Training is a word with different meanings. Especially now, with its common use in discussing AI.
AI training is the opposite of Buddhist mind training.
Training is a key process in developing AI models. It is the foundation by which those models acquire the knowledge they use to cultivate their intelligence.
Buddhist mind training practice is different than AI training. It is not about acquiring knowledge, far from it. At the start, Buddha and his tradition established that mind is everything. If we, individually and universally, want to reduce our suffering and live a better life and have a better world, we have to investigate and transform our mind. We have to train it.
It is a semantic coincidence that training is a central word and process in both AI and Buddhist practice. An ironic one, since AI regularly tends to pulls us farther and farther out of our own minds, while mind training aims to take us farther and farther into our own minds. We can of course do both. But since it is already attractive to leave our mind behind sometimes, one more easy opportunity to go out rather than in is often welcome.
Following are all nine parts of Richard Brautigan’s work The Galilee Hitch-Hiker. You do not know that you need Richard Brautigan, this and his other works, but you do. Serious, sentimental, silly and sad, he responded to strange times and a strange life (aren’t they all?) in ways that would do any writer proud. Open hearts are the most vulnerable.
More about these poems and Richard Brautigan here.
The Galilee Hitch-Hiker
The Galilee Hitch-Hiker Part 1
Baudelaire was driving a Model A across Galilee. He picked up a hitch-hiker named Jesus who had been standing among a school of fish, feeding them pieces of bread. “Where are you going?” asked Jesus, getting into the front seat. “Anywhere, anywhere out of this world!” shouted Baudelaire. “I’ll go with you as far as Golgotha,” said Jesus. “I have a concession at the carnival there, and I must not be late.”
The American Hotel Part 2
Baudelaire was sitting in a doorway with a wino on San Fransisco’s skid row. The wino was a million years old and could remember dinosaurs. Baudelaire and the wino were drinking Petri Muscatel. “One must always be drunk,” said Baudelaire. “I live in the American Hotel,” said the wino. “And I can remember dinosaurs.” “Be you drunken ceaselessly,” said Baudelaire.
1939 Part 3
Baudelaire used to come to our house and watch me grind coffee. That was in 1939 and we lived in the slums of Tacoma. My mother would put the coffee beans in the grinder. I was a child and would turn the handle, pretending that it was a hurdy-gurdy, and Baudelaire would pretend that he was a monkey, hopping up and down and holding out a tin cup.
The Flowerburgers Part 4
Baudelaire opened up a hamburger stand in San Fransisco, but he put flowers between the buns. People would come in and say, “Give me a hamburger with plenty of onions on it.” Baudelaire would give them a flowerburger instead and the people would say, “What kind of a hamburger stand is this?”
The Hour of Eternity
Part 5
“The Chinese read the time in the eyes of cats,” said Baudelaire and went into a jewelry store on Market Street. He came out a few moments later carrying a twenty-one jewel Siamese cat that he wore on the end of a golden chain.
Salvador Dali Part 6
“Are you or aren’t you going to eat your soup, you bloody odd cloud merchant?” Jeanne Duval shouted, hitting Baudelaire on the back as he sat daydreaming out the window. Baudelaire was startled. Then he laughed like hell, waving his spoon in the air like a wand changing the room into a painting by Salvador Dali, changing the room into a painting by Van Gogh.
A Baseball Game Part 7
Baudelaire went to a baseball game and bought a hot dog and lit up a pipe of opium. The New York Yankees were playing the Detroit Tigers. In the fourth inning an angel committed suicide by jumping off a low cloud. The angel landed on second base, causing the whole infield to crack like a huge mirror. The game was called on account of fear.
Insane Asylum Part 8
Baudelaire went to the insane asylum disguised as a psychiatrist. He stayed there for two months and when he left, the insane asylum loved him so much that it followed him all over California, and Baudelaire laughed when the insane asylum rubbed itself up against his leg like a strange cat.
