Driven From Exile into Our Hearts

At this point, it’s ludicrous to think I would have anything momentous to add to the oral history of His Holiness the Dalai Lama beyond personal reflection. Typically, I don’t celebrate birthdays; certainly not my own. There are exceptions, of course, every once in a while and this is one of those occasions.

I’d have to go back some years to a point at which my dear friend Pasang Tenzin said that it would be a worthy project to see His Holiness once a year. I’ve pretty much done that with the exception of the last couple of years. I keep thinking that I’ll be back in India and will see him in Dharamsala or around South Asia, so I’ve cheesed out since I’ve been back in the states. However, honestly, he’s never far from my thoughts and I’d like to think, in my heart.

This last part is most important. In the course of human history, at any given time, there are exceptional individuals who remind us of what we can be in this realm; who are living examples of individuals who care more for others than about themselves. They are often mocked, belittled, and vilified. We look at them fondly at a distance, and regard them admirably in posterity. But while they’re alive, despite the good they’ve rendered, there are the naysayers who speak from bases of abominable ignorance, if not outright hatred.

Tenzin Gyatso doesn’t need me to speak up for him or defend him. He doesn’t need me to go to toe to toe with people who say Tibet is part of China and always has been; or who say he’s a demon in monk’s robes; or who say he just wants to return to Tibet to subjugate it to the old order pre-"liberation"; or who say he suppresses the Shugden worshippers within his own Gelug tradition, and so on, ad nauseum.

However, I do think that the world needs reminders of why he matters, to borrow from the title of a book by Robert Thurman. He matters for the same reason Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela matter in death; he matters for the same reason his friend Arch-Bishop Desmond Tutu, Sulak Shivaraksam, and Malala Yousafzai matter in life. We need figures who, of course, promote peace and tolerance. We also need them to speak truth to power, whether it’s the power of the Taliban or the power or the Chinese Communist Party. How they speak is often as important as what they say.

In some cases, it’s fairly direct and pointed; in other cases, it’s wielding a stick of righteousness swathed in the cotton of rather gentle humor. At the end of the day, someone has to call bullshit on the wrong that humans inflict on one another through the powers of state.

There’s more to it than that, though. There’s the promise shown of what humanity can be when motivated by compassion and wisdom. For God’s (whatever that word means to you) sake, nothing seems to scare people more than when they see people whose only agenda is promoting fairness for all and not accepting the status quo or the temporal and temporary power that attempts to keep "business as usual" in place. To say that His Holiness is one such is an understatement.

I’ve seen him dozens of time in my life, particularly over the past couple of decades, on two continents and in both hemispheres. I’ve never met him, sadly, but I know people who have and their stories are wonderfully, well, enlightening. The best story I’ve heard was from a former KGB agent who worked the security detail when His Holiness came to Moscow for the first time in 1991. This was a guy who pretty much admitted to me that he had carried out some pretty extreme acts during his career; his heart and his life changed working that detail. From what I understand, His Holiness accepted him as a student during the course of a private audience. I was privileged to hold a small buddha statue had been consecrated by His Holiness and given to this rather large bear of a man.

Or there’s the woman I met in Dhasa who is in her late sixties, I think. She’s from Australia and heard him speak. Afterward, she quite literally bumped into him with his entourage on a city street (I want to say Sydney, but I’m really not sure.) She said she became the equivalent of a Deadhead and followed him around for years before settling in Dharmasala. She’s a hoot; I didn’t catch her name, but you can’t miss her if you’re there. She’s thin and fit with dreadlocks and the most wonderfully flamboyant attire. And she glows; and of course, she’s met him.

If ever there is an individual on this planet whose birthday we should celebrate, this would be one. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on the attacks he’s been subjected to by various Chinese leaders and the CCP’s propaganda machine; they’re essentially liars and guided by a misplaced sense of superiority. That His Holiness has pressed for dialogue with Beijing and tried to get his point across that he’s no longer seeking full independence for Tibet has resulted in no change or meaningful response from the occupiers of his country. That he holds them in his heart with great compassion is beyond ordinary human ken.

