R.I.P. Iris Chang

[Dale]

Shortly after it came out in 1999, I read Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking. A profoundly disturbing piece of journalism, the book has haunted me over the years and I would short-list it among the books that changed my life.

I read tonight that Chang committed suicide at age 36. I'm deeply saddened by the news.

Obit
Another story

[Redwolf]

Shortly after it came out in 1999, I read Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking. A profoundly disturbing piece of journalism, the book has haunted me over the years and I would short-list it among the books that changed my life.

I read tonight that Chang committed suicide at age 36. I'm deeply saddened by the news.

Obit
Another story

That is terribly sad. It happened right here in our back yard, on Highway 17, near Los Gatos. It's hard to imagine the depths of depression that would lead such a lovely and talented woman to end her life.

Redwolf

[jim stone]

I've studied the involvement of Japanese
Buddhists in the horrible events in China that
Chang wrote of. Some of the most famous and revered religious
teachers, who migrated to America and started
Zen lineages that remain today, or wrote
books widely admired, were
utter fascists and anti-Semites who cheered
on Japanese troops in China, explaining that we must
'lop off the head of the enemy with the
sword of compassion.'

Something that's impressed me over the years
is the extraordinary unthinking reverence for Oriental
people in robes, payed by Americans who
are deeply critical of Western religion. On many occasions
the object of this adulation knows less about his religion
than most Christian ministers do about Christianity.
Some of these people stood for evil things.
We seem to want Shrangri la, whatever the price.
The history of Buddhism in the USA, especially
Zen groups, is rife with sexual exploitation
and alcoholism. In Japan Zen teachers have committed
suicide and there is a long history of alchoholism.

Consider Tibet: The Dalai Lama is a terrifically good fellow, but
few people know that he is one of the few Dalai
Lamas to survive adolescence, the others
having been poisoned. Candidates for reincarnation
to important spiritual positions were often competing
with one another, and tended to be thrown off roofs.
There were torture chambers in the basement
of the Potola.

One thing I've seen pretty clearly: wherever
sila, fundamental Buddhist moral teaching, is
breached in apparently small ways, sooner or
later there is hell to pay. The first precept is
to refrain from killing, including non-human
animals. In Japan Zen became the religion of
the samurai, the warrior caste, who killed
for a living--and so there are stories of
enlightened swordsmen. Swordmenship
became a spiritual practice. This was a giant step
toward Nanking.

Another thing: the Mahayana idea that when you
are enlightened you can chose to be reborn
so as to teach sentient beings, cries
out for abuse, especially here. 'I am the reincarnation
of an enlightened Lama, beyond good and evil,
and so you must sleep with me; and if you tell
anybody you will be reborn in a Hell realm' is
hardly uncommon.

The Buddha taught that when you get enlightened
you can't come back. So nobody can claim to
be the incarnation of anybody enlightened.
And there is a powerful emphasis on
the fundamental moral teaching, so the
Theravada tradition in America, which
encodes the Buddha's teaching, has been the
least involved in sexual scandals, drug abuse
by teachers, and so on. The teacher who
drinks is violating precepts, pure and
simple, and his response 'I am the reincarntation
of an enlightened being and cannot be judged
by usual standards' is a non-starter. The
less mystical nuts and bolts teaching of the
Buddha is a firebreak.

But even here there is no Shangri la.
When you go to the great Theravada meditation centers
in the USA, you are typically asked to fill out a form
which asks questions like 'Have you ever
attempted suicide? Are you you in
psychotherapy? Are you under the care of
a psychiatrist. Does your therapist
know you are here?' Guess why.

[Flyingcursor]

Wow. That is a great book though the descriptions and pictures are appalling. Looks like I'll be reading it again.

[Will O'B]

Wow. I am truly saddened. It feels like I just saw her on C-Span talking about her book. She came across as a lovely, articulate, talented young woman. Such a tragic ending for someone with so much to give.

Will O'Ban

[demon_piper]

Dale, thank you for mentioning this as I had not heard of her death. Certainly we may debate the applications of all of the major religions and the ways in which they have gone wrong. However, we should recognize the voices which come forward and sing truth into the darkness that a few misguided individuals bring upon their people.

As to all of these ills with the Buddhist religion, certainly, however we must not forget the recent scandals involving Catholic priests, nor the fact that Christianity arguably has the highest death count of any religion ever known in the world, thanks to the crusades and its other follies.

We cannot look to the worst exemplars of a religion to try and find its meaning, but rather the quiet and peaceful practioners who do not seek ego gratification, nor to control and force their beliefs on others. A situation which is growing unfortunately more common in the modern day, with the new crusade for morality.

We should simply be thankful for truth and peace, and try to ignore the ignorant and cruel.

[glauber]

I read tonight that Chang committed suicide at age 36. I'm deeply saddened by the news.

