Contention OneThe Persistence of Memory

KCKCC Ard/Novak

Daoism 1AC

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Contention OneThe Four Noble TruthsFirst note that desire creates the illusion of the self and the suffering that defines the human condition. Our only capacity is thus to affirm the extermination of this desire in the face of perpetual death and an impermanent reality.

Jonathan Dollimore 1998(Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture, p 54-56.)

We reject the notion of the United States federal government as an external entity distinct from ourselves overcoming the assumption of difference is a key first step to a nondualistic framework.

Loy, David. 1996 (Beyond good and evil? A Buddhist critique of Nietzsche. Asian Philosophy, 09552367, Mar1996, Vol. 6, Issue 1)This process implies that what we fear as nothingness is not really nothingness, for that is the perspective of a sense-of-self anxious about losing its grip on itself. According to Buddhism, letting-go of myself and merging with that nothingness leads to something else: when consciousness stops trying to catch its own tail, I become no-thing, and discover that I am everything--or, more precisely, that I can be anything. The problem of desire is solved when, without the craving-for-being that compels me to take hold of something and try to settle down in it, I am free to experience my nonduality with it. Grasping at something merely reinforces a delusive sense of separation between that-which-is-grasped and that-which-grasps-at-it. The only way I can become a phenomenon is to realise I am it, according to Buddhism. A mind that realizes this is absolute in the original sense of the term: unconditioned. Meditative techniques decondition the mind from its tendency to circle in safe, familiar ruts, thus enabling its freedom to become anything. The most-quoted line from the best-known of all Mahayana scriptures, the Diamond Sutra, encapsulates all this in one phrase: "Let your mind come forth without fixing it anywhere". [10]

We United States Federal Government should substantially reduce the size of its nuclear weapons arsenal, and/or substantially reduce and restrict the role and/or missions of its nuclear weapons arsenal. Well clarify

