Transcendinng Popular Culture

“If there is to be peace in the world,
There must be peace in the nations.
If there is to be peace in the nations,
There must be peace in the cities.
If there is to be peace in the cities,
There must be peace between neighbors.
If there is to be peace between neighbors,
There must be peace in the home.
If there is to be peace in the home,
There must be peace in the heart.”
- Lao Tzu
People often make the assumption that they’re separate entities from their neighbors, cities, nations and the world because they can’t see unification existing or possible. Coinciding, peace advocates believe that there is not a large enough platform for the promotion of peace practices within the mediums that publish information and entertainment to all publics. According to researcher Alice Cherbonnier, television viewers of the USA are more prone to believe that the images they view are true sixty percent of the time (Cherbonnier, 1998). Keep in mind that news television shows are viewed much more than others. Editor, publisher and politician William Randolph Hearst once said “you furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” It’s hard to fathom how the USA still thrives on sensationalism that started over a hundred years ago within the news industry.
The information and images projected through the public sphere can be informative to an educated person or very detrimental to a naked mind. The Buddhist teachings of mindfulness help enforce a person’s immunity to the negative, mental food ingested by a medium’s viewing audience. A person who applies Buddhist practices to their own life has the ability to decipher the mental imaging they ingest while discarding information that will resonate in the mind harmfully. The individual who consumes these negative influences as a form of information or entertainment is similar to a child who mistakes hazardous toxins as a tasty treat. Entertainers know this too well as they have to continually be an element of society’s interests and fads. Legendary musician Bob Dylan describes the power of the media in his song “Man of Peace,” an excerpt is posted below.
He got a sweet gift of gab, he got a harmonious tongue
He knows every song of love that ever has been sung
Good intentions can be evil
Both hands can be full of grease
You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.
The questions that maybe arising might be: “if entertainers know about the harm they produce then why is the material created;” or “why are viewers consuming entertainment that will lead to suffering?” A person of religious descent may say it’s because there are many lost without a structure of morale that they abide by. This assumption is wrong seeing how 89% of the earth’s human population practices a religion. Practices that are a solution to this problem popular culture faces were created thousands of years before the discovery of the 512 lines of resolution that first projected television or the electromagnetic spectrum that radio-waves travel; not to mention that these teachings became in practice centuries before the birth of Christ (BCE).
Over twenty-four hundred years ago, at the age of twenty-nine Siddhartha Gautama was disheartened with the life he lived and the perceptions he possessed. Gautama was on a quest and in a six year span he practiced meditation under many enlightened teachers. After Gautama’s studying ventures he applied what he learned through deep meditation under a fig tree that’s known as The Bodhi Tree. After twenty-four hours this man felt understanding and he became the Buddha that is referred to within the Buddhist religion today.
The Buddha didn’t intend for Buddhism to be a religion but a practice for people of all religious backgrounds to use and attain understanding. Nyogen Senzaki was a Buddhist scholar and teacher during the turn of the twentieth century in San Francisco, California. In his literary work “On Zen Meditation” Senzaki declares “Buddhism removes heavy and unnecessary burdens from the shoulders of its followers instead of imbuing them with passions and desires of the Spiritual World, as many traditions do” (Senzaki (1936) p.13). Thich Nhat Hanh and other contemporary Buddhist monks describe practicing mindfulness and meditation similarly to constructing a raft out of raw material on a river bed. Every thought that rushes through our mind has the ability to become one of many fibers that create this raft while a thought that isn’t analyzed and put aside can turn into a wave of the violent current. We must cross this river because it symbolizes the past, present and future.
During every moment of life we process thoughts consciously and subconsciously. Everything we view with our five senses (hearing, sight, touch, smell and taste) generates thoughts; this verifies an interconnection we possess with all “things.” Television influences our minds with the average American viewing over twenty-eight hours a week. Not to mention, by the time an American child completes elementary school they have viewed over eight thousand televised murders with 78% of the country believing that violent acts are influenced by television (Herr, N. (2007). Television & Health). Now, a person just learning these facts may appear bewildered but will they break the addiction?