[beowulf573]

I've been meaning to read her book on Nanking for a while now, I'm sorry to hear she's lost her battle with depression.

I've taken to putting transcripts of CSPAN's booknotes program on my palm pilot for reading when I have a few spare minutes, here's one I read a while back with her:

<a href="http://www.booknotes.org/Transcript/?Pr ... ang">Irish Chang</a>

[Nanohedron]

I have the CD Lover's Ghost by the group Cran playing as I write this. When I clicked onto this thread and read the sad news, the air "After Dawning" began to play. It is a fitting bit of synchronicity that this air served as a lament for the tragic passing of Ms. Chang. Those of you you who are familiar with the air will be with me in this moment, I trust. RIP.

[DCrom]

Like Redwolf, this one hit close to home - not only was she local, but my wife's family history gave her a feeling of connection to Ms. Chang's writing. The night we heard we spent a long time talking about it, and how senseless it seemed - by all reports, she was a lovely, successful woman with a loving husband and a young son.

A real tragedy, and a reminder that even the most outwardly successful among us may still be wrestling with their own inner demons.

[burnsbyrne]

I don't know Ms Chang or her work but I do know about standing at the edge of a high bridge trying to make the decision to go or stay. I stayed, obviously, found a good doctor and am still living. In the course of my journey I have learned that talking about depression has never caused someone to commit suicide, but not talking about it can pave the way for someone to slide into hopelessness and despair. Depression is no one's fault. It won't go away with will power. It is a life threatening disease. The demons that cause it are chemical and treatable. I am glad I got treatment.
Mike

[Dale]

Depression is a life-threatening disease, as are other forms of mental illness. People don't like to confront this. Even less, they don't like to confront the truth that we when we are talking about psychiatric illness, we're not talking about us healthy people and those people with psychiatric illness. We're talking about us.

For reasons we can't know, Iris Chang was dedicated to revealing the truth about the worst side of human nature...or probably more properly, the worst behavior that can emerge out of groups that hate other groups, and war, and the the tendency to demonize or dehumanize our enemies. As painful as it is to read stories about Nanking or any of the other similar situations in history and across cultures, we must. The line between the Rape of Nanking and Abu Ghraib is thin.



Dale

[Joseph E. Smith]

Depression is a life-threatening disease, as are other forms of mental illness. People don't like to confront this. Even less, they don't like to confront the truth that we when we are talking about psychiatric illness, we're not talking about us healthy people and those people with psychiatric illness. We're talking about us.

I've been living with depression most of my adult life...and it wasn't until within the last month or so that I was finally diagnosed with it. From my viewpoint, it is still very much an issue of 'crazy me' and 'not crazy everybody else'....though I wish it weren't...that's simply how my mind processes it. It has been at times very scary, and I have little doubt that if it hadn't been discovered recently, it would have led to a serious outcome. My heart goes out to the friends and family of Iris Chang...it is a very sad loss to them, and to the rest of this world.

[jim stone]

We cannot look to the worst exemplars of a religion to try and find its meaning, but rather the quiet and peaceful practioners who do not seek ego gratification, nor to control and force their beliefs on others. A situation which is growing unfortunately more common in the modern day, with the new crusade for morality.

We should simply be thankful for truth and peace, and try to ignore the ignorant and cruel.

Ithink we should count it all. The price of not doing so is too high.
I attended lectures of one of the best known and most brilliant
Buddhist teachers in America. Each time he drank from a big glass of saki
as he spoke. Slowly his speech got slurred, finally he curled up
into a fetal position and passed out. This before over a hundred
followers who were asking themselves: What is he trying to
teach us? He wasn't trying to teach them anything;
he was an out of control alchoholic. He died at 46 of liver failure,
leaving the community in the hands of his successor who had
AIDs and infected several of his students, both male and female,
because he was having sex with them and didn't bother to
tell them he was infected. Some of them died too, then he died.
As Krishnamurti once said: 'The guru murders the disciple; the
disciple murders the guru.'

I don't look to these people to reveal what Buddhism is about,
but certainly they are examples (and not the most serious) about
what can happen when we ignore what is ignorant and cruel
in Asian religion.

[Dale]

I don't look to these people to reveal what Buddhism is about,
but certainly they are examples (and not the most serious) about
what can happen when we ignore what is ignorant and cruel
in Asian religion.

I'd be really interested in your ideas about whether there is something distinctively ignorant and cruel about Asian religion. Clearly, among religions, they don't have the market cornered. Also, I wonder if the atrocities in Nanking, Europe under Nazi Germany, Cambodia, the heinous acts we're seeing now in the Middle East, has anything whatever to do with religion or if those who who engage in cruelty toward other groups just use their religion as an excuse to justify their behavior.