Contention TwoImagining Violence

As long as we have desire in our hearts, we are just like Don Quixote - blindly flailing at windmills while ignoring the fact that we have created the enemy we are fighting. This ego-driven ideology makes violence inevitable there will always be another crusade. Only by turning inward and rejecting the desire to make ourselves permanent can we have peace and happiness in our hearts which is the only thing that ultimately matters. Both a framework which envisions difference and one which seeks to overcome this violence replicates the harmsAyya Khema, 1994 (Buddhist monk, All of us beset by Birth, Decay, and Death. Buddhism Today, http://www.buddhismtoday.com/english/philosophy/thera/003-allofus-5.htmIf you have ever read //Don Quixote//, you'll remember that he was fighting windmills. Everybody is doing just that, fighting windmills. Don Quixote was the figment of a writer's imagination, a man who believed himself to be a great warrior. He thought that every windmill he met was an enemy and started battling with it. That's exactly what we are doing within our own hearts and that's why this story has such an everlasting appeal. It tells us about ourselves. Writers and poets who have survived their own lifetimes have always told human beings about themselves. Mostly people don't listen, because it doesn't help when somebody else tells us what's wrong with us and few care to hear it. One has to find out for oneself and most people don't want to do that either.What does it really mean to fight windmills? It means fighting nothing important or real, just imaginary enemies and battles. All quite trifling matters, which we build into something solid and formidable in our minds. We say: "I can't stand that," so we start fighting, and "I don't like him," and a battle ensues, and "I feel so unhappy," and the inner war is raging. We hardly ever know what we're so unhappy about. The weather, the food, the people, the work, the leisure, the country, anything at all will usually do. Why does this happen to us? Because of the resistance to actually letting go and becoming what we really are, namely nothing. Nobody cares to be that.Everybody wants to be something or somebody even if it's only Don Quixote fighting windmills. Somebody who knows and acts and will become something else, someone who has certain attributes, views, opinions and ideas. Even patently wrong views are held onto tightly, because it makes the "me" more solid. It seems negative and depressing to be nobody and have nothing. We have to find out for ourselves that it is the most exhilarating and liberating feeling we can ever have. But because we fear that windmills might attach, we don't want to let go.Why can't we have peace in the world? Because nobody wants to disarm. Not a single country is ready to sign a disarmament pact, which all of us bemoan. But have we ever looked to see whether we, ourselves, have actually disarmed? When we haven't done so, why wonder that nobody else is ready for it either? Nobody wants to be the first one without weapons; others might win. Does it really matter? If there is nobody there, who can be conquered? How can there be a victory over nobody? Let those who fight win every war, all that matters is to have peace in one's own heart. As long as we are resisting and rejecting and continue to find all sorts of rational excuses to keep on doing that there has to be warfare.War manifests externally in violence, aggression and killing. But how does it reveal itself internally? We have an arsenal within us, not of guns and atomic bombs, but having the same effect. And the one who gets hurt is always the one who is shooting, namely oneself. Sometimes another person comes within firing range and if he or she isn't careful enough, he or she is wounded. That's a regrettable accident. The main blasts are the bombs which go off in one's own heart. Where they are detonated, that's the disaster area.The arsenal which we carry around within ourselves consists of our ill will and anger, our desires and cravings. The only criterion is that we don't feel peaceful inside. We need not believe in anything, we can just find out whether there is peace and joy in our heart. If they are lacking, most people try to find them outside of themselves. That's how all wars start. It is always the other country's fault and if one can't find anyone to blame then one needs more "Lebensraum," more room for expansion, more territorial sovereignty. In personal terms, one needs more entertainment, more pleasure, more comfort, more distractions for the mind. If one can't find anyone else to blame for one's lack of peace, then one believes it to be an unfulfilled need.Who is that person, who needs more? A figment of our own imagination, fighting windmills. That "more" is never ending. One can go from country to country, from person to person. There are billions of people on this globe; it's hardly likely that we will want to see every one of them, or even one-hundredth, a lifetime wouldn't be enough to do so. We may choose twenty or thirty people and then go from one to the next and back again, moving from one activity to another, from one idea to another. We are fighting against our own //dukkha// and don't want to admit that the windmills in our heart are self-generated. We believe somebody put them up against us, and by moving we can escape from them.Few people come to the final conclusion that these windmills are imaginary, that one can remove them by not endowing them with strength and importance. That we can open our hearts without fear and gently, gradually let go of our preconceived notions and opinions, views and ideas, suppressions and conditioned responses. When all that is removed, what does one have left? A large, open space, which one can fill with whatever one likes. If one has good sense, one will fill it with love, compassion and equanimity. Then there is nothing left to fight. Only joy and peacefulness remain, which cannot be found outside of oneself. It is quite impossible to take anything from outside and put it into oneself. There is no opening in us through which peace can enter. We have to start within and work outward. Unless that becomes clear to us, we will always find another crusade.Our ethic of transcending desire comes first. Any political or alternative framework perpetuates a divisionary binary and makes all harms possible.

Bell Hooks, Buddhims and the Politics or Domination.Mindful Politics, 2006

Finally, any reversion to political role-playing creates a discursive advocacy of desiring a solution to suffering which is the only reason why the harms exist in the first place. Desire makes every impact inevitable.

Rahula, What the Buddha Taught, 29-30.

Contention ThreeNirvanaFirst, dont confuse our intentionswe recognize the impossibility of outright, systemic rejection of consumerist and self-centric ethics of desire. But our refusal to perceive the worlds ills as solvable through exterior actions entails a necessary first step to break a cultural addiction to desire and permanence.

