2.22 Letter to Stephen Batchelor  (see his home page). Dear Mr. Batchelor, I think we may share common views about agnostic Buddhism as set forth in Confession of a Buddhist Atheist. We have not corresponded before but I have followed your writings for some time. My background is a Buddhist layman age 69, a retired single American man living in isolation far from contact with any Buddhist community or anyone to talk to. I appreciate your fresh insights in your book about the political intrigues surrounding the Buddha and your goal to separate his unique teachings from the Hindu and other cultures overlaying them.  Your hypothesis about a possible sojourn in Taxila is a brilliant solution to the puzzling question of why the birth of his son was delayed until so late as age 29. I have a question related not directly to your recent book but to the issue of rebirth. I wonder if you have addressed somewhere in your writings the detailed case histories of Ian Stevenson MD suggestive of reincarnation. Even Stevenson admitted he could not come up with a modus operandi but the depth and quality of his research is provocative. Do you just accept that some phenomena are unexplained and leave it at that?

2.21 I have just read Confession of a Buddhist Atheist by Stephen Batchelor and rated it five stars. I think he (or his publisher) may have chosen to use the word Atheist in the title instead of Agnostic for dramatic effect because within the text he takes pains to qualify the meaning as "not-theist", not "anti-theist", which is still an agnostic stance.  I read his earlier book Buddhism Without Beliefs two years ago and reviewed it in my blog essay Agnostic Buddhism Without Karma or Rebirth. . I hope to review CBA in more detail later. It interests me both for Batchelor's autobiographical history as a former monk and for his fresh insights into the life and politics surrounding Siddhattha Gotama, the Buddha. For example, Batchelor suggests that the reason that Gotama did not father a child until the late age of 29 was that he may have been away from his homeland studying at Taxila, the preeminent center of learning at the time and the capital of the Persian empire, located seven hundred miles to the northwest (two months travel) on the main North Road passing through Gotama's home town. At least five other contemporaries of Gotama are known to have gone there to study, including King Pasenadi of Kosala with whom the Buddha had many dialogs later. A long stay in a non-Hindu culture would have exposed young Gotama to revolutionary ideas about democratizing the Hindu caste system which he did in his community of monks. 

2.15 On the definition of "substantial" food. Another possible cause of headaches could be eating too much food. At one time, that is. When trying to limit mealtimes to the traditional monastic interval between dawn and midday according to a strict interpretation of the sixth Theravada precept, I get a powerful urge to eat more than necessary at the midday meal in anticipation of the hunger pangs that will follow that night. Years of practice don't seem to make it easier. A kind of panic reaction takes over when the meal is in progress. The inevitable result of overeating is discomfort due to sluggish drowsiness which can last for hours wasting most of the afternoon. The suttas relate that when a bhikkhu returns from his alms round after finishing his midday meal, he sits down under a tree to practice concentration. This is an unrealistic ideal far beyond my powers. I have not even seen it practiced in yogic retreats where a main meal is usually followed by a rest period. Drowsiness can be more uncomfortable than hunger. It is one of the five major hindrances to spiritual practice (lust, ill will, drowsiness, restlessness and doubt). Considering that drowsiness has been a problem for me for a long time, I am coming to the conclusion that eating a light supper in the evening would be a fair tradeoff for limiting the quantity of food consumed at lunch. It would be better than lurching from one extreme to another. In my case, a reasonable limit for lunch on a typical day of light physical activity would be a volume of about one pint. One pint is the volume of a small Rubbermaid Twist-N-Lock food container, the same volume that worked for me during my retreat at Boonkanjanaram in Thailand in 2004. It is also the volume of food mentioned in the suttas [Samyutta Nikaya, Book I Ch III 13] which King Pasenadi found to be the right amount to overcome his obesity (see a Bucket Measure of Food).

When I took the sixth precept among the full set of eight Theravada precepts at Wat Metta in 1996, my vows had to be taken in the canonical Pali language at the insistence of Ven. Thanissaro who administered them to me. I had to memorize and recite the lines without fully understanding all the nuances of their meaning. Of course many contracts or commitments are entered this way without fully understanding the terms at first. In Pali, the word describing the kind of foods prohibited outside of the allotted time is "bhojana" meaning "staple" or "substantial". Ven. Thanissaro goes into a lot of detail about the allowed foods at accesstoinsight.org. The subject of food is especially interesting to bhikkhus, long distance hikers, mariners adrift in an open boat and anyone with a keen appetite. There are foods which are permitted as snacks and there are others considered as medicines (salt, tea, cocoa, oil?). Fruit is a recommended snack at any time. Note that fruit juice and sugary sodas are not allowed in my personal list because of concerns about obesity and heart health. I used to think that snacks should be discouraged because nibbling or munching often gets out of hand. However now I concede that they may serve a useful purpose as a safety valve.

