire traditional morality on others. Havel clearly appreciates the distinction, which is why I brought the passage with me to read it. Actually I don’t think Nietzsche even saw the distinction, and it is this failure that led to his overinflated claims.

C: he equated conventional western morality with morality as such?

Z: Exactly. That is exactly what I meant.

C: Hmm.

Z: Cultures differ in their applications and interpretations of the core precepts; also they differ as to whether morality is approached in a positive or negative manner.

C: positive? negative? What do you mean?

Z: The negative approach, which Nietzsche scorned, posits duties which if broken result in punishment, not to mention damnation, and in christianity at least loving one’s neighbor also is a moral imperative so there’s really quite a heavy burden associated with morality. A burden Uncle Fred was quite willing to throw off. And rightly so, in my opinion. Even if it is in our natures to love, it really doesn’t help to make it a duty.

C: I believe he said that in the last analysis, love of the neighbor is always something secondary, partly conventional and arbitrary--

Z: Yes, he said that, in the On the Genealogy of Morals. That is what I was referring to before.

C: Where he said love is always illusory in relation to fear of one’s neighbor.

Z: Right. Yes, Charlie, he did said that and like I said, I believe he is just flat wrong about that part. Here Nietzsche himself was just way too immersed in the self-hatred of western culture that arises out of the negative approach to morality. He had some good insights, about how human power relations reflected God’s role, so rulers "deceive themselves before they can command" -- the deception was supposed to be that they--let me read it-- "they pose as the executors of more ancient or higher commands (of ancestors, the constitution, of right, the laws, or even of God)". But these are insights about traditional western morality, about its negative approach to morality, and it is not about the core common ground.

C: You’d say "self-hatred" can arise out of being immersed in a negative approach to morality?

Z: Yes! Exactly! Continually evaluating and condemning oneself, terrified of oneself, of one’s sinful nature. The "original sin" stuff continues to taint everything. The whole idea that everybody just deserves to die. An alternative is how the Buddha said you could look throughout the entire world and find nobody more deserving to be happy than yourself--

C: who did he tell that to?

Z: I’m not sure. I think he meant it in general. One can look for the good qualities in people, to see basic human nature as including good, loving qualities from which the basic precepts emerge quite naturally in normal human development --I mean, normal in the sense in which as a matter of fact human beings have come into existence--

C: Are you talking about individuals or the species?

Z: Both. -- As individuals we generally originate in remarkably beautiful circumstances, growing in a woman and welcomed upon arrival with hugs and milk. I mean, it is horrifying too, getting thrown into this world. But the hugs and milk are nice to have. It makes us happy and we love. But also I mean how the species itself came into existence, survived and flourished.

C: how is that?

Z: I don’t know in any detail. And actually I’m not claiming my view is obviously correct. But why should it simply be ignored? Perhaps an evolutionary story about the species can be told so that we understand why we are so good at loving. Ok. What I’m saying though is this: Havel’s common ground is not difficult to identify. We don’t have to scratch our heads and come up with some fancy new theory. It is a fact that there is a short list of precepts universally accepted. Now either we can reject the whole idea like Nietzsche and others did, saying it is grounded in fear and unworthy emotions and needs to be transcended in order to develop our isolated dense reality. Or on the other hand, as I would encourage, we can begin to look for the facts about human nature and human life that explain why the core precepts are in fact universally accepted. I do have some ideas about that too.

C: What?

Z: In a nutshell, as human beings we quite naturally recognize our own nondensity and our interconnectedness with others. A parent caring for a child, and conversely a child being cared for. The interconnectedness is more fundamental than our self-centeredness and it grounds love, fearlessness, selflessness, and happiness and these states just quite naturally give rise in an individual to respect for the basic precepts. One doesn’t need an abstract theory like Kant’s to understand why people tend to treat other people with great respect, nor does one need the utilitarian’s formulas to transcend egoism. We just naturally do it. Why we should be predisposed to do it, in terms of natural selection, I do not know. Maybe a further explanation can be given. In any case, so far contemporary philosophy is more or less irrelevant to the project Havel proposes, and to the construction of alternatives to Nietzschean rejectionism, because those philosophical theories are part of the whole complex that Nietzsche quite rightly was rejecting.

C: Why?

Z: They are theories that are rooted historically in fantasies about God and about universal love. It is obvious these ideas underly the utilitarian idea that morality is determined by maximizing happiness throughout the universe. Which is ridicuous.

C: so you’re not recommending universal love.

Z: That is correct. No, I am not. The idea of universal love or universal concern as a moral imperative is truly staggering -- especially if you are going to get tortured endlessly in the afterlife if you don’t conform well enough. In fact nobody really loves all that much.

