Breakfast in Yokohama

MacArthur arrives in Japan on Aug. 30, 1945.

Kamakura's 50-foot Buddha

On Aug. 30, 1945, Gen. Douglas MacArthur flew to Okinawa in a C-54, passing over the serene whiteness of Mount Fujiyama, Kamakura’s 50-foot bronze Buddha and a newly surrendered nation.

His officers weren’t entirely sure about that. Roving bands of young diehards wearing white bands around their heads were engaging in violent clashes in the cities down there, and who knew what the humiliated Japanese troops might do? But when the officers started to strap on handguns, MacArthur said no.

“Take them off,” MacArthur said. “If they intend to kill us, sidearms will be useless. And nothing will impress them like a show of absolute fearlessness. If they don’t know they’re licked, this will convince them.”

Landing, they were driven past rubble and ruin on a dusty road lined by 30,000 Japanese infantrymen, their backs turned deferentially and as a security measure. The generals settled in to Yokohama’s New Grand Hotel, where they were served steaks.

“(Gen. Courtney) Whitney thought MacArthur’s might be poisoned and suggested that a Japanese taste it first,” wrote biographer William Manchester. “MacArthur laughed and shook his head: it was good meat and he didn’t want to share it with anyone. The gesture did not pass unnoticed. The hotel staff had anticipated Whitney’s suspicion and expected a tasting of the General’s food. (Hotel owner Yozo) Nomura reappeared at his table to express his gratitude for this demonstration of ‘great trust.’ He and his employees, he said, were ‘honored beyond belief.’

“MacArthur was obviously delighted with this little speech. His officers wondered why. It seemed a very small matter. But the General knew that word of everything he said and did would quickly spread throughout the country. He was determined that the occupation be benign from the outset.

“Moreover, remembering his tour of duty in Germany after the 1918 Armistice, he realized that in a war-torn, defeated country, food would be at a premium. He sensed that the acquisition of these steaks had been no small matter, that all Japan must be hungry, a surmise which was confirmed at breakfast the next morning, after the commander of the 11^th Airborne ruefully reported that his division had searched all night and found exactly one egg for the Supreme Commander’s breakfast.

“MacArthur immediately issued an order at odds with the whole history of conquering armies in Asia. Occupation troops were forbidden to consume local victuals; they would eat only their own rations.

“An hour later, he canceled the martial law and curfew degrees (Gen. Robert) Eichelberger had imposed on the city. The first step in the reformation of Japan, he said, would be an exhibition of generosity and compassion by the occupying power.”

The Emperor and the Slave

One had been a tortured slave, the other an emperor. And yet… “It is remarkable that Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius are completely at one on all philosophical questions,” wrote Bertrand Russell. “This suggests that, although social circumstances affect the philosophy of an age, individual circumstances have less influence than is sometimes thought upon the philosophy of an individual. Philosophers are usually men of a certain breadth of mind, who can largely discount the accidents of their private lives; but even they cannot rise above the larger good or evil of their times. In bad times, they invent consolations; in good times, their interests are more purely intellectual.”

Free Your Thoughts with Stoicism, Buddhism and Epicureanism

I have long been interested in the parallels between Stoic and Buddhist insights about the mind. When people from vastly different cultures arrive at the same ideas about human nature, that's strong evidence in their favor, I think

My point is that their shared insights about the process of the thought — controlling the emotions by controlling the perception of reality — are important because of their implied universality.

The emphasis on thought control and clear vision is the same, I think. “The example is given of the person who mistakes a coil of rope for a snake at twilight and becomes terrified. When he realizes his mistake, his fear subsides and his desire to run away disappears.
“What is needed for liberation, then, Nagarjuna reasoned, is essentially correct vision — to see things as they really are — rather than to embark on a flight from one supposedly imperfect reality (samsara) to a better one (nirvana). Nirvana is thus reinterpreted … as a purified vision of what is seen by the ignorant as samsara. It follows that nirvana is here and now, if we could but see it.”
That’s from “Buddhism: A Brief Insight” by Damien Keown, but the ancient Greeks had the same insight.