I remember him being asked if he ever got angry and he admitted that he did have a temper, but he continues to practice to tame it. Yet, if that’s so, I don’t recall any instance where he’s lashed out in anger against those who have seized Tibet and continued an onslaught against its people and their culture as unrelenting as the world has seen for decades.

It’s not just as a political leader that he’s exceptional; even within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, his insistence that if there is something in the scriptures that doesn’t accord with science, then it should those teachings should be retired. In Indiana, I was struck dumb as he was quoting from an abhidharma reference during a series of teachings on Atisha that a significant aspect of Buddhist cosmology was erroneous and should be put aside. I wondered what went through the minds of the more traditional ordained and lay followers at that point.

Of course, even His Holiness still maintains views that aren’t necessarily scientific or perhaps that meet the criteria for textual criticism demanded by contemporary discipline. A few years ago when he said that he had requested some Indian Sanskrit pundits to do a textual analysis of the two Nagarjunas, they told him that the style was the same and that, yes, the great philosopher and the great mahasiddha were one and the same. Thus, Nagarjuna lived several hundred years. With the greatest respect, I would have to ask him someday if it occurred to him that those pandits would say anything to confirm this simply because he is who he is. I’d have to ask him why, knowing how important Nagarjuna is to Mahayana Buddhism both in late classical India and throughout the history of Buddhism in Tibet, that no one has called up or been able to find any contemporary records of him over the span of the period of the long-lived one’s life? In some ways, though, while this might be a big deal to me, personally, it’s probably not relevant to most practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism (Tibetans themselves or their non-Tibetan converts).

More important - most important, I mean to say - is that His Holiness embodies the spirit of compassion. It is said that the Dalai Lamas are emanations of Avalokishvara or Chenrezig in Tibetan, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. I can get behind that. Without blithering on too much, I do think that part of Buddhist tantra is to embody the principles of wisdom and compassion and if it means visualizing a figure like Chenrezig and absorbing the qualities of that being into the practitioner to realize those qualities, then I think this is a worthy practice. In His Holiness’s case, I don’t know if he even needs to practice! It seems to me he simply IS this great compassion.

It is this which trumps, also, my disagreement with his MIddle Way approach to the Tibet issue. The idea that the Chinese will allow Tibetans self-rule within the context of being part of China or perhaps simply as a separate but equal people within China as another way of putting it, seems mistaken to me. I know many Tibetans who don’t agree with the Middle Way policy but who would die before criticising His Holiness.

It is this last point that the Chinese and indeed, the rest of the world, don’t seem to understand; he isn’t just a political or religious figure. The Dalai Lamas have been part of the very DNA of Tibetans since the sixteenth century. Many met their ends early (including the Sixth Dalai Lama who is sometimes called "the People’s Dalai Lama" for his independent spirit and his excursions into Lhasa to spend time among the people; he refused full ordination, was a great poet and architect and withal, probably would have been happier to not be Dalai Lama), but all were loved deeply. Despite his part in forced conversions of Kagyu and Nyingma to the Gelug sect, the Fifth Dalai Lama is still loved as the unifier of Tibet during a particularly fractious period of Tibetan history and is honored and regarded as the Great Fifth. Similarly, despite his antipathy to the practice of Dolgyal, I’d say that even within that sect, Tibetans cannot deny their love or at least respect of the current Fourteenth Dalai Lama.

It doesn’t do any good to apply rational critical reasoning to this. The Dalai Lama isn’t just an institution, the Dalai Lama is part of the social and private fabric of every Tibetan alive. It’s not even accurate to look for equivalents in other cultures. The closest the U.S. might come would be, who? Maybe Abraham Lincoln? For Asia, perhaps the emperors of dynastic China and Japan held similar positions in the hearts and minds of the people, but I don’t always get that impression. Again, the people who come most readily to mind are Gandhi and Mandela. Then there’s a third facet to the Dalai Lama as perceived by the rest of the world.