C: Maybe that is what Nietsche said is illusory.

Z: Good point. We can wish to be helpful, and we certainly can generate good will wherever we go. But at most we’ll love only a handful of others. At most. It is my observation that I don’t know anybody who really loves very much. We’re all so bound up in our bodies, our vulnerabilities, fears, thoughts. Please understand, I am not criticizing anybody. That’s the point that Uncle Fred saw: it is ridiculous to think we should love a lot. But I just wish he’d looked more closely at the significance of what he himself recognized to be universally accepted, namely the core precept not to harm.

C: So-- a more positive approach?

Z: Well, the buddhists do take a more positive approach to morality. Actions have consequences, they say. But at least there’s not an All-seeing Eye watching you all the time just waiting like a cat to pounce on you if you fuck up. Oops.

C: We’ll edit it out. Just go on. --Cut.

Z: Yah but I want to say it.

C: ok, say it.

Z: Actions have consequences but there’s not some All-Seeing Cat just waiting to pounce on you if you do something wrong. Wait. Cut! -- I didn’t mean to say Cat.

C: ok. Don’t say cat this time. Go ahead.--Cut.

Z: Actions have consequences but there’s not some All-Seeing-Eye Dog.

[laughter]

C: Now you’re just fucking with my producer.

Z: Well, yes, that’d be nice, Charlie, he is very cute.

C: That’s frivolous talk, isn’t it?

[laughter]

Z: I must admit it had crossed my mind.

C: Uh, you don’t mean my producer?

Z: No, I really mean it.

C: I think he’s married. Aren’t you?

[Inaudible]

C: No, I guess they’re splitting up.

Z: Good!

C: Good?

Z: Does he want to go for coffee after?

C: You want to go for coffee with her?

[Inaudible]

C: Yes, he’s interested.

Z: I was just teasing about fucking. Actually I’m not having sex until my head gets a little better. I just want to be held.

C: She doesn’t want to fuck you, just be held.

[inaudible]

[Inaudible]

C: Yes, he’s interested.

Z: Good. That’d be great. This is working out better than I expected. Right after the taping?

[inaudible]

C: Yes, when we’re done. Zoe, could I ask you something?

Z: What?

C: Aren’t you being a bit nonchalant about fucking my producer and all that?

Z: Oh, Charlie. Don’t be silly. You know what girls want.

C: What?

Z: Good God, where have you been?

C: Well--

Z: Girls just wanna’ have fu-un!

C: Oh.

Z: That was established already in the 80’s!

C: oh.

Z: Uh-huh.

C: Ok. --So, about the core precepts?

Z: How long does this go on?

C: We’re about over.

Z: I didn’t think your interviews took so long.

C: What about the core precepts?

Z: What?

C: What about them, for your buddhists? The positive approach?

Z: Well. The precepts are a part of mindfulness practice: to be really aware of what one is doing, to appreciate what really is going on when one acts in harmful ways. Not because of some All-seeing Eye waiting to pounce. Or some internalized Ideal observer constantly evaluating. And of course loving one’s neighbor is good to do, and that can be cultivated, but its not built into the moral imperatives, so there isn’t that burden built into morality. Just be respectful. Of course, being mindful of the basic precepts --the ones we were talking about-- is not a trivial matter. Aren’t your interview supposed to be fifteen minutes?

C: I expanded the show to an hour.

Z: Oh, that’s the problem.

C: Do the buddhist monks with whom you study give sermons about morality, or is it just left as some private thing?

Z: Oh they definitely preach! Last month I was on a retreat with U Pandita and he was in rare form. Every night for three weeks he talked about sila, morality, the precepts. It was virtually the same thing every night. In this retreat he put the emphasis on children, training children to respect the basic moral precepts. There were a number of Vietnamese-Americans on the retreat who have children, and some of their kids even took part for a few days. UP talked about offering moral training to children so that these children when they have children will pass on the training to their kids, who in turn will pass it on to their children so that a causal chain of clarity and respect stretches far into the future. This is a vast vision of the meaning of one’s life in which oddly one more or less disappears and what is highlighted are one’s pure and helpful acts (or not). The first time I heard these talks I was of course thinking (after a week or two) "ok! enough already!"

C: A week or two?

Z: He’d give an hour-long talk each evening during the retreat, and it seemed like he was repeating the same talk every night.

C: Huh.

Z: He’s talked for three nights about not taking what’s not given --not stealing-- and we’re going Duh, ok let’s move on here and on the fourth night he says he wants to look more closely at the importance of not stealing, not taking what’s not given.

