{"id":1567,"date":"2018-04-02T19:47:08","date_gmt":"2018-04-02T19:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zatma.org\/?p=1567"},"modified":"2018-04-02T19:47:08","modified_gmt":"2018-04-02T19:47:08","slug":"kudzu-black-pearls-and-dangerous-beliefs-part-2-by-ming-zhen-shakya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/?p=1567","title":{"rendered":"KUDZU, BLACK PEARLS, AND DANGEROUS BELIEFS – Part 2 by Ming Zhen Shakya"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>We\u2019re all certain that we\u2019re immune to the contagion of disastrous conviction, that we\u2019ll never be vulnerable to a belief that is too foolish even to consider, but the fact is that not only are we not immune, but that by the very human nature of our mind, we\u2019ve already proved ourselves susceptible. Sometimes we need to see a belief displayed in ordinary life\u2019s petrie-dish aspic before it begins to look suspicious.<\/p>\n

What exactly are we seeing when, for example, we observe the antics of sport fans? We see the same fanatical excess that characterizes any cult membership. People who, just a few hours earlier were thoughtful and calm as they returned from church or shuffled through the sections of the newspaper\u2019s Sunday edition, show up, say, at the baseball park wearing a professional sport\u2019s team\u2019s heraldic colors and insignias – silly hats, clothes and even painted faces. As the occasion demands, they boo and hiss and cheer, in unison they stand in waves or make hatchet chops, or in a mob\u2019s \u201cGive us Barrabas\u201d chorus, they demand the death of an official. We\u2019ll see fifty thousand spectators wildly jump and shout because a man who has been paid a few million dollars to take an oak bat and strike a leather covered pellet, has actually done so.<\/p>\n

Where does all this emotion come from? It comes from the same place dangerous beliefs come from: it is incorporated into the nature and the structure of the mind. To be sure, sports fans are only rarely overtly destructive; but every bookmaker who ever died rich, – and seldom do they die otherwise – died rich because bettors are usually fans whose team-enthusiasm has not only skewed the odds but has inspired them to bet in the first place. Wagers based on false information – and sentiment invariably falsifies appraisals – are foolish wagers. Emotion is a symptom of projection and inflation, those two conditions of samsaric slavery. Again,\u00a0any<\/span>\u00a0emotion is a symptom of projection and whenever we find ourselves sliding from interest into fascination and down into emotional involvement, we\u2019re trying to negotiate attachment\u2019s white water rapids and only luck will keep us from colliding with those boulders in the stream. How many times in our lives have we believed in someone who betrayed us? How many times, despite other people\u2019s insistence that he was unworthy of our trust, did we stubbornly cling to our delusion, insisting that they were prejudiced, or blind, or simply did not know him as we did. Of course, it was we who were blind, because projection made us see only what we placed upon him. That is the nature of projection. When emotion overrides reason we are automatically prejudiced in our belief. No one should doubt the sincerity of the mother who, when watching an army march by, says simply, \u201cEverybody\u2019s out of step but my son, John.\u201d<\/p>\n

The instincts of self-preservation and of reproduction, those gods of Mothers, Lovers, Heroes, Friends and Enemies, push and pull us, compelling us in the most irrational ways to accomplish their goals.<\/p>\n

There is a strategic survival pattern evident when horses form a herd and follow the dictates of a single stallion. An army and a general are pressed from the same survival template, as is a patriarchal family or a town and its mayor or an assemblage of sport fans and their heroic MVP. Our bodies and brains are the hardware, our very genes and cultural norms are the software that we run. For as long as there is strength in numbers and we require that strength, we will form alliances, group ourselves into religious, social, and political collectives. We\u2019ll appreciate the ligatures of family and friends. For as long as we perceive enemies, we need to hate enough to kill. For as long as we need the reciprocal benefits of possessory love, we\u2019ll adore our baby or parent or spouse. There is no requirement that someone be worthy of our adoration. If we waited until we found the perfect lover, we would not mate; if we waited until we found the perfect teacher, we would learn nothing.<\/p>\n