My friend Pasang once opined that he felt that His Holiness was more of a universal man; he told me that he felt Thich Nhat Hanh had more Buddhist followers and that His Holiness appealed to more non-Buddhists because he was beyond any limited perspective. I think there’s a great deal of truth to this. Indeed, within his own sect, I understand there are doctrinal arguments about him as a Buddhist scholar (though, come on, he got his geshe degree while he was still a very young man, something that’s almost unheard of since it’s the equivalent of a Ph.D in the west and in many ways, more grueling!) but something tells me that if he was to enter a debate, his opponents would defer to him; I’m still not sure if the whole "science vs. abhidharma" stance agrees with the traditionalists (in fact, I rather doubt it.) The point is, many people who have never read a sutra are enamoured of him. And they are all over the world.

After the First Dalai Lama, who passed in his 83rd year, Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama is the longest lived. It is my hope that he remains in this world for all of us for, well, forever? This of course, would negate the truth of impermanent, but with his presence, there is a definite sense that love can guide us wisely.

On July 6, Kundun (the Presence) will have completed 80 transits around the sun with sentient beings. If you feel so inclined, here is a long life prayer if you’d like to celebrate this journey:

GANG RI RA WE KOR WAI ZHING KHAM DIR

In this pure realm, surrounded by snow moutains,

PEN DANG DE WA MA LU JUNG WAI NE

Is the source of complete happiness and benefit.

CHEN RE ZIG WA TEN DZIN GYAM TSO YI

Avalokiteshvara, Tendzin Gyamtso,

ZHAB PE SI TAI BAR DU TEN GYUR CHIK

May you stand firm until the end of existence.

If you’d like to download the prayer with an alternative translation and the Tibetan u-chen script, it’s available here at the Tibetan Language Institute: http://www.tibetanlanguage.org/images/Free_Study_Aids/PDFs/LongLife.pdf.

You could check http://www.dalailama.com/ for a wealth of his teachings, videos and more. Best of all, you and I can put these teachings into practice.

That said, please join me in wishing a Happy Birthday and Long Life to His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama!

Kundun la ku tsering dang kyekar nyin tashi delek!

 

 

 

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Nepal and giving: my whys and what you can do

Shantideva wrote to the effect that if there is a situation about which you can do nothing, then why worry? Conversely, if there's a situation about which you can do something, why worry?

All too often, it's too easy to give in and give up to pathos and tragic sentimentality or despair. Yes, the world is full of tragedy, pain, and misery. But we have choices about what we can do to ease suffering at our disposal relative to our capacity. People all too often throw up their hands and cry about what they can't do due to lack of funds, or time, or just plain confusion about what they can do. They will work themselves into frenzies of sadness and do nothing or join the chorus of how shitty the world is. I had a pretty bout of that myself a couple of weeks ago, but it was motivated less by the world than by my focussing on a prickly situation in my own life and spending far too much time reading up on Honduras and reflecting on Baltimore. It's a rare occurrence for me to turn nihilist like that and it's not very much more than skin deep, but it's there from time to time.

And then, I woke up at six-thirty on Saturday morning a week ago to check my email. It is odd that each time I feel a compulsion to check my email on a day off, early in the morning, it results in bad news. This time, it was the earthquake in Nepal. I have a few friends from Nepal, and a number of connections witht the area, but my first concern was how this affected my bahin, my sister Meena and her kids at Bal Sarathi, the home and school for some three hindered abandoned children of which she has been the guiding force for decades.

Over the day, my heart sank by and by. On the other hand, it was clear what needed to be done. We met at Meena's, prayed, had dinner and resolved to raise funds for Bal Sarathi. Over the course of the evening, I was struck by two things.

One, that which requires our presence, our attention, and our engagement finds us. When I was in India, I knew I had something more to do than hang out, go on retreat and study. I met Kapil and Mahendra, my brothers, whose non-profit has made a huge difference in the village of Choraha, near Bodhgaya. Working with and for them to help keep the LBWS going is my on-going project. Similarly, when I signed up for Meena didi's Hindi class, something much richer came from that.

I had no idea of Meena's experience, her depth of humanity. Nor what she has accomplished. Bal Sarathi isn't just a NGO she started to take care of homeless children. Bal Sarathi is Meena and these are her children.

The second thing that occurred to me is how and why we get involved in this, not that. Over the years, I've volunteered for a variety of causes ranging from the environment to nuclear disarmament, but the bulk of my work has circled back South Asia. I love Latin America and had my druthers, I would move south in a heartbeat. Honduras and Guatemala are two countries I feel are owed special attention and I've nots tinted in critiquing the havoc that U.S. foreign policy has created in those countries and all across Latin America.