Barnhill, David Landis. (Director of Environmental Studies and Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh) 2004, Good Work: An Engaged Buddhist Response to the Dilemmas of Consumerism Buddhist-Christian Studies, 24.1, p 55-63. The student asks, But what can we do? Isn't whatever we do so small as to be insignificant? What if the consumer culture has such a momentum that there is very little we can do? The question of hope arises, particularly I think in our Western tradition that assumes at least the possibility of progress. Is there hope? Many claim there is, and claim it is necessary. Frankly, I don't agree. I don't think there is much prospect of successfully stopping or significantly turning around what Gary Snyder has called "this growth monster." That monster isto mix metaphorsa huge beast and we have but slingshots as it rolls uncontrollably downhill. Surely this economic epoch will someday end, literally running out of gas, and I do believe the next epoch will not be able to generate the artificially intensified greed, hatred, and delusion of the consumer culture. But the possibilities for our having a significant impact at this point are very small indeed. Indeed, as a Buddhist I begin with the assumption that we will always have the three poisons. The First Noble Truththat life is sufferingremains true for the world as a whole even though individuals can realize the Third Noble Truththe extinction of suffering. Or, to use a phrase from the poet Robinson Jeffers, greed, hatred, delusion, and suffering are "exactly conterminous with human life."12 Hope, as the term is usually used, in fact, is itself a type of craving, a desire mixed with expectation for things to change for the better in the future. As such it leads us away from the equanimity we need. So is the result hopelessness? No. Hopelessness arises only when there is the possibilitythe expectationof hope. There is no despair where there is no possibility of hope. The true rejection of hope involves the dissolution of hopelessness as well. But while I am not hopeful, I am "heartened." I am heartened by the possibility of good work. I like the simplicity and humility of that phrase, "good work." What is a good work? We can make the political choice to work against the monster in whatever limited way fits our niche in the system. Each of us as individuals is not called to save the world. As Wendell Berry has said, we need to "think little," and focus on good work in our own setting. And there are many types of good work, as outlined by both Buddhist and Christian thinkers with increasing political sophistication and detail. Work is good also when we make that political choice a spiritual one: think little [End Page 60] and act spiritually. By spiritual work for a Buddhist I mean action based on compassion and equanimity, action arising out of a realization of interdependence and impermanenceand out of an honest recognition our own complicity in the system. I am heartened by the possibility that we can enact not just political confrontation but a "spirituality of resistance"whatever our limits and however small the results of our action. Such work, combining the spiritual and the political, is good also because it creates a communityan activist sangha. It is work done as part of a community of goodness. However limited the political success, and however much we continue to be part of the consumer culture, we enter into a communion of those working for the good, toward the good. There is a kind of peace in that, I think, one that undercuts our penchant to live or die by the results of our actions. We participate in an abiding community of those who act and have acted against craving, discontent, and suffering. I am heartened also by this possibility. And good work is also cosmic, for it arises out of the universe itself. Buddhist compassion, including action aimed at overcoming greed, its causes, and its effects, is not our own personal action, some good deed we altruistically launch from the individual self over to the world-out-there. Since Buddhism claims that the self is a delusion, it is more accurate to say that we are moved to act by the world's compassion. This enables us to act in a centered way, in both senses of the termwith equanimity while in the middle of craving. This type of action, then, involves a deep sense of being grounded in the cosmos, of acting, we might say, out of the heart of the universe. This is being heartened in the deepest meaning of the term. So my answer to my student is that, no, I don't think we will be able to transform the consumer culture at the social level. But we can do a little good, and we can do it in a way that it is spiritual work that transforms us, that nourishes and sustains us in these dark times by locating us in a community of others doing good work and by embodying the compassion of the universe. But I cannot end on a positive note, however qualified. While engaged Buddhism help us do good work and be transformed by it, we cannot dismiss the feeling of helplessness. We need to sit with it and transform it in a way that does not invalidate the concern expressed by my student and felt by many of us. I think along with this affirmation of good work is a moral and social sorrow. Perhaps this arises from my long love for Japanese aesthetics. In such terms as "aware,""ygen," and "sabi," 13 Japanese aesthetics has aimed at a complex state of mind that combines sorrow and tranquility. This aesthetic sorrow for the Japanese is not something one tries to get rid ofindeed it is part of the world itself and thus our feeling of it is a natural response to that world. It is an entering into the sadness of things. But we can come to rest in that sorrow, precisely because it arises out of our realization of the essential nature of the world. So too the moral sorrow at the boundless craving of a suffering world. So in the call to resist consumerism, I look not to overcome greed but to enter good work, heartened but saddened, knowing that we are interwoven with all other people, however trapped in desire we all may be, and interwoven with the great universe [End Page 61]we live within, however painful it remains. I recall in the 1960s standing together, holding hands, and singing"we shall overcome" . . . and thinking to myself, "no we won't." Some improvements were made, a war came to a crashing end, but we did not overcome the greed, hatred, and delusion of that time. And we will not overcome consumerism, at least in the sense of extinguishing it. But there is another kind of overcoming. Every time one speaks truth to power, one has overcome. Every time we face hatred and give back love, we have overcome. Every time you walk into the midst of craving and violence and you are yourself peace, you have overcome. It is an overcoming that we are always called to enter into, together. A rejection of this cycle of desire allows us to have an enlightened engagement with the world a fundamental prerequisite to all other actionBret W. Davis, 2004 (Department of Japanese Philosophy Kyoto University Zen After Zarathustra: The Problem of the Will in the Confrontation Between Nietzsche and Buddhism The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 28 (2004) 89-138, accessed through muse.edu)

