####September 7, 2014 ###Participants

###Discussion ####Initial Reactions * Alice: Why didn’t people panic as much? * Bill: The importance of jobs in Japan, a recurring theme * Austin: Were there good points in Aum teachings? Were they just misguided people? * Jacky: Why were they going to work when they got poisoned?
* Jenny: The “us vs. them” mindset in both the victims and the Aum people * Kathy X. Sun: You give up part of your identity in exchange for narrative; healthy vs. unhealthy subculture * Kathy S. Sun: Writing aspect: how do we craft oral history? Attackers are portrayed a certain way in the media, but Murakami is doing the same thing with the victims

####How do people respond to traumas? * Jacky: Range of responses: from PTSD to people moving on with life. Most of them concentrated more on returning to the regular work life * Bill: Preface mentioned many publication issues: only people who were willing to share were presented, but so many other people had their own untold stories. Also, why do salarymen live their lives for the company? * Jacky: The identities people create are linked to their jobs. There is a sense of obligation, so it’s a natural thing for them to embody their job as their identity. For us, a job is just one portion of our everyday life, but traditional Japanese view their occupation as an essential characteristic. Personal experience (got mugged and decided to go to school anyways): I don’t know why I reacted that way? There weren’t that many options, and I just wanted to get back to regular life, i.e. continue the walk to school. Perhaps going through with your day is a coping mechanism * Jenny: I got the sense from the station attendants interviews that they are really proud of what they do and how they contribute to society; they emanate this sense of pride and passion for their jobs. People in the US are less enthusiastic? Here, we often times treat our job as a detached third of our daily life. There is a pretty big cultural difference when it comes to how we view our occupations. * Kathy X. Sun: After WWII, a way for people to rebuild was to commit to work; some victims were double penalized–injury and alienation from work–a comparison to rape victims. Social expectation: if you fall out of place, you better find a way to fit back in. * Austin: It’s not just about Japanese culture, but other cultures as well. In the US, we don’t provide our military and disabled veterans with the proper transition to reintegrate. What would I do? I would probably do the same as the gas victims. * Kathy S. Sun: It’s like how people delay when they make doctor appointments, there is always something else to do first. A lot of interviewees were from the working class, and they talk about their jobs in a different way than we do here. The lack of proper disaster management–the fact that the train just kept going–demonstrates the invisibility of this attack? * Bill: If train is late in Japan, it’s a serious issue. * Alice: Japan is a different extreme. From my experience, the crowd is always very quiet and respectful during a concert in Japan, a big contrast from American concerts. People take their work seriously, and are part of a collectivist culture. In general, humans don’t like change and don’t like disruptions: if we can ignore it, we will do that. However, Japan should not forget that this happened, which is one criticism from Murakami. * Jenny: Agree, but what boggles me was the lack of attention with the trains after they discovered sarin. They might not have known it was poison, but the workers just mopped up this mysterious smelly liquid, didn’t bother investigating it, and sent the train running again. Same with the hospital: many place turned down patients because they were not specialized in treating eye problems, which was a major symptom of sarin poisoning. * Kathy S. Sun: The specialization aspect of society today makes it hard for people to do more than they usually are asked to do. An example is the Tokyo News filming crew…why didn’t they have the common sense to take people to the hospital? I think when people are thrown out of the loop, they don’t know how to react.

####Buddhism in the Aum Cult #####Introduction to Buddhism - Jacky Mahayana Buddhism says that the denial of self is not as important as pre-Mahayana Buddhism. People should welcome changes to the self, rather than denying it. Self-denial and not being reliant on desires in life achieves a satisfied state. However according to the Mahayana tradition, nothing is permanent, and there is nothing that you can keep forever. Emptiness of the self and opposite of the self–the other–neither is more important. Denying the self is not a good way to achieve enlightenment, because trying to deny the self is itself an attachment. Mahayana Buddhism argued against trying to do anything to get to that state. The ultimate goal is to come to term with neither self-denial nor self-fulfillment, and to find a natural way to do this.