C: Huh.

Z: He knows we are educated and eager to hear the teachings about subtle meditative states of mind. So he was rubbing our noses in it in a most elegant way.

C: In what?

Z: At a certain point it dawned on me what UP was saying was: LOOK! these meditation techniques are powerful, but they will do no good unless firmly grounded in simple pure moral behavior. The Buddha said it’d be like rowing strenuously in a boat tied firmly to the dock.

C: oh.

Z: without moral behavior meditation can even make things worse. You are even more self-centered. Morality is not complicated. And I feel it is important to see that its heart is not to be found in the complex controversial issues upon which western philosophers and politicians focus. Of course we have to focus on those details, to develop public policy and so on, but the basics can be spelt out simply and easily. The message is: --be scrupulous not to harm --and really IT IS NOT OPTIONAL! Unless one is careful and conscious, one violates, one does harm! And that sort of carelessness seriously undermines! It ruins everything. One can’t even enjoy a cup of coffee. One’s mind is unruly, wild, unsettled. One can’t simply sit easily and enjoy a cup of coffee! Much less simply one’s own mind. --Do you get this?

C: I’m not sure.

Z: Let me say, then, I am making an empirical claim. I don’t know if it can be studied using methods of scientific psychology. But one can experiment with one’s own mind. In experience the bottom line is that one cannot develop or settle into deep concentration and tranquillity if one's mind is wrapped in remorse and regret and reflection upon whom one has harmed, how one has done it, on the suffering one has caused. This becomes so obvious in a silent retreat, indeed, that is why they can be so difficult when one begins to do it. If one has not been bringing mindfulness into ordinary behavior, or if one simply has not been giving proper attention to the simple important realities of one’s life, for instance, one’s relationships with one’s parents or children or siblings or lovers, or other significant relationships, then upon entering the profound quiet of a retreat one's mind just naturally rocks and rolls with remorse about these things. On the other hand, when one is firmly grounded in the intention not to harm as well as the wish to benefit, bodhicitta --Charlie, that’s where we touch common ground. It is so liberating! One’s mind isn’t continually ensnared by regret. I mean, if one doesn’t win the lottery, ok. One feels bad for a second then forgets it. But if you’ve lying and cheating you don’t forget it, it begins to structure all your experience in an unstable way. --So anyway this time UP was rapping every night as if he thought each of us on the retreat were personally responsible for the recent high school shootings. Which come to think of it is probably what he did think, in some way. Not that we were blameworthy, but after all those shootings are not taking place on some remote planet! The focus on the basic moral precepts in the quiet intensity of the retreat situation was salutary even though it probably would be mystifying to an outsider looking in, like much else on retreats-- what would be mystifing is the attention being given to "the obvious." Well, in daily life we're just too often not paying enough attention to the obvious!

C: [laughing] I believe I asked you if he preached. I didn’t ask you for a sermon.

Z: [laughing] Well you got one. The text was from St. Vaclav Havel, the great Violet Revolutionary, with exegesis from the buddhists. That’s about it. Sermon over. Amen.

C: Wasn’t it the Velvet Revolution?

Z: It was? Oh. Oops, I painted it violet. I tend to get things like that wrong all the time now ever since--

[pause]

C: Since when?

Z: I got kicked in the head.

C: Oh, I’m sorry.

Z: It’s ok. It’ll get better.

C: So now you do buy into it? -- I mean, theravadan buddhism?

Z: To some extent, sure. If somebody calls me a buddhist I don’t necessarily fight about the label like I used to. I certainly don’t use any label like that myself, but I have practiced sincerely, and I’ve put a lot into it --and I have persevered in developing a meditation practice even when it ain’t necessarily been easy. But I haven’t really joined up with anything, and it has been great to see how they can encourage practice like that without caring very much whether you’ll join up with anything. So I’ll chant the refuge chants and so on, but I’m not really identifying with either the religion or the culture. And then, of course, there are aspects of their traditional morality that I flatly reject.

C: You are back again to that distinction between the core moral precepts, Havel’s "common moral minimum," versus various forms of tradition. --Right?

Z: Yes. Back to that again. It is an essential point.

C: Isn’t that the idea that started the fistfight on CNN between Erin Hughes and Liddy?

Z: Yes it was! I don’t think he landed any punches though. She was simply saying that he was identifying his own puny little religious uptight morality with all of morality, like I was talking about here. He couldn’t see the difference, which was precisely her point, and after he called me a Nazi she just slugged him. I had warned her that something like that would happen. In fact that’s why we had gone to the kick-boxing class. It was beautiful.