Here, for example, Epictetus' thought parallels the Buddhist quote. “As for us, we behave like a herd of deer. When they flee from the huntsman's feathers in affright, which way do they turn? What haven of safety do they make for? Why, they rush upon the nets. Thus do they perish by confounding what they should fear with that wherein no danger lies,” Epictetus said. “Reflect that the chief source of all evils to man, and of baseness and cowardice, is not death, but the fear of death."

And compare the Buddhist emphasis on relief from suffering as the reduction of desire to this Epictetus quote: “The origin of sorrow is this: To wish for something that does not come to pass.”

This quote attributed to Buddha sounds quite Stoic to me: "Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow come and go like the wind. To be happy, rest like a giant tree in the midst of them all.” Compare that to Epictetus: “It is the part of an uneducated person to blame others where he himself fares ill; to blame himself is the part of one whose education has begun; to blame neither another nor his own self is the part of one whose education is already complete.”

Epicurus headed a rival school at the time of the Stoics, and Epicurus' view of pleasure echoes the Buddhists: “When we say that pleasure is the end, we do not mean the pleasure of the profligate or that which depends on physical enjoyment — as some think who do not understand our teachings, disagree with them or give them an evil interpretation — but by pleasure we mean the state wherein the body is free from pain and the mind from anxiety.”

Both Buddhism and Stoicism remind you to calmly and carefully observe not merely reality, but the way that reality is reflected in your mind.
“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them,” said Epictetus. “Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but that you have increased a habit.”
“Zen meditation is often misunderstood as a practice of stopping thoughts or having no thoughts, but it’s actually a practice of noticing thoughts,” author Kim Boykin observed. “Zen is not about eliminating thoughts, but illuminating them.”

I’ve linked an insightful essay by Massimo Pigliucci, a philosophy professor at the City University of New York. He compares Stoicism, Epicureanism and Buddhism. Among other things, he writes: “Both Buddhists and Stoics, for their part, developed techniques to improve people’s mental well being, and there is good empirical evidence that those techniques do work (though my personal preference is for the more reflective Stoic approach rather than the overly meditative Buddhist one).”

“The ultimate goal of the Stoic was apatheia, or peace of mind, which I think is akin to both the Epicurean ideal of ataraxia and the Buddhist goal of nirvana (again, with due consideration given to the significant differences in the background conditions and specific articulation of the three philosophies). And of course Stoics too had a ready-made recipe for their philosophy, in the form of a short list of virtues to practice … These were: courage, justice, temperance and wisdom,” Pigliucci wrote.

“Perhaps more interestingly, though, all three philosophies arose and thrived in times of social and political turmoil, within their respective geographical areas. This is relevant because I think it may go some way toward explaining some of the similarities I am interested in. Of course, Buddhism still thrives today, with hundreds of millions of followers. Epicureanism and Stoicism, on the contrary, largely exist in textbooks, the main reason being Christianity: as soon as the Christians took over the Roman empire they put their newly found political and military might in the service of the one true god and persecuted both Epicureans and Stoics. Both schools were officially abolished in 529 CE by the emperor Justinian I, that prick.”

Times of social and political turmoil, eh? No wonder they’re relevant again.

The Mundane as Motive

“One of the strongest motives that leads men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness. Such men make the cosmos and its construction the pivot of their emotional life, in order to find the peace and security which they cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.”

— Albert Einstein

Sound and Fury, Right After This Message

American corporate "journalism" persists in putting demonstrably false lunatics on the air. It's as if "Network" has collided with "A Face in the Crowd" and sprayed stupidity everywhere.

The opportunity cost of the corporate news media is ignorance of what's important. Right now, the American public is being manipulating into believing that watching a dumb-ass mediocre Hollywood  comedy is equivalent to fighting in some holy war.