Television’s effects to our culture are very serious but there are practices we can use as crutches similarly to an alcoholic attending an Alcoholic’s Anonymous meeting except without forcing a super-being on the practitioner. There are various teachings that the mind can learn and practice to eventually see how each teaching is part of the others as the other teachings create a specific lesson. The Noble Eightfold Path is possible for the viewing public sphere’s audience to achieve during any viewing of mediums. The first path is right view which is the ability to maintain the mind in a neutral and accepting form. These violent images that children see automatically alter their mind and viewpoints but a simple solution to this is changing the substance that the children are viewing.
Ron Kauffman is a strong advocate and member of Turn-Off Your TV. Kauffman states in the following how violence on television can distort a developing mind: “Children exposed to large doses of violent programming will give them violent heroes to imitate (and it doesn't matter if the TV character was justified to use violence). It will also show children that violence is the right way to handle conflicts and may also whet their appetite for viewing more violence” (Kauffman. (2004) Filling Their Minds With Death: TV Violence and Children). I’ve heard many people exclaim “it’s the only thing on” when justifying what they’re watching but really there is much more than what really meets the television-sheltered eye.
The internet has many peace advocacy websites on it with sites that show interviews with celebrities who are humanitarians while they’re performing great acts of kindness. My Peace TV has materials for all age groups to occupy themselves with from musical performances by artists who regularly appear on MTV to documentaries about courageous individuals. Not only does My Peace TV shape our perceptions but it helps generate the second path, right thinking. There are programs that exist in our public sphere that promote positive thinking.
The people in the entertainment business who make their fads popular without the use of violence are using right thinking. Back in 2000 the LA Times published a summary of the Federal Trade Commission’s Report on Media Violence. "Of the 44 movies rated R for violence the commission selected for its study, the commission found that 35, or 80%, were targeted to children under 17" (LA Times. (2000). Highlights of The FTC Report On Media Violence). There’s evident proof that creators of violent films are targeting children isn’t something wrong here? If 85% of these films are targeted to children than this must be a general consensus that violence is accepted by members of all ages in the American society.
Right Speech is the third path and it’s very obvious that the fads in the entertainment industry can be vile for all minds. Society’s frustration with how children are influenced by the media is very ironic. Material that portrays murders and obscene language also influences the adult mind. Vulgar language and obnoxious, verbal and non-verbal cues generate tension in calm situations. Buddhist practitioners in these “tense” moments don’t view them as tense and think before they speak. If they can’t speak, reflecting their complete thought then the Buddhist practitioner must go back to right thinking.
Not only does violence plague young minds as a solution to a problem but it’s a consensual solution that all age groups participate in. The entertainment industry thrives off the plot of a story composed of protagonists and antagonists. The 8,000 murders that a young child has viewed are alright because those who died were “bad guys,” this ideology carries onto adults. Dualism is a misconception that our culture has been plagued with and it’s lead to fatal tragedies. For a person who is on the path of right action, they know that aggression isn’t a solution to the problem and that reacting negatively not only hurts the person they’re reacting to but it also hurts their mind.
Peace Magazine is a component of pop culture that emphasizes pacifism and reconciliation. They also act as a platform for other organizations worldwide to inform those who don’t have a right view and want to change it. After upon hearing about the deaths, terrorists, drugs and famine in Afghanistan the creators of Roots of Peace were appalled. Roots of Peace didn’t take the approach of annihilating those who appear different from us in the name of freedom but instead they took a much more logical approach. They helped poppies growers whose yield helped the growing epidemic of opium and heroin abusers in the world. Roots of Peace helped these growers by offering the Afghanistan farmers grapes to grow as opposed to the poppies. Someone reading this may think that the Afghanistan farmer made much more money in the other trade but there isn’t such a thing as fair trade in the drug empire of the world.