I often wonder if I come back to more visible support for India, Tibet, and Nepal because I have a different connection in one sense and no connection in another.

The first sense is my love and engagement with Hinduism, Buddhism, and Daoism. This began at an early age. Disaffected with our so-called Christian nation's actions during the Vietnam war, I questioned how it was that people call themselves Christians and then unleash napalm and worse on people who have done no wrong except ask to be left alone and follow their own path. Closer to home, I had to question why we routinely killed people like Martin Luther King and a couple of guys who sounded like they were okay guys. And by "we", I mean We because even at a young age, I got that blood is on all our hands. We kill directly, we kill indirectly, by what we buy, consume, and produce. We kill by our system of appropriation, cultural, capital, and political.

I knew something else at an early age. We are responsible because we can vote. But we vote poorly or not at all. Or we vote for stumble bums who reflect who we are at the moment or extremely smart people who kind of look like what we'd like to be. But in any event, I also saw directly, that we are not as good as our ideals. Often, our ideals are themselves perverse.

I started looking at what the rest of the world believed, unpacking as best I could, these different religions and philosophies. These last loaded words don't mean the same in some cultures as they do in ours. The definition of religion in other, more traditional (for lack of a better term and time) cultures is a bit different or a lot different from how European and U.S. hermeneutics interprets them.

After years of study and middling practice, association and affiliation, I discovered that the personal is the political. I supported the Tibetan cause, I thought, less because of Buddhist affiliation than hating what the Chinese were doing to the Tibetans. I fell into Tibetan Mahayana ass-backward and that made it more personal. And so on.

In any case, I still continued to volunteer and contribute to other "areas of interest" and realized that I was spreading myself thin.does it make sense to consult, donate and/or serve on boards for a small set of diverse causes or start focusing on a more concentrated area of thematically commonality? I opted for the latter. For a while. For now.

Perhaps you reading this, are at a similar crossroad?

Whether that's the case or not, the situation in Kathmandu is critical. Following are some resources and ideas. But first and foremost is an email sent to Meena from one of the teachers at Bal Sarathi:

"SAI RAM

MEENA DIJJU

We have NO LIFE NO HOME NO FUTURE IT is a big shame.

Bal Sarathi children are very very sick, Afraid .NO FOOD, NO WATER ,NO Nothing getting for us , Most of them are crying, I am doing my best to comfort all . But I am also a simple human being. Most of our teacher are missing. Children are every asking for food.

Please help. You are our MOTHER , You have the power of protection and love.

WE need NEW HOME as soon as possible . I found a place but very different and expensive, Let’s build our own HOME. Please make us believe in Good that we will have OUR OWN HOME. Children need safe and secure place. You are coming to us. Please live together in Tent and we all build HOME together for this homeless children. Need YOU Please Please Pray harder for HOME.

Always Always waiting for your love and blessing . You are our Life . People like you in the world. You are every one’s life. Mala and all the children.

Dearest and most Respected our mother, Meena dijju sai ram,,

Always yours

Mala bahini"

Perhaps that makes the case better than anything else I can write.

There are so many issues at hand. There's the bumping up of prices for goods in country, the government taxing goods coming into the country for aid. Hell, the Nepalese government is seizing funds earmarked for non-profit support. There's the anarchy of what's going on on the ground.

Ideally, supporting groups developed in Nepal by Nepalese are the best since they can navigate the corruption and have their own supply chains. Outside agencies are stymied by the corruption of distribution along the lines. This is emphatically not to say that UNICEF, Medicins sans Frontieres or the Red Cross and the like shouldn't be supported. Of course, they should, but your dollar will go further more immediately supporting regional/local groups circumventing th government. Eventually, this will change. I believe it. For now, however, this is the best/most expedient route. With Nepal, particularly, aid distribution has met with varying levels of interference.

Following are Facebook pages for Bal Sarathi and a link to support via GoFundMe and contact information from Meena. Further down are some other worthy organizations to consider supporting.