If it is the Hero god in our mind that we project onto someone we believe is a Perfect Master, we will see the God, not the person. We\u2019ll fall on our knees before him and worship him and in our mind at least, we will be raised up, inspired. If he\u2019s a good leader, he\u2019ll make us stand up as he leads us in love and teaches us to live in splendid poverty and humility. He\u2019ll refine us and open our minds to all the possibilities of science and art. But if he\u2019s just another false prophet he\u2019ll have to manipulate us to hold us together… he\u2019ll have to assure us that – as we\u2019ve always suspected – we\u2019re rather special. And, inflated with elitism, that helium of superiority, our lips will curl out and up as we affect that slight, smug smile of cultish certainty: \u201cWe, the Chosen, the Elect, the Privileged, have been blessed in ways that you who are none of these things can understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then, so that our superior group doesn\u2019t self-destruct with internecine conflict, our leader will have to gather all our individual shadows into one great missile of hate and hurl that weapon against some other hapless enemy… some race, or religion, or nationality, or social class, or intellectually inferior rabble. It will be Them versus Us. We\u2019ll display the insignias of exclusivity. We\u2019ll all be wearing identical Nike sneakers when we board that spaceship. Our alien masters will not confuse us with those other would-be passengers who wear Rebok or Converse or LAGear.<\/p>\n

No, we don\u2019t wear blue to cheer the Denver Broncos and we don\u2019t wear orange to cheer the Miami Dolphins. We know these things.<\/p>\n

And this is how we live and how we need to live before we mature and attain the Age of Reason, the Age of Nonattachment. We project the appropriate god – lover, mother, child, friend, or hero from our mind\u2019s Olympus onto someone and if he or she is worthy of that questionable honor, we can in due time detach, withdraw the projection, and let the god in question engage us in Alchemical adventures. We\u2019ll be independent then and more, we hope, than just a little wise.<\/p>\n

But if he or she is unworthy of the honor, we\u2019ll be mangled in the chains of our own attachments. Whether or not we survive the ordeal depends a lot on luck. The second instance of dangerous belief that hauntingly comes to mind involved another visitor, a distraught man of no more than thirty, who was still grieving over his young wife\u2019s death which had occurred months before.<\/p>\n

As soon as he entered the room he noticed a foot-high plastic acupuncture mannequin I keep on a side table. Eyeing me suspiciously, he asked, \u201cDo you do acupuncture?\u201d I assured him that I didn\u2019t, and that I kept the mannequin only because it so clearly showed the meridians. Many forms of meditation require at least a rudimentary knowledge of these \u201cChi\u201d conduits. But he was still not satisfied. \u201cDo you ever tell people that since there\u2019s a Buddha inside us, our body is a kind of temple and we should take care of it?\u201d I say it often so I owned up to the remark. But he meant, \u201ctake\u00a0spiritual<\/span>\u00a0care of it\u201d, a term that I did not quite understand and said so. Not caring to elaborate, he continued, \u201cWhat about drugs? Do you also tell people not to take drugs?\u201d \u201cDrugs as in illegal drugs… or drugs as in a drug store, prescription medicines?\u201d I suddenly felt the need to deflect his questions and went into a sort of \u201cshields up\u201d mode.<\/p>\n

\u201cPharmacy drugs. Can a good Buddhist, say, a Chinese Buddhist, take ordinary prescription medicine? Or is he or she limited to herbal medicines?\u201d<\/p>\n

I found the remarks astonishing. \u201cNothing in the Dharma says that a person can\u2019t take medicine. What we shouldn\u2019t do is take pills in lieu of self-control. An obese person should try to lose weight by eating properly and by exercising, not by popping amphetamines. That sort of thing,\u201d I explained., adding, \u201cAnd when it comes to medications, there\u2019s no difference in concept between taking an herbal tea, for example, and taking a capsule of the relevant herbal ingredient, even in synthetic form.\u201d I said that this was simple common sense. \u201cQuality, quantity, and delivery systems may vary, but a medicine is a medicine. The question is, \u2018Does it restore you to good health?\u2019 What happened to your wife,\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