In fact, I would accept a snack of a rice cake or a similar vegan food with an afternoon cup of tea, even if rice is considered one of the "staple" foods according to the traditional rules. Likewise a light supper could be justified for a lay person observing a modified sixth precept if it helps sustain energy and motivation overall. The English translation of "bhojana" as "substantial" can be interpreted in this case in a quantitative caloric sense. For Theravada monks, however, the problem with eating an evening meal or snack is more complicated than the issue of allowable foods. Even if some foods could be construed as allowable snacks, Theravada monks can not freely help themselves to anything at all, not even snacks, unless given to them that day and saved for consumption later. They cannot hoard food overnight and they cannot eat anything not given, not even an orphan fruit fallen from a tree and picked up off the ground. The problem with supper is there might not be any lay person around to give them food at a late hour if they might not have been able to save any allowable snacks to tide them over. This happened to me. One evening as I happened to be walking past a wash up area behind the main hall of Wat Metta, a young monk visiting from Thailand standing there noticed my approach, brightened up and motioned at me to come over. Then he asked me to hand him a jar of instant coffee sitting there on a shelf in plain view. Feeling pleased to be of service in a humble way but also amused to be caught up in a role-playing scenario, my role being "layman" and his being "monk", I willingly picked up the jar and handed it to him. Actually it may not have been technically "mine" to give, but if my giving it was all right with him, then it was all right with me. I just assumed that the jar was for everyone to use but this visiting monk, perhaps not sure of all the local protocols, correctly did not make any assumptions. While handing him the jar I asked him if he needed coffee to stay awake all night, as monks sometimes do. "No," he replied truthfully, "I just like coffee."

Important note:
Having said the above in defense of a modified definition of "substantial" food, I have to backpedal a bit to reaffirm that mild nocturnal hunger is healthy and can produce some interesting dreams, provided it can be tolerated without panic attacks. The main object is to avoid drowsiness from eating too much at midday but not at the expense of throwing out the baby (caloric restriction) with the bathwater (the sixth precept).  Caloric restriction is still necessary for health and vitality even if the sixth precept is relaxed from a hard and fast rule. The right amount for my aging metabolism seems to be about one-half pint of a light and early supper around five pm. After that, the kitchen is closed until the following dawn. 

A blind adherence to rules and regulations may not be wholesome. The suttas state that a belief in external observances is one of the first fetters to drop away on the path to enlightenment. At stream-entry the first three of the ten fetters to drop away are identity view, doubt and wrong grasp of rules and observances.

2.11 Some premonitory headaches centered in the left temple have resumed in the past weeks. The cause of these episodes is still an unsolved mystery. I am wondering what conditions might have changed lately. The headaches could be due to a general decline in physical and metabolic activity over the past several months, except that the first episode occurred at the end of my 1999 CDT hike when physical condition was excellent, apart from lack of water. Some doubts about kidney function were suggested by a recent metabolic panel exam at Waianae Comprehensive Health Care. The report listed some parameters hovering on the edge of normal. I will try drinking more water or tea, in fact may buy a large thermos to keep an ample supply of liquid on hand, or else make a point to drink more plain Culligan-purified water. The headaches might be due to a slow but cumulative allergic reaction to wheat in the diet which manifests only after several weeks or months of exposure. I will try to eliminate all wheat, once again, after experimenting recently with whole wheat breads. To implicate androgen deficiency as a possible cause would not explain why the episodes have been intermittent instead of chronic. There does seem to be a vague correlation between headaches and periods of anxiety or depression (except, again, for the CDT hike). I doubt if the cause could be some nutritional deficiency because of numerous vitamin and mineral supplements in my current daily regimen.

My bet is on wheat allergy as the most likely cause of headaches because it correlates with every episode.  On my CDT hike I lived on practically nothing but peanut butter and ramen noodles (wheat) for six and a half months. The daily headaches began five months into the hike until the end when I finally changed my diet to rice and beans. On my Vermont hike the initial headaches faded away on a low-carb high-protein Neanderthal all-meat diet (unfortunately all that cholesterol is bad for the heart, a mortal threat worse than mere headaches).  Fortunately I am very satisfied with my present diet, a vegan fat-free oil-free cholesterol-free Ornish-Esselstyn cardiac-disease-reversal diet, even if bread may have to be excluded.

Conditions are not very conducive for physical exercise in Waianae; walking beside roads bearing heavy traffic is disagreeable as well as swimming in the ocean, especially after a recent incident on the beach when my foreign presence was challenged by a hostile native. Walking along neighborhood streets is discouraged by many aggressive barking dogs, some of them roaming unleashed, unfriendly to the rare pedestrian where vehicular traffic is the norm. Some streets are signed "Private Property No Entry". These signs of distrust may be due in part to a pervasive homeless population. There are no public trails to hike in solitude like the grand forests of northern Arizona which stand silently waiting for my return.

My Recipe for Congee Oats
* handful of Quaker Oats, Old Fashioned
* 1/2 handful Sun Maid California Raisins
* 1/2 handful Quaker Yellow Corn Meal
* 1/2 handful Hodgson Mill Flax Seed
* 1/2 tsp cumin
* 1/2 tsp cinnamon
* 1 Tbsp Bragg Liquid Aminos (tastier than other kinds of soy sauce)
* 1 Tbsp Sriracha Hot Chile Sauce or Sriracha Garlic Chile Sauce

Mix  ingredients in a non-stick saucepan with purified water, bring to a boil and stir about thirty seconds. Pour into a lightweight melamine bowl optionally decorated with a visually attractive band of flowers pleasing to the eye. While the congee is congealing in the bowl, rinse the spatula and the saucepan. Set the clean saucepan on the still-warm stovetop burner to dry. Enjoy congee at dawn or evening with a cup of hot Oolong tea.