About Bal Sarathi:

https://www.facebook.com/balsarathinepal?fref=ts

https://www.facebook.com/balsarathifriends

http://www.balsarathi.org.np/

GoFundMe: http://www.gofundme.com/balsarathinepal

Also, since Bal Sarathi isn't a 501(c)(3), in recognition that some people like to make tax-deductible donations, Pastor Norman David at Christ Lutheran Church of Belmont, MA will accept checks made out to the church on behalf of Bal Sarathi.

Checks should be made payable to "CELC" with either "for Nepal children" or "Bal Sarathi" in the memo line and may be overnighted/snailmailed to: Christ Lutheran Church, 597 Belmont Street, Belmont, MA 02478.

Message Meena directly via Facebook/send a friend request. She's one of the greatest hearts I've encountered. You may have additional ideas to share with her and she'd like to hear them. If you would like to send funds directly to her, I'm sure she'd love to hear from you. Again, message her or send a friend request.

Read this to get a sense of perspective of how to proceed with this or any other disaster: http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2015/04/28/402842890/what-you-need-to-know-before-donating-to-earthquake-relief-for-nepal

Other organizations (with ratings): http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=1888#.VUU89GK9KSM

What the government is doing and impact:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/nepal/11577706/Nepal-aid-donors-may-halt-fundraising-amid-fears-government-will-seize-donations.html

http://www.ekantipur.com/2015/05/01/top-story/govt-to-take-all-bank-deposits-meant-for-disaster-relief/404711.html

Images from Bal Sarathi:

For the record, the building that housed, provided care and was the school for these children, no longer stands.

Nor, it should be said, does Meena's home. It, too, has been reduced to rubble.

 

 

 

 

 

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The Renaissance, the Reformer, and the Painter

Sandro Botticelli has always fascinated me, less as a seminal painter (which he is), than as a unique example of a great artist who fell under the sway of a particularly powerful form of religious fundamentalism. My understanding is limited because, honestly, I don’t know much about Savonarola and even Botticelli.

I’m aware that Fra Girolamo Savonarola had been disciplined by the Pope for aligning with the French and prophesying the invasion of Florence to Charles, King of France. Apparently, Florence was to be a new Jerusalem and I get the impression that if Savonarola was a reformist of the harshest order (he was as antisecular as I think you can get), he may possibly been driven by his own sense of realpolitik. I wish I did know more because it fascinates me that he was charismatic enough to draw a significant number of followers and be perceived as a threat by both Rome and the Medici.

Additionally, his is an object lesson that regardless of the advances made in education, technology, science and the arts, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for spiritual malaise or even fear (on the part of the faithful) of persecution. Both can be fuel for what we see currently in the so-called "culture wars" between fundamentalism of various stripes and the secular structures in place in education, technology, the sciences and the arts and how these differences have profound effect on politics and policy.

I would argue that despite their primitive rhetoric and appeal to millenarian/apocalyptic visions, many of these charismatic leaders aren’t necessarily stupid. Certainly, they seem remarkably uneducated, uninterested in, if not outright hostile to science and technological advances, but they know how to play politics and have carved out extremely dug-in positions among the conservative right. The reasons are numerous and this isn’t what I’m interested in addressing right here.

What I am interested in looking at are two paintings at the Fogg on display at the Harvard Art Museums. One is a Madonna and Child from 1490, if memory serves. The other is a crucifixion from 1500 or 1510. The one predates his involvement with Savonarola (but not his brother’s who was more under the reformer’s influence than Sandro); the other was painted afterward and there’s a note that Botticelli may have painted the crucifixion for his own use. I find them both amazing works and I think I may be one of the few who find Botticelli’s post-conversion work as compelling in its own way as his earlier, more sensuous oeuvre.

In the Madonna and Child, we see this handling of the brush and vision of one of those pristine Botticellian faces on par with his Venus or La Primavera. It’s a tour de force of surface, color and movement.

The crucifixion, by contrast, is raw and expressionist in a way not often seen from someone whose work was typically much more studied and composed.