The way things are here and now, according to Buddhism, is neither existence nor non-existence, but rather the middle way of dependent co-origination. When this dynamic process of interconnected becoming is radically thought through, according to Nagarjuna, there is no (substantial) "thing" that comes into and goes out of existence. And this means that each and every phenomenal event is marked byin the words of his famous eightfold negation"non-origination, non-extinction; non-destruction, non-permanence; non-identity, non-differentiation; non-coming (into being), non-going (out of being)."28 The "uncompounded" is thus not someplace else, but is this world of non-substantial becoming seen aright. According to Nagarjuna, the root of samsaric existence is the activity or disposition (Sk. samskra) that compounds phenomena into reified forms, forms that we attach ourselves to and then suffer the loss (of control) of. The "wise one" who sees into this vicious circle, therefore, ceases to "act" in the sense of "to create compounds." But this cessation is presumably not a cessation of all "activity" as such; indeed, as Garfield puts it, by ceasing the activity of reification "we can achieve... a nirvana not found in an escape from the world but in an enlightened and awakened engagement with it."29 The right effort to attain nirvana is thus not a will to nothingness, but leads rather to the realization that there is nothing to "attain."30 Thus asamskrta refers not to an eternal realm outside the conditioned world of becoming, but to a more originary way of perceiving and dwelling in the world of dependent co-origination. This nondualism of samsara and nirvana, however, is not a simple identity. It is neither a dualism (since nirvana is not some other place outside this world), nor is it a sheer nothingness, a negation of existence as such. Yet the world reaffirmed is not simply the same as the initial world of "attachment" (P./Sk. updna). Rather, nirvana implies a different way of being-in-this-world. Yet how can we characterize this difference? Negatively speaking, we may assume that enlightened action would not be driven by attachment, craving, or, presumably, the will to power. In following the return movement in Buddhism back toward a reaffirmative characterization of being-in-the-world, we must not loose sight of the importance of this initial moment of negation. The negation of these modes of "willful" being-in-the-world marks the radical difference between an enlightened "re-affirmation" and an ignorant craving for and attachment to life. Nirvana, as a "blowing out of the flame of craving and attachment," demands first of all a radical negation of the will. A reaffirmation of the world of activity [End Page 98] is made possible, however, only by way of a secondequally necessarynegation, namely, a negation of any sublated craving for and attachment to transcendent repose in the realm of nirvana. The event of nirvana thus paradoxically completes itself only in a movement through its own negation. Saigusa Mitsuyoshi writes that this dialectical movement toward reaffirmation through double negation can already be found in the early sutras. The Suttanipta, for instance, often instructs us not only to discard "this world," but also to discard "that world" of the beyond. Saigusa interprets the first negation to signify the "negative" moment of nirvana, the "going forth" (Jp. s) from this world of craving and ignorance, and the second negation to indicate a "positive" moment of "returning" (Jp. gens) to compassionate activity within the world of conditioned existence. This movement of return, he adds, is not that of a one-dimensional circle, but rather that of a three-dimensional spiral.31 This dynamic dialectic of reaffirmation through double negation is clearly developed in the Mahayana tradition, as succinctly stated in the key phrase of the Heart Sutra: "form is emptiness; emptiness is form." Phenomenal beings (forms; Sk. rpa) are emptied of any reified substantial essence (Sk. svabhva); yet emptiness essentially empties itself into and as the eventful suchness of phenomenal be-ings in their dependent co-origination.

Additionally, our affirmation of a nondualistic framework does not entail engagement with the cycle of desire we critique. Rather, it is the lynchpin to unraveling a terminal replication of systematic violence. But even if we somehow entail greater suffering, our separation from desire means you still vote aff.

