Dollars for Sense

New York Times and Esquire jounralist Ethan Watters has a new book, "Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche", re American's global influence on the categorization and treatment of mental illnesses irrespective of cultural differences, or as he puts it: America's role in "homogenizing the way the world goes mad". He speaks about how British pharmaceutical GlaxoSmithKline infiltrated the Japanese market where before SSRIs were exceedingly rare, essentially by worrying the line between perceived normalcy and pathology which, in order to do so, it was required that they partially restructure Japanese identity itself. Namely, the Japanese sense of sadness, which has always been considerably more complex than in the West, celebrated through songs and poems as something of a restorative agent. So how'd GSK compromise their culture? They wined and dined the doctors. Fine, that's how it works everywhere, except I see a pattern here beginning with the Meiji Restoration running through the IJA's collaboration with Nazi Germany right up to today -- fortunately, I think enough influence runs the other way to make the trade-off more than fair. At least in Japan they know where it's coming from.

Pygmalionism

Pygmalionism. The state of being in love with an object of one's own making. Edward Said's "Orientalism" is, among other things, but also essentially, about the way Westerners see Easterners through the veil of their own interpretations i.e. prejudices and biases. In other words, a Westerner can never fully understand Eastern culture because any attempt to do so will unavoidably be from their own perspective, a Western perspective, so all judgments and impressions will forever remain, no matter how grounded they may be in experience or empathy, distorted by the cultural filter through which they must inevitably pass.

And yet, how much of our own culture do we ever really fully understand? We are often so taken by the exotic that visitors to our societies can with only minor effort seem to surpass us. I'm thinking in particular of my French college roommate, a brilliant future geneticist with encyclopedic knowledge of American history and pop culture. Then I'm reminded of when I was in Japan, and how disappointing it was that so few Japanese had ever heard of or knew anything about so many of the things that caught my interest there.

I was often frustrated while making statements about Japan when friends would ask a nearby Japanese person if what I was saying were true, as if by virtue of their DNA or the extra experience their opinion would be definitive. True, certain layers of the onion remain obscure to outsiders, especially in some cliquish societies like those of East Asia, but it's not impossible to peel the layers back. Learning to speak the language helps. But it's the question of whether foreigners can ever grasp a culture as well as the native born that I find absurd.

To a large extent there is a certain framework Westerners work with that prevents them from experiencing Eastern culture in the same way as Easterners, and vice versa, but this doesn't necessarily denote an inferior understanding any more than a feminine perspective on male-dominated society denotes inferior understanding. Are Asians therefore somehow less capable of grasping even the subtlest shades of a Shakespearrean sonnet? Maybe I'm not really going anywhere with this, but I think a lot of foreigners love what they perceive to be the countries they inhabit without ever really seeing the thing itself...

In Korea especially, too many foreigners exist in bubbles, mostly eating Western food with Western friends and never learning more than survival Korean, they are utterly isolated and while this sphere of existence is no less real and remains uniquely Korean (however foreign it may feeel, there's no place like Itaewon anywhere else in the world), in another sense the Korea they love isn't exactly the one Koreans think of when they think of Korea. They are separate worlds. But Said was wrong. It's not impossible to step out of that sphere.

In too many cases, the construction of one's own making with which we are in love is not a false perception of some culture, but a false sense of arcane status, as though only a few, selected by race or nationality, are capable of insight. Living in Korea, I just find it an endless task trying to determine which of the two applies and when. Perhaps that's the difference. I feel more acutely the need to sniff around, whereas I think when something is yours, it's more likely you'll take understanding it for granted, and therefore possibly understand it less. Maybe.

"Non-possession" by The Reverend Beop Jeong

I have always had great fascination and respect for Korean Buddhism, especially Chan/Zen, since it has always seemed to me more realistic. More…honest. Better at balancing that noble path with the human condition. But I had never read the teachings of any particular Korean monk. Then this past month The Reverend Beop Jeong passed away. He was seventy-nine. I had never heard of him before, but for several days read about him in the papers while on the subway to work. I was saddened, for one of the greatest living Buddhist teachers had been no more than a short ride away and I had never met him. Moreover I felt shame for seeing his death in such terms – a missed opportunity. After all, a man had died.

I resolved to acquaint myself with him through whatever writings I could find, and was delighted to discover he had gathered quite a following of foreigners by having often delivered sermons in English. I went to bookstores hoping to find what the papers described as his most celebrated work, 무소유 (musoyu) i.e. “Non-possession”. But finding no English translations, I decided to put my own hand to it as a sort of birthday present to myself. So, with a sturdy desk, a heavy dictionary and plenty of time, I went at it and, I think, even managed to understand most if it. What follows then is gathered from the notes I used to burrow my way through. For those who understand Korean, please forgive my paraphrasing (and mistakes). I hope you enjoy it as much as I did…

“Non-possession”

The Reverend Beob Jeong

“I am a poor beggar. I have a spinning wheel and from jail a used rice bowl and a tin of goat’s milk, six shabby blankets, a towel and a reputation not worth mentioning, that’s all.”