He cautiously proceeded to tell me about his wife\u2019s death and of the problem he was having with his in-laws who blamed him for it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Chinese believe that the heart and mind are the same thing,\u201d he began, \u201cbut I don\u2019t think they are.\u201d I agreed.<\/p>\n

He had met his wife in Taiwan. He was working as an engineer for a construction company and she, an architecture student, had visited the building site. From the moment he first saw her, he knew that she was the woman God had created for him. They were married in a Buddhist temple by her old Master.<\/p>\n

She had had a long history of stomach problems, he said, but antacids and herbal teas were always able to relieve the symptoms. But when he eventually brought her to Los Angeles, her condition worsened. She blamed the additional stresses of American diet and culture; and she was encouraged and supported in this belief by her Chinese friends and relatives. They wanted her to consult local Chinese Folk Medicine practitioners, but he instead took her to an American doctor who tested and treated her for ulcers which he said were caused by bacterial infestation. Antibiotics and PeptoBismal were prescribed, and she responded well to the treatment.<\/p>\n

But when his company sent him to the Middle East for several months\u2019 work, his wife decided to return to Taiwan to spend some time with her master in his monastic retreat. It was there, in rural Taiwan, that she began to experience severe attacks of indigestion. Responding to her first painful attack, her master, a kindly old man who evidently was rarely, if ever, sick, called in the only physician around, a Chinese herbal acupuncturist who often attended Buddhist services. This physician gave her Black Dragon Eggs, a miraculous concoction of precious herbs which immediately relieved her distress. He also prescribed regular acupuncture treatments, and gave her a digestive tonic and a creamy green concoction, both of his own compounding, to take before and after meals respectively. In the event she felt more serious distress, he sold her supply of these expensive and mysterious Dragon Eggs.<\/p>\n

Further, this doctor thoroughly criticized the regimen her American physician had prescribed and after assuring her that no one knew medicine better than the Chinese, a boast she was entirely disposed to believe, insisted that when she returned to the U.S. she not see this American doctor again. Instead she should consult a colleague of his in Los Angeles. She spent a small fortune on these treatments in Taiwan and a large fortune on these treatments in the U.S. The mention of the Black Dragon Eggs startled me. I knew something about at least one kind of mysterious black pill from China. I interrupted him to ask what these Eggs looked like and he told me like licorice gum drops that had a yellow yolk center. I didn\u2019t like what I was hearing and feared where the story would lead.<\/p>\n

To the young husband, the medicine the new Chinese doctor provided did not work very well. She was experiencing nearly daily bouts of diarrhea and cramps. But in the expert opinion of the doctor the medicines were actually extremely effective since, to put it simply, they weren\u2019t dealing here with simple physical illness. No, it was more serious than this. Clearly, her symptoms could be directly attributed either to karmic retribution or to irritated ancestral spirits, which was pretty much the same thing. A priest at a nearby Buddhist temple verified the disease\u2019s etiology and offered, for the sum of fifteen hundred dollars, to conduct a propitiating service. The husband refused to finance this shamanistic enterprise; but his wife\u2019s sister, who had a vested interest in placating these particular spirits, came up with the necessary funds, and the ceremony was held.<\/p>\n

Despite the bells, chants, and incense, the ancestors grew more restive. When they were particularly annoyed and her symptoms worsened, she took another five dollar Black Dragon Egg, a dish which the ancestors seemed to enjoy since her distress always abated. The young husband, however, was growing increasingly alarmed and begged her to return to her American doctor; but just as adamantly she refused, insisting that Chinese problems are best solved with Chinese solutions. And what did he know about things Chinese? She resented his nagging and counteracted it by reiterating that the one person she trusted most, i.e., her old Buddhist master, had personally restored her to the wisdom of her ancestors. She would not fall from grace again. Her heart had spoken to her and what it said was \u201cbe patient and keep the faith.\u201d At regular intervals, her Chinese friends, relatives, and fellow Buddhists buttressed this overarching conviction.<\/p>\n

