Jesus, Jazz, and Buddhism

"The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.  So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." (John 3:8)

You do not have to be a Christian or Buddhist to enjoy this site.  You don't have to like Jazz, either.  For us, it is the idea of jazz -- of improvisational blending and making music together -- that is important.

Jesus represents a spirit of kindness toward others and hospitality to the poor and powerless of the world.  Thus Jesus transcends Christianity, although Christians can walk with Jesus, too.   See the articles "Jesus Beyond Christianity" (GO) and "Jesus, Jazz, and Buddhism" (GO).

Jazz is a form of music, but for us jazz is also a mindset.  This mindset includes a love of improvisation, an openness to diversity, a delight in surprise, and a trust in the availability of fresh possibilities.  It also includes a desire to make music with others, in ways where people combine insights from different and surprising sources.  See "Who Cares and So What? A Way of Life in a Jazz Key" (GO) 

Buddhism represents a sense of interconnectedness, a capacity to listen without judgment, and an openness to the present moment as the fundamental unit of life.  Buddhism also invites a recognition that "letting go" can be as important, sometimes much more important, than "holding on."  We think that values such as these can be embodied by Buddhists and also by non-Buddhists.  See our articles "Can a Christian be a Buddhist, Too?"  (GO) and "All is Void and There is no Buddha" (GO) and "Adam and Eve Receive Marriage Counseling." (GO).

In the JJB community we celebrate creative, spiritual hybridity.  In an age of cultural globalization, it seems inappropriate to insist that various forms of religious wisdom remain pure and isolated from others. 

But the JJB community is not about spirituality alone.  It is also about modern science, about seeking wisdom for daily life with help from science.  

When it comes to science, many of the columnists of JJB are influenced by evolutionary biology, quantum theory, relativity theory, chaos theory and by the impulse within science to let the facts speak for themselves.  We know that there are no uninterpreted facts, but we believe in the value trying to be be open to facts of the the world as best we can: the facts of the universe, the facts of the brain, the facts of consciousness, the facts of experience.  And also to the patterns revealed in the facts, we some people call "the laws of nature."

For us there is a spirituality in this openness to the world of facts and patterns that is often unseen, even by scientists.  It lies in a desire to listen to the world on its own terms and for its own sake, and to understand what is heard.  Indeed, as influenced by the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, we believe that even the mountains -- the hills and rivers, the stars and planets -- are "singing" if we have ears to hear.  They are revelations of a continuously creative energy or qi.

One of the most beautiful languages in which they sing is mathematics.  Mathematics and science go together like yin and yang.  And both involve a certain kind of love: a love of truth, of beauty, of pattern, and sometimes even of goodness. 

But humans cannot live on science alone.  Even as we delight in science, we reject scientism, which is the act of making a god of science.  We don't like isms: scientism, religionism, americanism, or orientalism, nationalism, authoritarianism.  In this way we stand in the tradition of the constructive postmodern movement in contemporary China, as developed by two of our advisors, Dr. Zhihe Wang and Dr. Meijun Fan. 

We look for a creative and humble world in which people seek wisdom but do not pretend that their wisdom is absolute.  In JJB we speak of the activity of seeking wisdom as poetics.  It is not philosophy or theology, art or poetry, but can include them all.

In our time poetics takes on an international and East-West flavor for many people.  People living in Western nations -- North American and Europe -- know that we are entering an Asian century.  Not an Asian century alone, but an Asian century nevertheless. Some scholars speculate that the most influential economic powers of the 21st century will be China and India, along with Brazil, Russia, South Africa, and the United States.  Others such as Dr. Wang and Dr. Fan speculate that it is time for a Second Enlightenment: one that originates out of multi-cultural blending of insights from Asia and the West.  The first Enlightenment was centered in Europes.  The second can be more inclusive.  We agree with these scholars.

We know that "Asia" and "the West" are abstractions, too.  Some scholars suggest that they are constructions of the Western mind, aimed at controlling the world.  Maybe so. There are many, many Asian traditions and we focus on only some of them, namely the East Asian traditions influenced by Confucian values. Culturally, East Asian nations include China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and Mongolia. 

So far our focus in JJB is on China and Korea; but we hope to expand over time and eventually to include South Asia and Southeast Asia, too.  We are actively seeking columnists and artists from these cultural traditions. We are interested in helping contribute to a Second Enlightenment.  It will be a combination of many different traditions, just like the Bibimbab above.  And it will require the participation of generations young and old.  Middle-aged, too.

We believe that wisdom comes by paying attention to many different aspects of life: weather, food, trees, animals, books, movies, music, sports, science, religion, poetry, and, of course, life itself.  Thus our articles are not just about Jesus and Jazz and Buddhism.  They are about the whole of life.  