Wayne Alt, 2001 (There is no Paradox of Desire in Buddhism, Buddhism Today, http://www.buddhismtoday.com/english/philosophy/thera/013-desire.htm)It must be admitted that to obey the instruction "Give up desires" I must begin by adding to my desires. But even if I add to my desires the desire to give them up, I do not thereby disobey the instruction to give them up. Insofar as such a desire is counted as just one more desire in an already overflowing inventory, there does seem to be a sense in which it is a step backward and away from the Buddhist goal of eliminating desire. Even so, such a step is not tantamount to disobeying the instruction. Suppose, for example, that you tell me to jump up into the air. To carry out your instruction I must begin by bending my knees. But even though I must begin by moving downward, a direction opposite to the one in which you want me to move, I have not thereby disobeyed your instruction. Rather, I have simply taken the first necessary step in carrying it out. By the same token, if you instruct me to give up desires, I must begin by moving in a direction that is opposite to the one in which you want me to move. But I do not thereby disobey your instruction; rather, I simply take the first step necessary in carrying it out, and there is nothing paradoxical about that. Visvader claims that the desire to give up desires is made paradoxical by considering it in relation to the suffering it causes: It is this desire to escape suffering that fills out the paradoxical quality of the desire to give up desires, for if I give up the desire to give up desires, I will still be locked in suffering, while if I try to give up desires, I will only add to the cause of it.(8) It must be admitted that if one does not desire to give up desires, one will continue to have them, and so, continue to suffer. But it is roundly mistaken to think that if one does desire to give up desires, one will only add to the cause of suffering. Only someone who realizes the extent and cause of his suffering will generate enough concern to try to get rid of his desires. Visvader recognizes this, but seems to think that this concern must dangle forever in midair, as though it could never be anything more than a kind of ineffectual fretting that merely adds to one's stock of desires, thereby issuing in a kind of "double suffering." What he fails to consider is that this initial anxious concern to be rid of one's desires may mature and transform itself into methods of action that decrease, not add to, the causes of suffering. For example, by forming the resolve to conform to the moral precepts enumerated by the Buddha in the eightfold path, one might initially experience self-doubt and anxiety about one's ability to purify oneself in such ways. In fact, such doubts just might be additional causes of suffering, especially if, as seems inevitable at first, one deviates widely from the path. But by holding a firm resolve, one's practice improves, and as it improves, self-doubts, as well as those desires that were initially the cause of one's suffering, begin to melt away. In other words, by desiring to be rid of desires, one does not only add to the cause of suffering. This might be the case at first. But as this desire finds expression in suitable forms of practice, one begins to suffer less, certainly less than before forming the desire.