To the young husband\u2019s annoyance, these associates became so solicitous that they daily brought her Chinese meals, suitably bland and wholesome, which they convivially shared. But then, over their post-prandial cup of Jasmine tea, they would chat about those topics which most interested them. He often overheard these discussions and regretted not knowing less Chinese than he knew. What did Americans know about anything? Since this was not a rhetorical question, the list of answers was long: Americans didn\u2019t know how to dress, raise children, study or learn, work industriously, treat disease, grow food that didn\u2019t taste like plastic, prepare nutritious meals, survive a single day without popping pills, or resist the compulsion to tell scandalously intimate secrets on national television.<\/p>\n

The young husband blamed these domestic intruders for his wife\u2019s worsening health. Unfortunately he made the mistake of telling his mother about them and their comments. She, responding in normal maternal fashion, begged him to come home to her for dinner every night; and, as often as he could, he obliged. And naturally she also confronted his wife and the tea klatch telling them in so many words that emigration was the obvious solution to the problem of unsatisfactory immigration. Not having imparted this instruction diplomatically, she immediately instigated that most costly of conflicts, a civil war.<\/p>\n

For many months he had had a burning desire to see the new bridge across Tampico Bay and now, having vacation time coming and wanting a change of venue even more than he wanted to see the bridge, he decided to take his wife to Mexico for a vacation. They would leisurely drive along the Gulf and visit Mayan ruins, inspecting them with an architectural eye, and then go on to Cancun where they would lounge on the beach for two weeks. They visited a few Mayan ruins but they never got to Cancun.<\/p>\n

She had gotten a headache for which she had purchased aspirin, the only analgesic available at the little tienda they stopped at. Then, the following day, while driving across the Yucatan she collapsed. The Yucatan peninsula was not a good place to be when needing critical care. People were helpful, but she had gone into shock and was dead on arrival when he finally got her to a hospital.<\/p>\n

In the blur of grief that followed, he learned that his wife\u2019s stomach had been horribly ulcerated and that, because of irritation perhaps caused by coarse or spicy foods and the ingestion of aspirin, these ulcers had uncontrollably bled.<\/p>\n

He said that the Mexican doctor who took her history was brusque and insulting. \u201cHe asked me why I didn\u2019t get better medical treatment for her. I told him I spent several hundred dollars a week on acupuncture and \u201cnatural\u201d medicines and he called me a fool. Then he said that the green aftermeal medicine was probably \u201cMaalox with green dye\u201d and that the \u201cbefore meals tonic\u201d was probably laced with a narcotic or a muscle relaxant and that if I knew what was good for me I wouldn\u2019t drive around Mexico with unprescribed opiates or tranquilizers. They have drug laws. \u2018You should have kept your wife on antibiotics.\u2019 the doctor said. \u2018She\u2019d be climbing the steps of Palenque instead of lying in the morgue.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The young widower, knowing enough about Mexican jails to heed the advice, returned to his hotel and poured what was left of her supply of herbal medicine down the drain.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the Eggs?\u201d I asked him. He said that he flushed them down the toilet. By the time her sister arrived, even the containers had been disposed of and there was nothing to prove that she had ever had medicine with her. He returned to Los Angeles to face the condemnation of her family and friends. They were certain she had succumbed because he had deliberately deprived her of her treatments. The attacks on him were vicious. Still confused by grief, he wanted me to convince him that he hadn\u2019t in some way contributed to her death by acquiescing in the treatment. Should he have forced her to see an American doctor? Was there something to this Karma business? What did I think?<\/p>\n

I told him that I doubted that, given the intensity of her belief, she would have taken the American doctor\u2019s prescriptions. She would have found a way to obtain the Chinese doctor\u2019s medications and that this was the sorry fact of dangerous beliefs.<\/p>\n