C: Better be careful what you say or they’ll charge you with being an accomplice!

Z: True, I’d have to get Flynt’s lawyer working for me too.

C: Larry Flynt? The publisher of Hustler?

Z: Yah.

C: I was wondering how does this figure into your relationships with the Burmese monks? I mean, the issue you two are fighting with Liddy about?

Z: Which one?

C: J. Gordon.

Z: No, I mean which issue?

C: The difference between universal core precepts and traditional moralities.

Z: To be honest, Charlie, the monks can be just as bad as Liddy. Sometimes they do not seem to see past their own culture either.

C: We are all conditioned.

Z: Yes, of course. But it makes a difference how free one is within it.

C:--and the monks?

Z: As I was saying, on the recent retreat Sayadaw U Pandita was in rare form talking about the precepts, and like I said --like I preached! --I want to emphasize how elegant and beautiful were those talks. And yet, at the same time, he sometimes can lapse into the culturally-bound, and not even seem to realize it. Probably I do the same thing but don’t notice either.

C: Like how?

Z: For him or me?

C: For him. For you I think it is pretty obvious.

Z: What?

C: For him.

Z: For example, there was a Q&A session at the end of the retreat, with the questions written down beforehand and submitted. An unmarried western couple asked independently about the acceptability of unmarried people having sex. UP played this to the hilt, basically answering the question twice and making sure to mention each time who'd written the questions!--It was very funny!

C: Hmm.

Z: But of course when he began, I thought "Oh-oh! Here he goes again!!" --And yep, sure enough, he trotted out the 20 types of women-- I’d heard it before.

C: The twenty types of women?!

Z: Yes, I’m afraid so. I’m not sure what they all are. It is medieval, ugly, abhorrent. It is truly outrageous and idiotic. It is stupid. Not to mention sexist. When I’d heard it the first time I was so enraged. I could’ve walked out that day and never gone back. The great vipassana teachers Steve Smith and Michele MacDonald had to calm me down. "Remember," they said, "there's a diamond here in this meditation tradition. You know that from your own experience. Sometimes we have to use our own wisdom to differentiate the diamond from the culture." Their comments actually helped me a lot.

C: The twenty types?

Z: Charlie, I honestly don’t know what they are. Those captured in war, that’s one of them. It is truly ugly, just like unexamined western values about marriage. I would not hesitate to list the entire list for you if I knew it. It is just some petty little cultural thing that they got going and they haven’t shaken it off.

C: But you don’t really know what the twenty types are.

Z: No. Why should I know that? I just haven’t listened that closely. I mean, I certainly listened very closely the first time I heard the list, but it was obvious to me immediately that the bottom line underlying all the "types" of women in this archaic medieval horrific classification is the assumption that all females are owned --generally women are owned either by some man or by her parents. If you want the answer to the question it turns out there's a weird double standard. For the man, U Pandita said, no ok sex outside marriage at all, but for the woman who is not married but still "under guardianship of parents" (that is, not yet owned by a man; that is to say, still owned by her parents!): she can have sex before getting married --but, of course, one should be careful of AIDS or getting pregnant with all the attendant complications etcetera.

C: Who would the unmarried woman be able to have sex with?

Z: Right! Good question, Charlie! The system isn’t even coherent --I mean, it’d have to be some man breaking the rules.

C: huh.

Z: I would have several comments: first re men, its a mystery to me why legal conventions should be given such prominence, and second re women, the driving assumption that all women are owned obviously precludes any thought of a woman living an independent life not structured and controlled by somebody else. And third don’t treat me different from men when it comes to your goddam rules.

C: I didn’t say--

Z: I wasn’t talking about you, Charlie.

C: Then why are you yelling at me?

Z: Well--

C: Ok. Beings you are so critical of this, how can you study with them?

Z: Charlie, that is the value of being able to think for oneself! It isn’t an all or nothing thing. There is a diamond to be appreciated. But the petty traditional norms about women actually are quite similar to traditional western thinking and those traditional moral systems are of absolutely no relevance to me.

C: Of no relevance? But I thought you endorsed morality?

Z: You still don’t see it?

C: I think I saw it a minute ago, but now its not clear again.

Z: How dumb can you be?

C: Wait a minute. Are you insulting me?

Z: If you think that’s an insult, take this.

[whack]

C: Why you smartass bitch--

[smack]

[whack]

[crash]

[videotape goes blank]

**

Z: That was a nice left hook, Charlie.

C: You have a good punch yourself.

Z: I learned it at quick-boxing class.

C: I think it is called kick-boxing.