It’s a sketch, to be sure, but it’s almost Germanic in composition and attack. The angel in the lower right looks almost as tortured as Christ on the cross and the city in the background (Florence as the New Jerusalem) shimmers like a fever dream.What intrigues me is the idea that he might have painted this for his own use. Perhaps as his own reminder of the End Times? Was there something in Savonarola’s teachings that privileged or prioritized the smokey, burning of this vision of a dawn of a new age? Whatever it might be doctrinally, the very fact this exists shows its precedence in Botticelli’s life.

But the first reaction I had to it was that this vision didn’t bring him peace.It’s an agitated, disturbing counterpoint to his Madonna, serene in her place as the Mother of God, but not necessarily divorced from the world. The natural world in Sandro’s pre-Savonarolan work is thriving and alive and embraced and embracing. The flip side is a work like the crucifixion, which admittedly comes with the territory, but there’s a darkness that shocks in the composition. It begs contemplation; you can feel the despair the artist feels at the end of all he’s known up to this point.

Botticelli didn’t live much longer. It’s said that he burned a number of his works in a bonfire along with others who were heeding Savonarola’s call to turn their backs on the vanity of the world.

They are remarkable works and show a studied poeticism that remains with the artist in his later years.I wonder, though: what would the younger Botticelli’s interpretation of Dante look like? Or would it take an artist of his caliber to have his soul forged by reformer’s fire and brought to the depths to begin to essay the Alighierian depths (and heights)? And at the end of this contemplation, I’m reminded me that Savonarola was eventually excommunicated, hung and burned.

I want to be sure that I’m not dismissing him or writing him off. Pico della Mirandola thought pretty highly of Savonarola’s intellect and debates skills (Machiavelli didn’t think much of him, at all), and in any event, he remains a figure of influence in the Renaissance. It would be a whole other area of pursuit to examine the impact of these movements on the sociopolitical dimensions of the time. I believe we could learn much from them.

Postscript, December 7. After having spent a little more time reviewing the period and poring over a few papers, I want to return to the principals and question my own assumptions about the time, the intersection of faith and politics, and look a little more deeply about how we are danced with similar challenges as beset early sixteenth century Florence.

 

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So-Jong

གསོ་སྦྱོང་
Sojong (Wyl. gso sbyong; Skt. poṣadha; Pal. uposatha) 'Healing and Purification' — the bimonthly practice of confession observed by members of the monastic community. On sojong days the observance of the eight vows of sojong or the practice of Narak Kong Shak are recommended.
from the Rigpa Shedra Wiki
ཡོཾ་ཡ་མི་དྷེ་ཝ་ཧྲིཿ
I'm not a monastic, and while I feel the effects of my actions sooner than I'd sometimes like, I have to confess that I killed another being. Sure, it was an accident, but if we are to be genuinely aware of our actions and their ramifications, in small things as well as great, perhaps an acknowledgement to be more aware is in order
Thus, I offer this by way of purification and as a genuine wish that if there is a continuity of consciousness that emerges cyclically through form after form, then may the mouse being - whose lesson in care I take to heart - re-emerges soon in enlightenment and supreme well-being. I extend this wish to all beings, but when you are the gateway out of this life, it's best, I think, if you assume responsibility, however "accidental" the action may appear.
What follows is a kind of summing up of the event surrounding the main action and both a confession and a prayer. It can be enlarged to reflect on the numerous instances where we participate unwittingly in catastrophe, of the innumerable moments of sleep that we think are wakefulness, and the lack of compassion we hold for others in the world (well, I don't know about you, but I fall short of the mark more often than I'd care to admit.)

ཡོཾ་
I explained to my colleagues that you and your family and others of your species only want to be happy.
My colleagues found that humorous. All they could see was a small, wretched carrier of disease.

ཡ་
From a child, I was taught a reverence for all life, from the smallest to the greatest. Microbe to whale, all sentient beings only want happiness.
མི་
Do you people really believe that just because a paramecium or a cockroach (or a mouse, for that matter) doesn't have a nervous system like a human's that they are incapable of wanting to find happiness? Of wanting to fulfill their nature?

དྷེ་
They told me they caught you and trapped you! I said I would take you and free you back into the wild (well, at least the fens.)
WAH! ཝ་(1)
You were under a trash can, a recycling bin

more accurately. I slid the cardboard between the bin and the floor and felt your body sandwich between them. I felt the "something wrong" of your body-self departing.