Roots of Peace helped afghan farmer’s find the fifth fold of the Noble Path, right livelihood and the organization themselves has achieved this to. There are hundreds of thousands of other organization that enable people who don’t know the right decisions of life make them and thoroughly understand. The Playing for Change Foundation has helped set up education structures all around the world for children and adults. This organization is notable for giving homeless people education, shelter and music lessons while also helping the natives of Tibet still escape to a much more promising environment. Here in the state of Maine we have a camp for people of different culture backgrounds from all around the world settle their differences at the Seeds of Peace reconciliation camp.
These organizations may not be in existence for the same purposes as the multimedia corporations of the world but they possess the right livelihood that the entertainment industry lacks. This isn’t an implication that right view, right thinking, right speech, right action and right livelihood don’t exist within the fads of American culture but they seem to not be as endorsed. All of the folds of the Noble Path can be recognized within popular culture it just depends on how the viewing audiences interpret what is before their senses. This interpretation relies on the motivation to view not what’s necessarily popular but meaningful to the mind. This is the sixth fold, diligence and we all possess this with whatever decision making we participate in.
Deborah Tannen explores in her book “The Argument Culture” how everything that’s presented on the news wouldn’t be if none of the viewing audience opposed it. This is sad and what’s more devastating is she gives examples in her book about non-profit organizations reaching milestones then reporting these feats to a news corporation who won’t publish a story on this humanitarianism because there’s not enough conflict. This is negative mindfulness which essentially we want right mindfulness seeing that it’s the seventh fold but this raises a misconstrued image that the predecessors following after Siddhartha Gautama possessed and projected. The three Dharma Seals are suffering, impermanence and non-self.
After the Buddha’s death many believed that they had to spend every moment of life focusing on suffering. This isn’t true and is partial to why there are different branches of Buddhism. If a person were to get up everyday just breathing in suffering and breathing it out then they would be a very depressed individual. We’re supposed to recognize suffering but ignore it when it isn’t present. The entertainment industry has managed to focus on suffering and transcend it to the viewing audience. After we practice right mindfulness and control what we view we have the ability to view elements of entertainment that cause distress with others in optimism. This isn’t to say that a trained mind can view a gripping action scene; it’s to say that a trained mind decides to not view the malevolence.
This optimism is a product of right concentration which is a tool that we can use to not suffer from today’s popular culture. Right concentration is the eighth fold of the Noble Eightfold Path but this doesn’t mean that this is where we stop. Right view, right thinking, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right diligence, right mindfulness and right concentration all describe one another in a trait that describes Buddhism entirely: all in one and one in all.










REFERENCE LIST
Cherbonnier, A. (1998). Study Says TV Crime News Influences Safety Perception. The Baltimore Chronicle & The Sentinel. Retrieved from http://baltimorechronicle.com/tvcrime.html
Dylan, B. (1983). Man of Peace. Bob Dylan. Retrieved from http://www.bobdylan.com/#/songs/man-of-peace
Herr, N. (2007). Television & Health. The SourceBook For Teaching Science. Retrieved from http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html#tv_stats
Kauffman, R. (2004). Filling Their Minds With Death: TV Violence and Children. Turn-Off Your TV. Retrieved from http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/healtheducation/violencechildren/violencechildren.html
LA Times. (2000). Highlights of The FTC Report On Media Violence. Blue Corn Comics. Retrieved from http://www.bluecorncomics.com/ftcrpt.htm
Love on Earth. (2001, April). Some Thoughts on Peace. Retrieved from http://www.loveonearth.org/pages/peace.html
Meadows, D. (1990). State of The Village Report. The Miniature Earth. Retrieved from http://www.miniature-earth.com/
Senzaki, N. (1936). On Zen Meditation. Kyoto, Japan: Myoslin-ji.
Think Exist. (1999). William Randolph Hearst Quotes. Think Exist. Retrieved from http://thinkexist.com/quotes/william_randolph_hearst/