Z: No, actually ours was quick-boxing. Erin didn’t have too much time before the Liddy interview so we had to do a crash course. I could have broke your nose, but I pulled my punch.

C: I think you might’ve broke my jaw, though.

Z; Oh, sorry. Yah, it looks sort of crooked.

C: Ok, let’s continue. So back to that distinction you are so fond of. Could you please explain it just one more time, I mean, to summarize it for our viewers?

Z: Charlie, in the Old Testament it was ok to have many wives. That is of absolutely no relevance to me, just as are the traditional theravadan buddhist norms based on the twenty types of women. On the other hand, the core precepts are grounded in a principle of not harming, and that is totally relevant to me. A lot of it is encoded in the idea of basic human rights. And if we are talking about sex, of course not harming in a sexual interaction may depend on knowing something about what another’s person relationship happens to be to some tradition or other. That is just one aspect of the whole picture, and getting clear about the picture is part and parcel of being intimate. So one has to be careful, scrupulous. For instance, take your cute producer with whom I’m going out for coffee after. If he is just leaving his wife, or perhaps he is being dumped by her, then probabloy that could be pretty sad and complicated and difficult, maybe he should take some time for himself, not feel like he has to jump into--

C: No, actually I think he could use a good quick fuck.

Z: ok, fine. We’ll see. --Can we say that on the air?

C: Listen, girl. At this point I’m sure we have no viewers. We can say whatever we want to.

Z: Ok. Good. Look at the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon playing tiddly-winks and afterwards he still gets to write in the Bible and she takes care of the Ark of the Covenant. That’s a little bit more relevant to me, but my point is that if I am going around thinking well the Queen of Sheba jumped on King solomon’s bones so I guess it must be ok for me to hump your producer then I’m not really paying attention. I’m not living my own life. The point is that one has to talk and think about things in a flexible way.

[inaudible]

C: what?

[inaudible]

C: My producer’s asking if you want to dress up? He wants to be the Queen of Sheba.

Z: You know, I’m already sort of losing interest in him. I’m sorry. I’m kinda’--

C: That’s ok.

Z: Anyway, what I was trying to say was remember the central core is simply not to harm. In my opinion, one generally is more likely to do real harm if one mindlessly follows traditional moral norms --no matter where they come from --than if one flouts them! I know that sounds odd, given that my whole argument rests upon a claim about the wisdom gathered and preserved throughout the human species. But I also want to say that it seems to be that mindlessly following the entire code of a particular culture is not promising for human beings --and it doesn’t matter whether we are talking Old Testament, theravadan buddhist, tibetan buddhist, or contemporary mainstream puritan, or for that matter, contemporary mainstream hollywood or any other set of non-religious norms. Equating basic respect with any set of specific norms strikes me as silly and dangerous. If it weren’t dangerous I wouldn’t even bother to talk about it.

C: By specific you mean telling people exactly what to do?

Z: Well you can’t tell exactly what to do. There are infinitely many ways to perform any type of action.

C: What do you mean?

Z: You tell me to scratch my nose. Ok. I do it, but the individual action that I do wasn’t and indeed could not have been specified by you. I could scratch with my left thumb or right index finger or big toe, etc. There are infinitely many ways to do it and conform. So no list will specifiy individual actions. But codes can be more or less specific in the types of actions they preclude. I’m arguing the universally shared code is pretty general, and what is dangerous is to equate it with more specific codes.

C: Why dangerous?

Z: Maybe not dangerous. It makes it seem more important to spell it out than it is. I think people in practice recognize these things even when they don’t or can’t articulate it.

C: So say something less melodramatic than dangerous.

Z: It is destructive, or undermining.

C: Ok. Say it that way then. But why is it undermining to equate the shared norms with a specific traditional code?

Z: Think what happens when kids see that some set of prevailing traditional norms is not necessarily binding on them. Many naturally will see this as they mature, especially given general hypocrisy in a culture, which of course arises when an earlier generation has been raised in hypocrisy too--well, then these kids are likely to reject morality as a whole. They ignore the core precepts too, or at least don’t really appreciate their truth, they ignore the relevance of these points, and they live mindlessly.

C: Truth? How could a norm like "you should not lie" be true?

Z: I don’t want to insist that it is some sort of fact like facts about quantum mechanics. But nonetheless it can be objectively binding. The validity of the core precepts is similar in some ways to the very existence of people like ourselves. We exist, but we are dependent entities --philosophers use a term like "supervenient" --we "supervene" on bodies, mental events, causal relations between events through time, and so on. But we are not simple, indivisible, determinate substances even though we tend to assume we are. Saying we are not "dense" summarizes this point.