In September 1931 Mahatma Gandhi was on his way to the Second Round Table Conference in London when Marseilles customs opened and inspected his belongings. When I read this passage from a compilation by K. Kripalani I was so ashamed. Perhaps it was because I had so many things. At least now my portion is thus.

In truth, when I first came into the world I brought nothing with me. After a full life, I shall disappear from this cruel world with empty hands. While here, I’ve gradually acquired many things. Of course, in everyday life things can seem necessary. But are those things really indispensable? The more I look the more I find so many things may not be good to have.

We have what we need, but sometimes because of such stuff our hearts become more than a little obsessed. So having something can, on the other hand, also mean being bound to it. Rather than have things as needed, when we are bound to them we begin to confuse our priorities and it is then that we bear difficulty. Therefore, by having much do we become prideful, yet these sides are simultaneously intertwined.

Last summer I had two beloved orchids and raised them devotedly with all my heart and soul. Three years before some monks had sent them to our room. Because I lived alone, the only living creatures there were myself and those two young ones. For these children I got and read related publications, for these young ones I asked acquaintances going abroad to find and bring back hydroponic fertilizer. When summer came I found cool shaded places to move them to, and in wintertime I withstood not raising the indoor temperature too much, for their sake.

If such devotion were given to parents, I’d most likely hear rumors of being a dutiful child. Thus being cherished and raised, by early spring bloomed a delicate fragrance with chartreuse flowers that made my heart flutter, the crescent moon leaves that were always fresh and green. Each person who visited our teahouse and saw the fresh orchids was invariably pleased.

One day last summer during monsoon season I went to Bongseongsa (Balsam Temple) to see Unheonosa (耘虛老師). The midday sun, confined as it was by the monsoon sky, poured down all the more glaringly before me, exciting the sound of a brook that mingled with the voices of cicadas.

Dear me! Standing there I suddenly had a thought. The orchids had been left out in the garden. After such a long time the bright sun suddenly seemed so hateful. Its hot, ever-present rays and the thought of the orchid leaves haunted me until I could delay no more. I hurriedly returned along the road. Sure enough, it was as expected. The leaves had gone limp. Impatiently I gave them spring water at length in order to moisten them and raise their heads. But it was as if some radiant vitality had fallen from them.

All that time I had worked so earnestly, body and soul. It seemed attachment was no more than suffering. I had been so tenacious for those orchids. I decided then to remove this attachment. During cultivation, the orchids had required such attention that I could never leave and was essentially stuck. When going out to do something for a moment and leaving the room empty, I would crack the window a little in order to provide as much ventilation as possible, and if I went out forgetting to do this, I would quickly have to return again, so real and awful was my obsession.

A few days later, a friend dropped by whose quiet disposition so reminded me of my orchids that I gave them to him. For the first time, I had come out of my confinement. Out, it seemed, with a light-hearted sense of freedom. Three years with close ‘kind-heartedness’ had left me looking hurt and empty, but I walked ahead with a lighthearted soul. Since this time, I made a promise to myself to do away with things. The orchids had given me an understanding of the meaning of non-possession.

I now see human history as a story of possession. Continuous quarreling for the sake of one’s portion. With this desire to possess, there is no limitation and no days off. And even if there is a single thing more to have, the heart will surge for it. By wanting the things we are bound to, we thus come to want the people bound to them as well. That person then, should they then not possess what they wish, will see it as some cruel tragedy. Their mind cannot control themselves from this desire to possess.

As for this desire to possess, loss and gain are directly proportional. It is not only so with individuals, but with nations too. Yesterday’s allies stand face to face today, mutually opposed for the sake of possession. Yet if humans' history of possession were to become one of non-possession what then would become of us, I wonder. Maybe there would be no more quarreling. For perhaps then there would be nothing to fight for.

Gandhi also said one more thing.

“I begin to think for me possession is first an offense…… .”

If another has something, people who want the same things will be equally limited. However it is because this kind of ownership is impossible that one cannot help feeling sorry for oneself. We are sometimes blinded by thoughts of possession. They are, without even a shadow of doubt, restless. As for me, I shall toss aside this flesh with all the rest. For however much we posses, we cannot truly possess anything at all.