Any return to a paradigm of isolating negative harms for management or solution only seeks to institutionalize desireovercoming this delusion of imminent impacts is key. David R. Loy, 2007(Professor of Ethics/Religion and Society at Xavier University in Cincinnati, The Three Poisons, Institutionalized Tikkun, 08879982, May/Jun2007, Vol. 22, Issue 3) The importance of a personal spiritual practice. The basis of Buddhist social engagement is the need to work on oneself as well as on the social system. Why have so many revolutions and reform movements ended tip merely replacing one gang of thugs with another? If we have not begun to transform our own greed, ill will, and delusion, our efforts to address their institutionalized forms are likely to be useless, or worse. If I do not struggle with the greed inside myself, it is quite likely that, when I gain power, I too will be inclined to take advantage of the situation to serve my own interests. If I do not acknowledge the ill will in my own heart as my own problem, I am likely to project my anger onto those who obstruct my purposes. If unaware that my own sense of duality is a dangerous delusion, I will understand the problem of social change as the need for me to dominate the socio-political order. Add a conviction of my good intentions, along with my superior understanding of the situation, and one has a recipe for social as well as personal disaster. History is littered with examples. Commitment to non-violence. A non-violent approach is implied by our non-duality with "others" including those we may be struggling against. Means and ends cannot be separated. Peace is not only the goal; it must also be the way. We ourselves must be the peace we want to create. A spiritual awakening reduces our sense of duality from those who have power over us. Gandhi, for example, always treated the British authorities in India with respect. He never tried to dehumanize them, which is one reason why he was successful. Buddhist emphasis on delusion provides an important guideline here: the nastier another person is, the more he or she is acting out of ignorance and dukkha. The basic problem is delusion, not evil. If so, the basic solution must involve wisdom and insight, not good attempting to destroy evil only to discover that it is looking in a mirror. Awakening together. Social engagement is not about sacrificing our own happiness to help unfortunate others who are suffering. That just reinforces a self-defeating (and self-exhausting) dualism between us and them. Rather, we join together to improve the situation for all of us. As an aboriginal woman put it, "If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is tied up with mine, then let us work together." Many Buddhists take bodhisattva vows, which means that the), will devote themselves to helping everyone spiritually awaken. The point of the bodhisattva path is that none of us can be fully awakened until everyone "else" is too. The critical world situation today means that sometimes bodhisattvas need to manifest their compassion in more politically engaged ways. To sum up, what is distinctively Buddhist about socially-engaged Buddhism? Emphasis on the social dukkha promoted by group-selves as well as by ego-selves. The three collective poisons of institutionalized greed, institutionalized ill will, and institutionalized delusion. The importance of personal spiritual practice, commitment to non-violence, and the realization that ending our own dukkha requires us to ad dress the dukkha of everyone else as well, because we are not separate from each other. Present power elites and institutions have shown themselves incapable of addressing the various crises that now threaten humanity and the future of the biosphere. It has become obvious that those elites are themselves a large part of the problem, and that the solutions will need to come from somewhere else. Perhaps a socially-awakened Buddhism can play a role in that transformation. If, however, Buddhists cannot or will not participate in this transformation, then perhaps Buddhism is not the spiritual path that the world needs today.

Last, put away your kritiksour compounding of political action into discursive removal of the self into perpetual collective-becoming is the essential means to reactivating value.

Barnhill, David Landis. (Director of Environmental Studies and Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh) 2004, Good Work: An Engaged Buddhist Response to the Dilemmas of Consumerism Buddhist-Christian Studies, 24.1, p 55-63. So what can we as Buddhists do about such a destructive culture? Engaged Buddhism is a way of confronting social, political, and psychological poisons that threaten our world, and it offers an effective counter to consumer culture in at least three main ways. There is the extension of the Buddhist analysis of reality beyond the psychological and the metaphysical to the social, structural dimension of life of economic systems and political institutions. In the social context, the Buddhist truth of the mutual co-arising of phenomena takes on a more immense scope than the mere conditioning of consciousness, and a more concreteand thus soiledquality than Huayan Buddhism's mesmerizing metaphysics of Indra's net. The interpenetration of life (prattya-samutpda) includes billboards and boardrooms, peasants uprooted from their land as coffee is planted in their place. I live not just in interrelationship with the postglacial hills of Wisconsin but also with the mountains of toxins spewed [End Page 55] into the air to give us cheap, but very costly, energy. As Stephen Batchelor has said, "the contemporary social engagement of Dharma practice is rooted in awareness of how self-centered confusion and craving can no longer be adequately understood only as psychological drives that manifest themselves in subjective states of anguish. We find these drives embodied in the very economic, military, and political structures that influence the lives of the majority of the people on Earth."2 Engaged Buddhism gives us an incisive way to comprehend and critique our situation, and we stand on more solid ground as we view the vast and painful interconnections. Second, engaged Buddhism also can give us a vision of a social and political alternative, one that is based not on the three poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion but on generosity, compassion, and wisdom. But in doing so Buddhism must go beyond the limits of its own tradition and draw on the insights of contemporary social and environmental philosophies, from anarchism to bioregionalism. A creative merging of Buddhism and such ecosocial thought can help us work toward a modern life of communalism rather than consumerism, of contentment rather than self-perpetuating desire.3 Third, engaged Buddhism gives us a basis for directly responding to a world of craving and suffering. Activism against the rising tide of consumerismand against the social, political, and military structures and the deafening ideologies that support itcan emerge from a meditational steadiness. Contemplative activism avoids rage, burnout, and psychic numbness and allows us to meet greed and hatred with peace in a spirituality of resistance. Such a religiously based activism, however, needs to join hands4 with social philosophy and political activists.

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