C: yes, I heard you explain it on ESPN SportsCenter.

Z: I would argue that the objective validity of the core precepts is similar in some ways to our own existence as people. We do exist but we are not dense. We are dependent. Similarly, the core moral precepts are objectively valid but they are dependent for their validity on a number of things, including the existence of beings like ourselves.

C: They are not written in the sky somewhere.

Z: Nope. Not written in the sky. Maybe we could say that the core precepts are not DENSE either. Let’s see -- They are not given by some External agent --like a God-- and they don’t exist Separate from life and the existence of people. They do not give absolutely Determinate guidance in all situations which is why they can’t be simply identified with any rigid code. They are not iNdefeasible. That’s a start. The core precepts are objectively valid but not D-E-N-S-e. We need another E.

C: How about Extraordinary? They’re not foreign to us.

Z: Exactly! They’re right under our noses.

C: Maybe we should write this down.

Z: Go ahead. Also before dismissing the precepts as merely relative to a culture or to a person, one should look closely at what one is assuming about what non-relative might mean. What is the standard of "truth" that one is presupposing? Does the standard work in ordinary life or science or the areas in which one is assuming it does work? This is a complicated area. I believe that commonsense has a strong position here. The burden of proof definitely has to be borne by one who wishes to reject the collective wisdom of human beings.

C: But what if it is just some feature of what human beings are like?

Z: That’s part of what would be built into saying that the core precepts are valid but not DENSE. The great philosopher of law H. L. A. Hart was a positivist but nonetheless he recognized what he called the "core of good sense" in the natural law tradition.

C: Wait a minute. I thought positivism contradicted natural law theory. Don’t the positivists say the law has no necessary moral content?

Z: Generally, yes. Morality is one thing, law another--so conceptually it is possible to have unjust laws that morally one is not obligated to obey. Hart emphasizes this in his classic discussion of the separation of law from morality. All the same, in his book The Concept of Law, Hart points out that as humans beings we have features that explain why legal systems must meet certain conditions if they are going to work.

C: What are those features?

Z: We are vulnerable to each other, easily injured and killed by each other, we are approximately equal, there are limited resources, we have limited altruism, we have limited knowledge and understanding.

C: What if somebody says the core precepts also are just cultural?

Z: Then we can have an argument. As I said earlier, my position actually is conservative insofar as I believe that wisdom is preserved, transmitted, passed down. People have learned things. If we look at history, at different cultures, we can distill some wisdom. Do we find any agreement? Yes, indeed we do --don’t deliberately harm your neighbor. What are the crucial areas they focus on?--respect for life, property, use of words, sex. There is agreement about that. But when we get to more specific norms, cultures vary a lot.

C: Still, what if one insists the core precept not to harm is arbitrary?

Z: They can say it. Charlie, I thought we covered this. Nietzsche and others have raised the skeptical question. I’m taking a position but I’m not saying that I am just obviously right. In an argument about this, I would like to know upon what basis one thinks one has a perspective or insight that is superior to the collective wisdom of human beings in many diverse circumstances, so that willfully harming one’s neighbor is something we should countenance. The reason you are going in circles about this is because you have imbibed and are stuck with ideas of relativism. You want to be tolerant and fair, etc, and the idea of objective moral universals got associated with cultural imperialism. I’m not recommending any form of imperialism, but you want to keep coming back to this because you still suspect I am being imperialistic --right?

C: yes, I guess so.