Many of us are Chinese.  That is why so many of our articles are translated into Mandarin and Korean.   We hope to have translations into other languages, too.  For the past several centuries, we Asians have been "blending" insights from Asia and the West; and we hope our example might provide inspiration for "Western" people to do the same.  We believe in a mutual transformation of East and West through dialogue.

If you are like us, many of your ideas are changing over time, because your life is changing.  You are learning from your experience and adjusting as you go.  You are improvising your life.

The idea of change is very important in this site.  We believe that life is a process, a journey, and that change can be welcomed rather than feared.  It is often said that a healthy life needs roots and wings.  We -- the columnists and advisors for this site -- need roots and wings, too.

We appreciate in the wing side of life, the exploratory side: the side that is open to novelty.  Along with Buddhists we believe in impermanence, and in creative transformation, too.  For us the universe is a verb rather than a noun, and even the solid objects that endure over -- mountains, for example -- are slow verbs.  Part of having wings lies in being sensitive to the evanescent yet creative side of life.

Of course we need roots, too.  Not dead roots but creative and exploratory roots, like the roots of healthy trees.  Our roots are the friendships and relationships with other people that provide us with sustenance, and also the cultural traditions that nourish us: religious traditions, artistic traditons, food traditions, family traditions.  Our roots can also include a kind of faith: a trust in the availability of fresh possibilities.  This trust is still another way of experiencing God, even if you don't believe in God.

And our roots have an ecological dimension, too.  We are rooted in earth and in the wider adventure -- the universe -- of which we are a part.  We sense the possibility of being rooted in the earth when we are in the countryside, or in the presence of animals with whom we feel bonded.

These roots are also present to us in our own bodies.  Our genes are one way that we are indebted to the past even as we are beckoned by the future.  The same goes for our breathing.  Every new breath is made possible by prior acts of breathing whose immediacy has perished but which make possible the present moment.
 
And of course our roots are psychological, too.  Our roots in the earth lie not only in the landscapes that we see with our eyes, but also the dreams we carry in our hearts.  And in the questions we ask, which link us our earliest human ancestors.  As our web-manager Vivian Dong puts it: "We will wonder, too." (GO)

Roots and wings, then, is still another idea we columnists offer in this website.  We believe that at every moment of our lives we are nourished by the past yet beckoned by the future.  At every moment the many of the past actual world become one in the immediacy of experience, and with the experience itself, something new is added to the past.  In the words of Whitehead: "The many become one and are increased by one." (GO)

Some of our columnists are fans of John Coltrane.  You will get a sense of his influence in the essay by Rev. Monica Coleman (GO)  But we recognize that his music is like coffee: an acquired taste.  And we know that this taste is not for everybody.  It is Coltrane's exploratory spirit -- call it Coltrane consciousness -- that we admire.  We think Jesus and the Buddha had Coltrane consciousness, too.  Here's an article on him:

"The great John Coltrane's cultural explorations fused Asian American activism, spirituality and music. APRIL 1971. It's a cold night at the outdoor Greek Theatre and the seats are made of stone. But at the Berkeley Jazz Festival, the music is always worth the pain.

Our offerings have a particular flavor.  They are explorations in East-West thinking as influenced by the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.  We provide a brief introduction to Whitehead's thought in "What do Process Thinkers Believe? Twenty Key Ideas."  (GO)  If you are especially interested in his understanding of God, you might read "God and the Sendai Earthquake." (GO) 

However, you can read and enjoy most of the articles without any prior knowledge of Whitehead.  We are not interested in offering you a perfect system of thought.  We think there is wisdom in insecurity -- in not being able to tidy up life into a perfect system.   One of the ideas we propose that that there is a kind of knowing in not-knowing: that is, in not pretending to have answers to questions that are deep and mysterious, and in giving people and other living beings the freedom to be who they are, independent of our stereotypes.  They are, in the words of Whitehead, concrescing subjects and not objects of our manipulation.  (GO) In the language of Martin Buber, they are Thous not Its.  (GO) There is something very Socratic about his idea and also very Taoist.  There is a world beyond words, and we discover this world through deep listening.  (GO)

Our name -- Jesus, Jazz, and Buddhism -- points to this world beyond words.  This world is not really far away.  It is as close to us as the face of the other person, the sounds of music, the presence of dogs. (GO)  It is present in what Whitehead calls the withness of our own bodies. It is present in love.

In the house of wisdom there are many rooms.   Some of the rooms are in Asia and some in the West.  Many are also in other parts of the world.  The doors to these rooms are open and a wind blows through them all.   This is what the great jazz saxophonist John Coltrane knew so well.  He sought wisdom from many cultural traditions, blending musical styles from East and West.  He believed that music itself reflects, in his words, a Love Supreme.   