I described the projection process and the kudzu Blitzkrieg of irrationality. I defined Karma, that network of causes and effects which converge at whatever nexus of time and place we happen to find ourselves in. \u201cLuck enters into things,\u201d I said. \u201cWhen she went back to Taiwan for that visit, if she had had that attack in Taipei, her master would have called an ambulance or taken her to a hospital himself. She would probably have received the same treatment that her American doctor had given her. Taipei does not lack quality medical facilities or personnel. But she didn\u2019t have that attack in Taipei, she had it in some remote location.\u201d My comments gave him only cold comfort.<\/p>\n

I continued, trying to explain the incomprehensible. \u201cWhen a person\u2019s in extreme distress, a bond is easily formed or strengthened. A bond already existed between her and her master. She trusted him. And when the local doctor he sent for provided such immediate relief, everyone, especially her master, had to be favorably impressed. Surely he would have encouraged her to visit this doctor. Wouldn\u2019t we do the same?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

Then I returned to the mysterious black pills. \u201cIrrational belief doesn\u2019t confine itself to religious matters. People martyr themselves to beliefs of all kinds.\u201d I didn\u2019t know what was in the Dragon Eggs, but I offered a suggestion.<\/p>\n

I produced the summer l992 issue of\u00a0Priorities Magazine<\/span>\u00a0which someone had recently given me and opened it to an article by a Houston, Texas surgeon, Dr. Ralph E. Dittman.<\/p>\n

In his article,\u00a0The Black Pearl of China<\/span>, Dr. Dittman related the following story: a patient of his had visited Chinatown in San Francisco and there had been introduced to a miraculous herbal medication called Black Pearls. The patient, a successful businessman, saw the commercial potential of this herbal product and, by way of testing the market, purchased a quantity of them and distributed them to his Houston friends. Wanting to know what specifically was in the pills, he asked Dr. Dittman to have them tested. One of the people who received these pills was a man who, being on parole for a drug offense, was required to submit to periodic drug testing. One day, after taking a Black Pearl, he flunked the test. On grounds that he had illegally ingested Valium, he was immediately returned to jail.<\/p>\n

The results of the gas chromatography\/mass spectroscopy analysis which Dr. Dittman had ordered clearly showed diazepam\u2019s signature 36.6 minute peak. It was Valium, all right. After an investigation, the unwitting drug-taker was released.<\/p>\n

Dr. Dittman concluded his article by warning that these \u201c\u2018harmless\u2019 Asian herbal folk remedies often contain illegal combinations of cortico- or anabolic steroids, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, antibiotics such as tetracycline or chloramphenicol, Valium, narcotics…\u201d The various Federal and State Food and Drug regulatory agencies were finally beginning to prosecute the dangerous fraud.<\/p>\n

My visitor read the article several times. \u201cI should have been more forceful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wouldn\u2019t have done any good,\u201d I said. \u201cShe believed in what she was doing. Short of deprogramming her, you wouldn\u2019t have put a dent in that armor.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think that when he left he understood that his wife had been the victim of a cult. It may have been a cult of only one, but all the symptoms were there: the jingoism, the chauvinism, the elitist\u2019s smug superiority, the stubborn and blind conviction.<\/p>\n

No, a cult is not defined by numbers. One wrong seed planted in a single mind is enough. A dangerous belief, like kudzu, doesn\u2019t recognize borders. When the darting vine reaches the property lines, all our lawns are at risk.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"Humming<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  We\u2019re all certain that we\u2019re immune to the contagion of disastrous conviction, that we\u2019ll never be vulnerable to a belief that is too foolish even to consider, but the fact is that not only are we not immune, but that by the very human nature of our mind, we\u2019ve already proved ourselves susceptible. Sometimes… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":943,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays","category-essays-by-ming-zhen-shakya"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1567"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1568,"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1567\/revisions\/1568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}