Z: --and yet you haven’t answered my question. Can you show me the situation where people generally have been deliberately harming their neighbors and accepting others’ doing it, that is, accepting killing, stealing, raping, lying at will. Moreover I also would like to know if they live it. Can the skeptic live it? If not, that has to be counted as a relevant fact, part of the discussion. I am talking about something that pertains to real life, not just to abstract discussions. Is she happy? Since one’s willfully harming one’s neighbor can make sense only in terms of an assumption of the density of one’s own self --which is false; it is a delusion --it seems to me unlikely to lead to any secure sense of wellbeing. Also by the way, when a skeptic like Nietzsche comes along and says what you quoted earlier--"in the last analysis, ‘love of the neighbor’ is always something secondary, partly conventional and arbitrary--illusory in relation to fear of the neighbor" --well, that that is just totally steeped in density of self. Yes, fear is fundamental if we are dense and have to protect and promote a dense self. We are so vulnerable. Like this head of mine, Charlie, which to be honest just seems to be rotting away on me. But in fact I think Uncle Fred was just wrong empirically, even given the pressures we are under. People generally don’t live that way even when they feel they have to uphold world views that promote it. What I’m trying to say is as people we tend to believe we are dense, we may think we are supposed to believe that, and yet we do love our neighbors-- this is where nondensity shines through. We love our neighbors as ourselves. I really mean that. Look and see! We may not know how to do it, how to interact or express it. But we do love our neighbors and we look out for the neighbors’ kids too. Respecting the basic precepts is not such big a deal because in fact we are not dense, and because we do naturally love (to some extent). Uncle Fred was just wrong to say love is always secondary, always grounded in fear. He was assuming a circle beginning with fear giving rise to illusory "love" and morality, which is supposed to give rise to "happiness" (but that too is illusory, merely promised for the next life), which in turn fuels greed and fear and the cycle continues. I believe Fred had a lot of insight into western culture and religion. But generally he was quite wrong about this point. I actually know this from direct personal experience in meditation, in exquisite states of nonclinging mind. Fred had some good insights but he’s just plain wrong here. He was stuck with the presupposition of density. An alternative cycle is based in nondensity, in lack of fear or greed, in fearlessness and nonselfcenteredness, giving rise to tranquillity and happiness, which in turn gives rise to love and respect for the basic precepts, which in turn grounds deeper fearlessness. This alternative cycle is plausible, it is closer to ordinary human experience, and evidence for it can be gathered firsthand if you practice meditation seriously or maybe if you just pay some attention to it. I am making an empirical claim here. You don’t have to believe me. But you can see it in your own experience. Erin says that happiness and the emergence of morality from happiness can be understood in terms of the natural history of the evolution of consciousness. I think she wants a theory like Kant’s, where morality was derived from the nature of being rational, whereas she wants to derive it from the nature of being happy.

C: Just being happy does it?

Z: I think that is what she means. We more or less consciously resolve to act to conform to the basic precepts without trying to determine whether or not doing so is in our interest as an individual -- we do this when we are inspired to do so, and happiness inspires. To say that we conform in order to be happy or because we are promised happiness in some future life or anything like that is just to get things backwards.

C: So with the buddhists you reject their traditional norms but still connect with some of their teachings and practices.

Z: For the love of God Charlie!!

C: Security!

Z: How many times do we have to go over this?

C: Help!

Z: Relax. -- Ok. I’m not going to beat you up again. [Laughter]

C: I didn’t realize doing philosophy was so dangerous. Hughes beats up Liddy. [laughing] And now you’ve beat me up too.

Z: It might be the quick-boxing more than philosophy. How’s your jaw?

C: Its pretty sore. Ouch! Don’t touch it!

Z: Sorry.

C: So I realize we all do see that distinction --let me spell this out -- between (1) core universal moral precepts and (2) traditional codes of conduct and belief. I definitely see this now, and I am sure all of our viewers see it as well.

Z: Sure. Great. Finally. Then the wonderful thing about seeing it is you can draw upon traditions without being stuck in them. Or feeling dismissive and detached from them. Most people I know fall into one or the other of those two camps.

C: Which two?

Z: They either are totally submerged within one tradition or they are detached/aloof from all of the traditional ways of life. St. Vaclav Havel there was suggesting something new. Then we can experiment seriously with the freedom that Ellison talked about --to broaden our personal culture by absorbing the cultures of others.

C: yes, I see that now.

Z: In an odd way reflection on where the buddhists are absolutely irrelevant to me actually helps deepen my own meditation practice for it makes it so vivid I cannot really rely on any person or tradition for any interpretation of any of it! Ironically, this turns out to be pretty much U Pandita’s take on things too. He's happy to help if he can, in fact that is what he wants to do. Yet he is simply teaching the dharma as he understands it, and basically you do it yourself or not at all. You can recognize what is valuable and what is not. You don’t have to go around the world looking for somebody else to tell you. Charlie, you don’t have to take my word for this. If it sounds interesting, or potentially useful, you can look for yourself.

C: Just like when you hear some good lively music. Nobody is going to do your dancing for you.

Z: Exactamente.

C: Zoe, you’re not worried about diluting or changing the other cultures by virtue of your participation in them?

Z: No. I am not worried about that at all. That is silly. Why should I worry about that?

C: What about where cultures are disappearing, overwhelmed by others?

Z: That doesn’t happen because people participate in other cultures. That happens because people ignore them and destroy them, usually for the sake of making money. I’m not doing that.

C: But your art incorporates stuff from different cultures, but you change it too; and this makes you successful.

Z: Ok. So?

C: Isn’t this a form of imperialism?