My Insect Funeral Part 9
When I was a child I had a graveyard where I buried insects and dead birds under a rose tree. I would bury the insects in tin foil and match boxes. I would bury the birds in pieces of red cloth. It was all very sad and I would cry as I scooped the dirt into their small graves with a spoon. Baudelaire would come and join in my insect funerals, saying little prayers the size of dead birds.
I know how important this midterm election is. I’ve already voted and have supported candidates who will start serving as correctives to what is, by all measures, the worst governance America has ever had. That is saying something.
I know from a messaging standpoint that in this case, too much is never enough. Less than a week before the election, with many close critical races, there is no time to let up. There is going to be plenty of time after the election to see where we stand and move forward appropriately. Just a few more days of messages and then….
Of course I want an optimal outcome. I’ve done what I could, which may not have been enough, whatever that means, but I’ve tried. If you are an American voter, and think we need to get back on a better less insane track, please vote and ask other like-minded Americans to vote.
Beyond that, as I’ve said before, I believe the days before, during and after the election are going to be unprecedentedly challenging. Losers, from Trump on down, will do everything to subvert and invalidate outcomes they don’t like and won’t accept. I am expecting that we will be getting messages asking us to help push back on these efforts. I will do what I can, as others will.
But in the meantime, I’m interrupting to say that me, my email mailbox, and my text folder join me in saying that we are exhausted.
When someone out of envy does me wrong By insulting me and the like, May I accept defeat And offer the victory to them. –Eight Verses for Training the Mind, Langri Thangpa (1054–1123)
When I first saw this excellent ad, before it closed with a message about Jesus, I was sure it was a Buddhist ad campaign, even though I didn’t think that was a thing (it’s not).
The verse above is from Eight Verses for Training the Mind, a classic text of Tibetan Buddhism. The central aim of mind training (lojong) is to rid ourselves of self-importance. From that, all of our best will unfold.
Whether we are aware of it, all of our religious traditions promote this. For theistic traditions, it is that we are less important than God. For non-theistic traditions, it is that we are less important than other people.
If God gets you there, good. If the teachings of Jesus get you there, good. If the teachings of the Buddha get you there, good. If non-religious philosophy gets you there, good.
You may note that some who comment on this believe that God or Jesus or whoever want us to be warriors, so losing is not an option, in fact is blasphemy. How is that going?
Did you know that the CDC (Center for Disease Control) has a museum and that the museum includes a COVID-19 Timeline?
It is a summary reminder of the calendar of the worst days of the pandemic. At some point that felt like it would never get better or end, even though the worst days took only two years. (“Worst” being relative, since the effects still linger and the disease is now endemic.)
Remember Trump?
When you cross-match Covid and Trump, you find some interesting things.
Trump was first in office during the early days, though even then he demonstrated a known tendency toward absurdity not grounded in reality. For example, his suggestion of injecting bleach as a treatment. We don’t know what would have happened if Trump had been in office during the later worst days, but based on what we know now, we might still be seeing federally-funded bleach injections for a range of diseases.
The big point is that the worst days of Covid are behind us, thanks to scientific advances and to to a large number of citizens willing to treat it as the public health disaster it was. We have used the very human ability to selectively forget and move on, which in proper proportion is a psychically good thing, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of handling the next potential pandemic.
There is no official museum with a Trump Timeline. If the disease of Covid peaked in late 2022, Trump has not peaked yet. He is still with us as a pandemic, though hopefully not endemic. We continue to promote public information and vaccines, which ultimately worked for Covid.
If we had not found a way through the pandemic, the devastation would have been staggering and still ongoing. We will get through this lingering and still uncontrolled disease, if we have the will and find a way.
“Mendacity is the enemy of man, and yet more and more love is lavished on guile and lies. Truth is homeless in our world.”