These "Woods" Are Lovely, Dark and Deep, But Promises Go Unkept there

Chris Pine as the Prince who warns he was raised to be charming, not sincere

Disney has produced a perfect adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s 1986 stage musical Into the Woods, although — like all of Sondheim’s work — it won’t be to everyone’s taste.

These woods are lovely, dark and deep, but promises go unkept there. Wolves and witches prowl there, it’s true, but so do Bruno Bettelheim and Joseph Campbell.

Sondheim was decades ahead of American popular culture in following the darker streams in classic fantasy to their sources. Between the lines of his wickedly witty lyrics, astute audiences will discern observations about our existential condition — about love, parenthood, betrayal, courage and the disillusionments of maturity.

Sondheim faithfully mixes the elements of a half-dozen fairy tales, faintly mocking their absurdities while mining — and extending — their truths. Those truths are funny, bittersweet, profoundly sad (as in the parent’s lament Stay With Me) and even wise (as in Children Will Listen, the song that soars as we rise from out seats).

I don’t think Matt Mattingly found it as moving as I did, although he too enjoyed it. I wish the whole audience could have enjoyed it as much as I did.

But then you must be careful, you know, what you wish for.

“Careful the wish you make

“Wishes are children

“Careful the path they take

“Wishes come true, not free

“Careful the spell you cast

“Not just on children

“Sometimes a spell may last
"Past what you can see…”

Gen. Douglas MacArthur: An Appetite for Danger

MacArthur wades ashore at Leyte

During World War II, Gen. Douglas MacArthur regularly exposed himself to sniper fire, machine gun attacks and enemy bombs, scorning bomb shelters and offering a distinctive target.

That calm bravado — no doubt related to his vanity and heightened sense of drama— prompted at least one psychiatrist to render a snap diagnosis of “suicidal.”

At Brunei Bay in the Philippines, MacArthur was leading his nervous officers along a beach road battlefield when they came across the freshly slain bodies of two Japanese soldiers.

“An Army photographer appeared, hoping to take a picture of the General and the bodies,” wrote biographer William Manchester. “MacArthur refused, and the cameraman squared away to snap the two corpses. Just at the bulb flashed, the photographer fell with a sniper’s bullet in his shoulder.

“Sir Leslie Morhead, the corps commander, hurried up and said they had reached the front line. MacArthur protested: ‘But I see some Australian soldiers fully a hundred yards ahead.’ Sir Leslie said: ‘General, that is only a forward patrol, and even now it is under heavy fire. You cannot go beyond this point without extreme hazard. The enemy is right in front of it.’ MacArthur said, ‘Let’s go forward.’ Sir Leslie stepped aside and told one of the American aides, ‘This is the first time I’ve ever heard of a commander-in-chief acting as the point.’

“The General started to pace toward the Japanese, but (Gen. George C.) Kenney decided to intervene. They had found the enemy’s outpost position, he told MacArthur, and ‘if he wanted my vote, it was for allowing the infantry to do the job they came ashore for.’ Besides, he continued, the captain of the Boise had invited them to dinner, and it would be ‘extremely discourteous to keep dinner waiting when, after all, we were just guests.’ Capping his argument, he reminded the General that the cruiser’s skipper had promised them chocolate ice cream that evening.

“’All right, George,’ MacArthur said, smiling and turning back toward the ship. ‘I wouldn’t have you miss that ice cream for anything.’

“His craving for danger was unappeased, however; the next day they landed on the other side of Brunei Bay. Hearing gunfire coming from the direction of a nearby airfield, they ‘headed,’ in Kenney’s words, ‘for more trouble.’

“Reaching the edge of the landing strip, the General said, ‘Let’s go on,’ but then an Australian colonel stepped out of the bush and barred the way, brusquely telling the commander in chief that he and his entourage were an unwelcome distraction.

“Kenney writes: ‘He was not a bit awed at MacArthur’s five stars and, much to my gratification, refused to let us go forward another inch.”