They say only people who discard much can gain much. Just once, then, consider that it may be because of things that people have broken hearts. A broken heart because of something is a lesson for people to think about. Another meaning of non-possession is that when you do not have anything, you only have the world.

The Cheonan Forty-Six

The Cheonan, Pennant number PCC-772, was a Korean Naval vessel that went down March 27th. It had been charged with anti-submarine coastal guardianship. While on the South Korean side of the Northern Limit Line, crew members reported hearing a loud explosion at around 21:20. Less than five minutes later, the ship was gone. There was simply not enough time for an evacuation. Of the 104 crew members oaboard the Cheonan, 58 made it out alive. After an analysis of the hull, experts now believe the explosion was caused by an external source, possible a mine or torpedo.

Yesterday while walking home I saw a young boy, around seven or eight, going down the street in a sailor's costume with bell bottoms, collar and cap. As I walked behind, my imagination wove a little tale...that his older brother had been one of the Cheonan 46 and that he now wore the suit in memory of him, whom he'd so sweetly loved and looked up to...I knew how stupid the daydream was, that he was probably just wearing it the way kids wear cowboy hats and princess dresses, but the image had been laid and it made no difference whether it was true. I felt heartbroken. None of the news reports had touched me as deeply as this.

Today I took the train down to Suwon. The weather's was priceless and I intended to sit in a cafe by the window and watch people pass. Coming out of the exit, there was a tent with a row of flowers inside and the framed pictures of the fallen forty-six. I looked at them each carefully, studying their features, observing the unvaried portraits as though they were paintings in a museum...struck by how young so many were. A man in a suit came up and laid a white flower in front of one of the pictures, then dropped incense in a burner and stepped back to pray while the smoke passed through the tent and into the street.

"Mi mojito en la Bodeguita."

There's a bar in Itaewon called Naked, upstairs from B-One, where the owner is obliging and on Mondays they have 5,000 won Mojitos. Last night I met a young Mongolian girl there from UB. She said her mother was from Khövsgöl aimag and reminisced about riding bareback under the great wide Mongolian skies so infinite and blue, letting the horse carry her as she stared up drunk with bliss, passing whole days without looking at the road. She called it the freest place on earth. Last summer I traveled Mongolia by motorbike. The people there struck me as what you might imagine Native Americans would be today if the colonists had never come. Khövsgöl folks were some of my favorite, especially the Tsaatan reindeer herders. They ride the reindeer, use them to plow their farms, milk them, and live with them as other Mongolians do with horses. Unfortunately only 44 families remain, and these are dwindling as more Korean missionaries pursuade them to move to the valleys where they can attend church, but assimilation is erasing their culture and every summer more reindeer perish in the heat. In the last 40 years, their number has fallen 70%, leaving the Tsaatan increasingly reliant on tourism.

The Siberian Lapp are nearby reindeer herders of greater notoriety, due to their affection for Amanita muscaria, the red-and-white psychoactive mushrooms Mario and Alice ate to grow bigger, also home of the Smurfs and star of my favorite scene in Fantasia. In 1762, Oliver Goldsmith described how elder Lapps ate the mushroom and, according to hierarchy, recycled the yellow snow (containing the psychoactive chemicals) in descending order until the reindeer got to it, who then leapt wildly about, causing ethnobotanist Jonathan Ott to posit this as the mythological origin of flying reindeer and the color of Santa's suit, which is plausible since it's also long been associated in literature and painting with fairies and elves. How strange if Santa's paraphenalia were born of a people who centuries later are being wiped out by Koreans come to give them a distorted image of themselves via Christianity's most sacred festival.

I'm one to talk, living in a former colony profiting from Korean assimilation to my culture via English. An english missionary, though I'm pretty sure no animal have died as a result. Sitting with my Mojito, I reflected on the way English spread through the British Empire's reign, and how that success belonged to the Royal Navy, which in turn owed so much to their ability to stay at sea longer than anyone else because they'd discovered how to treat scurvy before anyone else. In fact, British seamen ate so much citrus fruit they were nicknamed 'limeys', which is how it became a slur for Brits in general. At some point in the mid 1700s lime got added to the daily grog rations, and in Cuba where the African slaves' taste for sugar cane juice caught on with the British, they added added this to their ration of grog and lime with a bit of mint as well to mask the harshness. So there I was talking to a girl whose culture may have given birth to one of Christianity's most loved icons, itself now being erased by Korean Christians, while I live in Korea selling grog and sneering at the Christian rumrunners, my presence here largely due to an early version of the Mojito, all while drinking one next her at the bar. God does have a sense of humor. By the way, the best limes for Mojitos are Makrud limes i.e. keffir limes, but 'kaffir' is a racial slur in Afrikaans so best avoided.