A World of Phantoms
For most of us, life is a series of evasions, pretensions, substitutes, and rationalizations. We do not see the world as it is but as a projection of ourselves, and so we are prisoners of delusions that hold us in their spell even after we become aware of their deceptiveness. Gradually pretensions are converted into certainties, rationalizations become entangled, and madness sets in.
So many people become salesmen of their delusions. So few people are fully conscious of the non-finality of our here-and-now world.
In analyzing and discussing problems of Jewish Law, possible solutions are often advanced in the Talmud with the introductory words, “I might have thought,” “I might have been led to believe.” After proving that these arguments are mere suppositions or hypotheses, a conclusion is usually reached.
One must learn to understand thoroughly the precise meaning of these phrases, Reb Bunam said. For the world in which we live is a mere supposition or hypothesis. The conclusion is still to come. “At that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call on the name of the Lord and serve Him with one accord” (Zephaniah 3:9).
How did the Kotzker, who was consumed with a passion for veracity, for eternity, look at people whose whole life was spent serving spurious goals?
Falsehood is not merely a discrepancy between what is said and what is meant. It twists and distorts the basis of a man’s life, deceiving him into believing he lives in a reality that does not exist. A person living a lie and taking it to be the Truth moves in a world of self-delusion.
Falsehood is not just a stigma that sullies man’s thinking. A healthy life consists in knowing what one wants, seeing an ultimate goal ahead, and hoping to reach it by means of clearly understood actions. And mendacity is a disease that binds a man’s entire existence. As a result of it, our perceptions are false. We regard as real what can be measured and controlled; what defies measurement and control we reject as irrational and unreal.
In Jewish mystical literature the world here and now is called “the world of falsehood”; each grain of truth may be surrounded by shells of falsehood. Our truths are often half-truths, acquired piecemeal and preserved precariously, their only refuge being the lips of a few dying men. For so many people die for the sake of a lie. So many who profess truth really shun it. Their solemn proclamations are often veiled deceptions.
This is what Abraham did. He forsook community and deception to live with Truth in solitude.
Genuine solitude is the prelude to a new community. However, if you do not withdraw but remain part of “the world,” your supreme effort must be not to deceive yourself. Clearly one of man’s strongest inclinations is to deceive himself.
People do not know whether they are alive and where they are. The world abounds in misrepresentation—lives without design, movement without aim, roofs without walls. They think they dance, yet they are paralyzed. Delusion holds them enraptured. They feel so comfortable in the clutches of their self-deception that when Satan himself embraces them, they think he is in love with them.
Mendacity is the enemy of man, and yet more and more love is lavished on guile and lies. Truth is homeless in our world. We suffocate for lack of honesty. As a result, man dies while yet alive. Who can speak of resurrection when life itself has become death?
Coarse and swaggering, men make insolent speeches and engage in presumptuous dealings. But they are dead, while Truth, though buried in the grave, is alive. Sometimes a voice cries out from underground, and a few isolated individuals sigh and weep.
When a man does not delude himself, he does, at the least, recognize the world’s falsehood. As long as he believes that his delusion is ultimately coherent, that his conceits have final meaning, he lives in a realm of phantoms. Though idle, he is convinced of his achievements. Even as he lies dying, he persuades himself that he is alive.
Each person should wrestle with this question: am I living in a world of phantoms? Is my life, are all my concerns mere delusions?
At the time of World War II, superhero comic books were growing in popularity. Even more so in the following decades.
A big question emerged: Why didn’t Superman just end the war quickly? He certainly could have.
The answer is obvious, even to those who admire him. He is a comic book character. Like all great characters of myth and fiction, he may exist as an all-powerful ideal in the psyche, spirit and imagination, but not in the real hard world.
We are thankful we do have human heroes in dire situations, and that is exactly how the force of evil was vanquished in World War II. In the overall social and political sphere, once in a while we do find individuals who can help “bend the course of history with their bare hands.” But we shouldn’t count on it.
Instead, as deep into undemocratic evil as we are sinking, what we have are very human politicians, which means that some will try their best, or what they think is best, which may not be enough. If we are waiting for Superman, or superheroes, or just heroes, know this: they are us.