• Jacky: It seems like Aum a way to get into Buddhism without the religious nitty gritty part.
• Kathy S. Sun: I feel like in Western society, there’s this stereotype that people are into Buddhism are ones that do yoga.
• Austin: People seem to have conflicted views about the Aum: there’s always the good vs. bad aspect. Extremism also messes people up, e.g. extremist Islamic sects. Some sects messed up what could’ve been something beautiful for others.
• Jacky: There are two extremes, eternalism vs. annihilationism
  • Eternalism: everything has its essence and therefore cannot be changed, e.g. computer has an essential part of being a computer.
  • Annihilationism: nothing matters because nothing exists, and there is no afterlife. Therefore, there is nothing important about following moral rules because everything is ultimately meaningless.
  • The Middle Road: Mahayana Buddhists try to put themselves in the middle, where the results of one’s karma is directing a self towards the future, but there’s no self per se that is immutable. Don’t go for the extremes.
  • Buddhism is very flexible, you can introduce other concepts and it wouldn’t be considered heresy. There is an emphasis that there’s no single way to achieve a certain state. All roads lead to the enlightened state, but there are many paths you can take.
• Kathy S. Sun: The Aum people all belonged to a certain subculture…which is kind of alarming because I feel like it’s something that could also happen to me?
• Jenny: Yeah, the people who decided to join the Aum were on the fringes of society.
• Alice: The Aum cult does not differ from cults that have done tragic things. While they held Asahara to such a god-like standard, they also intertwined with everyday people. We cannot simply view the Aum as “them” because they’re also “us”; in reality, we’re all the same.
• Jenny: A lot of people who joined the Aum cult were dissatisfied with their immediate family life. Does Buddhism address not fitting in, or any escapist tendencies?
• Kathy S. Sun: I don’t understand why these people would abandon their lives to do something more “boring”, because their new lives were more or less like prison? It seems even worse than the real world.
• Alice: Most people who join cults are damaged and weak-spirited. It is a lot easier to have someone guide you and tell you what to do, than to go out to society and make choices for yourself.
• Bill: Nazi Germany in Captain America movie: Hydra wants to have total control over humanity to have order and peace, this is like what Asahara was offering.
• Jenny: The Giver is another example of how people give up their identities in exchange for a peaceful environment where decisions are already made for them.

####What did you think of the written style/oral history of this book?

• Jenny: The repetition of the interviews definitely got to me. By the time you read another account of when person x got up, ate breakfast, and headed out the door to work, all of the stories start to blur together. I’m not sure if Murakami achieved his goal of attaching names to these sarin victims.
• Kathy S. Sun: Agreed. When you read about the 10th person’s daily routines, your attention starts to wane. However, that is only the written aspect, and I’m sure if I were to interview these people, I would also find their stories interesting. Perhaps an audio recording or a documentary would be easier mediums for people to get to know these stories? Also, the written format is more tedious, and I felt that real life stories are often times divorced from simple descriptions. Perhaps it is the lack of context? The girl who wanted to go to Disneyland was the most compelling one for me.
• Jenny: I felt as if I could not generate enough interest to get to know these people, even though I sympathized with their experiences. I think it might be the lack of background information that tells who these people really are?
• Bill: Perhaps it was hard because their background information was too private? He did cut a lot out from his initial recordings.
• Alice: I thought this book was not so different from Murakami’s usual fictional work. Every little thing we do is interconnected with everyone, and all actions lead to everything else. This was pretty much the sum of everyone’s day in the book.
• Kathy S. Sun: Hmm I felt it was different than his other work. His fictional work is usually very reflective, but I suppose the interview format is different.
• Jacky: But I think in the end, we still think these people as victims, even though Murakami tried to give each one an identity through this book.
• Jenny: Yes, and did anyone notice that the style of the victim interviews is a lot different from the style of the Aum people interviews?
• Alice, Bill & Kathy S. Sun: He sounded more belligerent with the Aum people???
• Jenny & Jacky: Also, the guy who wanted a scientific explanation reminded me of the I-Ching, where people back then strived to find order in chaos.
• Kathy S. Sun: Why would people do this scientific categorizing?
• Jacky: I guess doing this justifies what you believe in. Most people have more educational background than say, rural students, so they need more proof to believe.
• Kathy S. Sun: Why would people with scientific background become attracted to Aum then?
• Jacky: Maybe they already have compatible ideas in their scientific training. Buddhist philosophy incorporates a lot of logic, and people become attracted by these.
• Kathy S. Sun: Speaking of logic, a lot of these Aum people sound very INTJ–analytical and methodical.
• Jenny: Criminals are often INTJ, because I suppose they need a certain level of analytical skills and logic to carry out evil schemes? By the way, what is everyone’s MBTI type? I’m an ISTJ.
• Jacky: INTJ.
• Alice: INFJ.
• Kathy S. Sun: ENFP.
• Bill: INTP.

####Conclusion * Jenny: I didn’t know about this incident until I read the book, and while I did get bored because of the repetition, I’m glad I know about it now. I think this incident should be remembered, so similar tragedies don’t happen in the future. * Jacky: I did hear about this incident, but I thought the book was very informative and was an interesting read. * Alice: I liked the book, and while it was a little repetitive, I think the exposure of this incident is good. * Bill: All of the kind of sounded the same, except for the subway workers and Disneyland girl, but I’m also glad I was made aware of this.