Whitehead saw the world this way, too.  He envisioned a jazz-like universe, full of improvisational possibilities, which humans can explore, at the heart of which lies a Love Supreme which beckons each human being toward kindness, creativity, and wisdom.

Our name for the activity of seeking wisdom is poetics.   The activity is like writing poetry, except the poems we are trying to create are our own lives as we interact with one another and the rest of the natural world. 

Poetics involves the whole person: reason and feeling, listening and creativity, imagination and wonder, faith and compassion.   And it involves many ways of knowing: verbal, visual, bodily, empathic, mathematical, scientific, religious.    We can know things through empathy that we do not learn from science, and know things through science that we do not learn from empathy.
 
The ideas we offer in this website are springboards for poetics.  They are not dogmas or doctrines, but rather  poems or lures for feeling.   As you consider the ideas you will naturally add poems of your own: that is, insights which come from your own experience.   

Perhaps one final metaphor can help capture the spirit of poetics.  Poetics is like the making of fresh multi-grained bread.  The ingredients you add are the grains of truth that you acquired from your own life up to this point.   Some of them come from your experience; some from friends and mentors; some from music and art; some from books; and some from the natural world.   Always you are blending them into the most meaningful whole you can create.   Always you are in the process of making fresh bread.   We hope some of the ideas we propose can contribute to your breadmaking. 

Good ideas are like sautéed and seasoned vegetables in Korean Bibimbap.  Each has its unique flavor and each can be mixed with others in delicious and nourishing ways.  We hope you find some good ideas in this website.  Please take whatever ideas you like from this site and add some of your own.  No need to eat everything.  Just follow the best of your lights. 

We live in a globalized world where ideas from around the world are available to many of us through the internet, movies, books, and friendships.  We also live in a world that is undergoing, or about to undergo, an Asian renaissance.  This renaissance includes ordinary people -- people like us -- creating new intellectual and spiritual perspectives which combine insights from East and West.   In this website we are exploring ideas from Asian and Western perspectives, using the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead as a connecting link.  In China Whitehead's philosophy is called constructive postmodernism.

Who are we?  You'll see a list of columnists and advisors below.  Some of us are from China and Korea and India, others are from other nations.  Some of us identify ourselves as "process thinkers" or "constructive postmodernists" or "Whiteheadians" or "postcolonial thinkers."  But the labels are not so important.  It's the ideas that count, and the hopes we bring with them.

We bring two hopes.  First, we hope some of the ideas will help you live wisely, compassionately, and creatively in your daily life.  We all seek happiness in life.  For us wisdom and compassion and creativity are among the most important ingredients of happiness.   Additionally, we hope that the ideas might help you contribute to communities, in your own local settings, that are creative, compassionate, participatory, equitable, respectful of diversity, and ecologically wise -- with no one left behind.  Martin Luther King Jr. called these beloved communities.  In China they are called harmonious communities.  

Harmony has many faces.  Certainly there's a harmony in the Korean dish pictured to the left: bibimbab.  The colors and flavors and textures meld together and yet retain their differences.   These are harmonies we can see and taste. 

But there is also a harmony we can hear, namely the harmony of music.  It includes rhythm and melody and soulfulness.  The harmony of a harmonious community is very much like music: moving and changing over time, which means you can never quite contain it in fixed definitions.  It is a harmony that includes diversity, too.  Harmony is not sameness.  

This is where jazz comes in.  In a jazz performance there are many different voices, each with its beauty, and with none of them overwhelmed by the loudness of others,  but each with its place in the spotlight.  We think every human being deserves this kind of respect, too.  Additionally, the harmony of a jazz concert contains dissonance as well as consonance, tension as well as fluidity.  There is no need for complete agreement on all matters.  No need for one religion, one philosophy, one party line.  And so it is with a harmonious community.

Amid the diversity and sometimes the tensions, the harmony of a harmonious community has a kind of felt beauty.  This  beauty involves people living in cooperative relations with one another, inspired not only by a sense of moral responsibility but also by the gladness of their own hearts.  Often this gladness is found in food, music, and storytelling: that's why we include sections on these subjects.  Humans cannot live by vegetables alone.   They need joy, too.

Our aim is to foster a creative exchange of ideas, some of which are Asian and some of which are Western.  The ideas we offer that can be explored in local settings around the globe: in coffee shops, churches, beer gardens, and restaurants.  One of our columnists from China speaks of JJB as part of her spiritual community.  We know that the JJB community cannot replace or be a substitute for other kinds of communities: healthy families, neighborhoods, workplaces, churches, temples, synagogues, sanghas, mosques, villages, and cities.  But maybe we can add some spice to the mix.  Right now have readers in fifty countries on all continents.  We'll give you some more information below, and also explain the title. GO