Z: I might be missing something. I don’t really see your point. I practiced meditation, travelled, and so forth. And true --the fact that it is possible for me to have done it is inextricably linked with a history of imperialism. Actually the fact that lay people anywhere can even practice insight meditation probably reflects the democraticizing influence of the British when they controlled Burma.

C: Really?

Z: Yes, until a hundred years ago it was restricted to only monks and nuns.

C: Ok, then, yes. My question is about your picking and choosing elements from various traditions.

Z: Rather than just accepting it all or nothing.

C: Yes. Won’t that result in changes in the original tradition?

Z: Well, if we are talking about the twenty types of women--one could certainly hope that it might change.

C: Right. So your own participation may undermine the traditional structures.

Z: I doubt that I’d have that much of an effect.

C: But what if you did?

Z: Great. Fine. Where is the problem? If I am respecting the basic precepts, then I am not harming anybody. So what if a culture changes--maybe it should change.

C: I have in mind, for instance, where in Indonesia the kids want to hear the CDs of electronic synthetic gamelan music instead of the real live thing from their own cultures.

Z: I didn’t say every change is good or to be encouraged. I think I am missing your point. Are you suggesting everybody just ignore other cultures for fear of interfering? That is crazy. I think we should recognize that there will be interference and take responsibility for what we do. But its not an all or nothing thing.

C: Huh.

Z: If you have specific points about my art, how it is ruining the gamelan culture, then let me know. I’d be interested. I don’t want to do that. But you certainly don’t frighten me in the least with your politically correct frightened cultural isolationism. Maybe you should think this over and try again some time.

C: Oh.

Z: Anything else?

C: Yes, uh, I did want to ask you about a quote from Mark Epstein’s book,--

Z: Who?

C: Epstein.

Z: Huh.--Which book?

C: The second one-- not the one with the pictures.--its the book about Joe. I have it right here. He says on page 144:

One thing I did not understand is that I had thought that buddhists got peace by means of the elimination of desires. But Epstein does not seem to be saying that should be the emphasis.

Z: I guess the idea would be to be free even within desire, emotions, whatever. Why don’t you ask him? I mean -- after he gets out of prison.

C: I forgot to.

Z: You talked with him?

C: I interviewed him just last week by phone. He said some very nice things about you, by the way.

Z: He did?

C: He asked if I knew how you and Joe were doing?

Z: Really?

C: Ok. To be honest, I guess I should tell you he asked me to read this passage to you from his book. He asked me to read it to you.

Z: Hmm.

C: So. How are you and Joe doing?

Z: Fine.

[Pause]

C: So what about that guy, Merv Belzer, I think it was, the guy won a million dollars answering questions on Regis’ tv show, and then said he wanted to give it all to you, if only you’d marry him?

Z: I wouldn’t mind having the million.

C: What about the guy?

Z: It is some friend of Erin’s. Guy’s like that -- they need to get a life and leave me alone.

C: Ok. We just have a minute left.

Z: Finally. Does that count cutting out the stuff about the ketchup?

C: Yes, I think so. We can play the music longer if we need to. I have another quote to ask about. This one I really did want to ask you myself. I went to a meditation retreat myself up at Wisdom House in Connecticut. The teacher is a Catholic nun and this is how she described it:

I’m not sure I got it. Would that mean sitting and thinking about God’s love?

[Pause]

C: Zoe?

Z: Sorry. I was just thinking how different my life might be if even once as a girl I’d heard a sentence like that.

C: Which sentence?

Z: The sentence you quoted, about Christian meditation, perceiving beyond thoughts to God within.

C: How would it be?

Z: The counterfactual is too complicated to figure out. But I think it would have been good to have that reality acknowledged with words.

C: What reality?

Z: The silence.

C: Is it thinking about love?

Z: No.

[Pause]

C: No?

Z: No. Quieter than that. When she said "beyond thoughts," I think probably she would have just meant beyond thoughts. The words "the love of God" are just words. Thoughts. There are a lot of different words to use. Thoughts can useful to help us get interested, focussed, concentrated, settled, tranquil. There are all sorts of techniques and practices. But I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have been talking about any of that. And you don’t need to use any particularly religious language at all.

C: Thank you for being here.

Z: You’re welcome. Thank you.

C: I’ll be right back. Stay with me. I’ll be right back with J. Gordon Liddy.

Z: What!? You got Liddy comin’ in here?

C: Yes, he’s my next guest.

Z: Where is he?

C: Settle down.

Z: I’m gonna’ whup his ass! I can do it too!

C: Don’t forget, you have a date now! --Rex, could you get her out of here now?!!

Z: Where is that fuckin’ scumbag?

C: Security!! --Uh, please stay with me. I’ll be right back.