We are as gods and might as well get good at it. –Stewart Brand
When Stewart Brand birthed the Whole Earth Catalog in 1968, a version of this motto appeared in the introduction to that first issue: “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.”
WEC was an exercise in what we might call Human General Intelligence. It covered literally everything and everyone on earth and in the universe. It was aimed at getting readers—all of us—aware of everything and everyone, so that we could get on an enriched and enlightening learning and acting path of knowledge and ability about anything and anyone.
In a nutshell, that is what AI offers. AI is not “as a god”, though from a certain perspective it may look to some that way. We are “as gods” with it at our command, and not since putting world-destroying weapons in human control has that been clearer.
Think about the last time, or all the times, you used AI. Would you consider that a godlike experience, or was it a matter—not illegitimate, no judgment—of taking an easier and more convenient way to pass a school assignment or complete a work task? Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with that, maybe. But if with AI at your side you might be “as a god”, is that all you plan to do with it?
Note: That first issue begins and ends with two of my greatest inspirations, Buckminster Fuller and the I Ching. It may not be enough to know their Biggest Picture view of life and the universe and our place in it, but it is a start. What would they/do they think of AI?
Hey now, baby Get into my big black car I want to just show you What my politics are
Cream’s Politician, from Wheels of Fire (1968), is not the most sophisticated song ever about politics. Still, the message has never gone out of style. For those who don’t know Eric Clapton and Cream, the rest of the album and the earlier Disraeli Gears (1967) are worth hearing.
Hey now, baby Get into my big black car I want to just show you What my politics are
I’m a political man And I practice what I preach So don’t deny me, baby Not while you’re in my reach
I support the left Though I’m leaning to the right But I’m just not there When it’s coming to a fight
Hey now, baby Get into my big black car I want to just show you What my politics are
It is worth analyzing this post from five years ago.
Some of it seems right. Republicans back then saw Trump as a way to get the things they wanted but that seemed, in a slowly enlightening America, out of reach.
What I got wrong was this: “They [Republicans] are holding their fire as they wait for the emergence of a smarter, smoother, more attractive demagogue.” What they and we got is an increasingly less attractive and less stable demagogue.
“All they [Republicans] want is a captain to steer the ship of state in the right direction—one who isn’t quite so problematic and crazy. Next stop 2024.” Right direction? Not quite so problematic and crazy? Be careful what you wish for and enable. 2024 happened and the next stop is now.
Note: The following was drafted in early January, days after the invasion of the Capitol, days before Trump officially left office. Having just reread the draft, I believe it still has merit.
The conventional analysis of elected Republican politics goes something like this:
Most of the elected Republicans stuck with Trump even during his most heinous days—through active support or silence—because they feared the electoral wrath of him and his base. Their prime directive was to stay in office. Not a profile in courage or integrity, but a simple path anyone might understand if not condone: keep your job.
The actual story is more like this:
Many elected Republicans believe that the only future for America is one in which the forces of progressivism—even moderate moves toward equity and fairness—are turned around. They initially opposed and criticized Trump. But once they had to accept him in power, they saw that he could be useful for that plan. Yes, his behavior in office was extreme and distasteful. But it was a small price to pay for restoring America to its former glory.
So while Trump and his conduct are more reprehensible and toxic than ever, we read this headline from the Washington Post, days after the storming of the Capitol:
“Republicans largely silent about consequences of deadly attack and Trump’s role in inciting it.”
Of course they are largely silent. They are holding their fire as they wait for the emergence of a smarter, smoother, more attractive demagogue. Where, for example, is George Wallace when you need him?
So Republicans remain patient and, with some exception, silent or equivocal. They never wanted an invasion of the citadel of American democracy, nor did they want anyone to be killed. All they want is a captain to steer the ship of state in the right direction—one who isn’t quite so problematic and crazy. Next stop 2024.
