Spring bulbs are appearing here from out of the wintry depths so that is a welcome sign of encouragement. The reason? Victoria is in a rain-shadow zone, protected from extremes of weather by mountains and water, a Middle Way sort of island. Being brought up on the coast of another island a continent and ocean away I feel comfortable about the occasional cul de sac feeling that happens on the edge. For many cultural theorists living on a coast or by rivers, lakes, and mountains produces a liminal consciousness, a boundary-state where possibilities can be recognised and distance maintained from the dominant interior culture. Because of this coastal areas or cities are often the crucibles of new technologies, innovation, and societal critiques (consider California, Seattle, or New York, for example). These are psychic spaces where elements collide, oceanic ideas flood in, and lives can be reinvented with each new high tide.

Here on the Island you find the visible limit of the Anglosphere…the great mass of English-speaking social, economic, and political practices that has dominated most of the planet for hundreds of years. It faces across an unruly ocean to the Asian world through the ancient forests and totems of the dispossessed Native ancestral lands. These features, the East, the Ocean, and the Native Presence, act as a mirror to Canadians living on the coast, bringing transformative questions and responses. Until very recently these were blithely optimistic or self-obsessed…but then, in 2008, the old Anglo certainties began to crack underfoot.

It seems that North America (and, by implication, the World) is hunching its shoulders as we edge into 2009. What new economic blows are about to glide hypnotically across the neon tickerscreen ? It is as if these numbers are magically potent…you know their secret woes are set in motion by our mere act of perception and unravelling comprehension. It reminds me of the analysis of karma given in Buddhist texts. Every subprime action has a global banking reaction. Our financial (not to mention our biological) systems are so interdependent that if only we could step outside their toxic zone we could appreciate the baleful beauty of the Mara of capitalism.

Mara, the Deceiver, the impulse to ‘Do the wrong thing”…the embodiment of our unadmitted delusions. I often wonder why there has not really been a Buddhist critique of Capitalism and the American Dream of perpetual wealth since Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful back in the 1970s. Perhaps it is time to re-read that book or seek out a new one? As we hurtle towards the increasingly referenced psychological tipping point of the end of the Mayan Calendar on December 21st, 2012, it may be that dwelling on past mistakes is not a meaningful use of our time. The consideration of possible solutions to our planetary crises seems more appropriate. We each need “Our own private 2012″, a ticking awareness of how to improve our lifepaths and, by so doing, improve those of many others. The emphasis on positive social service from the new Administration is an exemplary sign that shows how we need to consider others as ourselves in order to get through the thicket of malevolent quasi-scientific enchantment by the neon ticker equations.

Often the superiority of western Science is somehow condensed into Einstein’s celebrated formula E = mc (squared). Enthralled by its seeming simplicity and applicability (who can deny atomic weapons or gravity?) humanity has given it a god-like status. But, like the study of Divinity, its meaning is understood by very few…and , whisper it softly, its truth-value is being eroded by new theories, new Quantum Idols. Back in the 17th C. the very idea of ’science’ was formulated by the work of Bacon, Newton and so on. The apparent success of technology based on scientific theories in the 18th & 19th centuries gave rise to a very powerful manifestation of Mara, the belief that the scientific method alone could discover Truth. By 1900 there were new social sciences predicated upon this dubious foundation - psychology, sociology, and economics. That most unpredictable phenomena, human behaviour, was to be categorised, controlled, and improved.

Of course the Scientific Project was doomed. As the eminent biologist Francisco Varela asserted, “Everything that has been said has been said by someone.” He meant that there is no value-free statement possible. The theorists have their own subjective agendas, most of them unknown to themselves. In the case of economics the recent chaos in the marketplace has shown how much capitalism relies on Trust (a feature described in a book by Francis Fukuyama), a very subjective human response and one not measurable by statisticians or market analysts. The present crisis is therefore one of collapsing identities, if we cannot ‘trust’ each other then our Mara-indoctrinated Selves are to blame somehow. To save the material economy we need to save our sacred selves.

If we are to reassess Science and its ‘domain of applicability’ then perhaps we should change the meaning of Einstein’s equation. Instead of thinking in terms of Energy, Mass, and so on we can assert a new truth value to the equation that cannot be eroded, that continually iterates optimism about our sentient condition:

E (Enlightenment) = M (Mahayana) C(Compassion) Squared (by the Four Immeasurables).

Unifying personal and political, meditation and activism, the past and the future, such an equation has some claim to be a foundation for the new World now becoming. It is a Change We Can Believe In.

Finally, keeping in mind the need to “Think Globally, Act Locally”, we should add “and Expect Nothing” if we are to avoid Varela’s criticism of unrecognised agendas referred to above. I recently found a Japanese haiku (or it found me) that speaks to this -

(Niwa haite idebaya tera ni chiru yanagi )

On leaving the temple
where I swept:
falling willow leaves.

Basho - transl. by Nanae Tamura