While it might be true ultimately that there is no arising and no cessation, appearances are to the contrary. Like the Old Fox Monk(2), while recognizing that, I am not blind to cause and effect.

Am I an agent for your ripening karma? Or is this a seed that will come to fruition in my continuum?
For my self - a construct, a fiction - I do not care. All that matters is your liberation, little mouse friend; may you be liberated. May you awaken in Amitabha's Pure Land.

ཧྲིཿ

Footnotes

1. Wah. It's a pun, of sorts. A cry of "alas", but also, ཝ་ is pronounced "wa" or "wah", I suppose.

2. This refers to the second case in the Wumenguan/Mumonkan/Gateless Gate of Chan/Zen Buddhism.

Case 2 Hyakujõ's Fox 二　百丈野狐

百丈和尚、凡參次、有一老人常隨衆聽法。

When Hyakujõ Oshõ delivered a certain series of sermons, an old man always followed the monks to the main hall and listened to him.

衆人退、老人亦退。

When the monks left the hall, the old man would also leave.

忽一日不退。師遂問、面前立者復是何人。

One day, however, he remained behind, and Hyakujõ asked him, "Who are you, standing here before me?"

老人云、諾。

The old man replied.

某甲非人也。

"I am not a human being.

於過去迦葉佛時曾住此山。

In the old days of Kashyapa Buddha, I was a head monk, living here on this mountain.

因學人問、大修行底人還落因果也無。

One day a student asked me, 'Does a man of enlightenment fall under the yoke of causation or not?'

某甲對云、不落因果。

I answered, 'No, he does not.'

五百生墮野狐身。

Since then I have been doomed to undergo five hundred rebirths as a fox.

今請、和尚代一轉語貴脱野狐。

I beg you now to give the turning word to release me from my life as a fox.

遂問、大修行底人、還落因果也無。

Tell me, does a man of enlightenment fall under the yoke of causation or not?"

師云、不昧因果。

Hyakujõ answered, "He does not ignore causation."

老人於言下大悟。

No sooner had the old man heard these words than he was enlightened.

作禮云、某甲、已脱野狐身住在山後。

Making his bows, he said, "I am emancipated from my life as a fox. I shall remain on this mountain.

敢告和尚。 乞、依亡僧事例。

I have a favor to ask of you: would you please bury my body as that of a dead monk."

師、令維那白槌告衆、食後送亡僧。

Hyakujõ had the director of the monks strike with the gavel and inform everyone that after the midday meal there would be a funeral service for a dead monk.

大衆言議、一衆皆安、涅槃堂又無人病。何故如是。

The monks wondered at this, saying, "Everyone is in good health; nobody is in the sick ward. What does this mean?"

食後只見師領衆至山後嵒下、以杖挑出一死野狐、乃依火葬。

After the meal Hyakujõ led the monks to the foot of a rock on the far side of the mountain and with his staff poked out the dead body of a fox and performed the ceremony of cremation.

師、至晩上堂、擧前因縁。

That evening he ascended the rostrum and told the monks the whole story.

黄蘗便問、古人錯祗對一轉語、墮五百生野狐身、轉轉不錯合作箇甚麼。

Õbaku thereupon asked him, "The old man gave the wrong answer and was doomed to be a fox for five hundred rebirths. Now, suppose he had given the right answer, what would have happened then?"

師云、近前來與伊道。

Hyakujõ said, "You come here to me, and I will tell you."

黄蘗遂近前、與師一掌。

Õbaku went up to Hyakujõ and boxed his ears.

師拍手笑云、將謂、胡鬚赤。 更有赤鬚胡。

Hyakujõ clapped his hands with a laugh and exclaimed, "I was thinking that the barbarian had a red beard, but now I see before me the red-bearded barbarian himself."

Mumon's Comment

無門曰、不落因果、爲甚墮野狐。

Not falling under causation: how could this make the monk a fox?

不昧因果、爲甚脱野狐。

Not ignoring causation: how could this make the old man emancipated?

若向者裏著得一隻眼、便知得前百丈贏得風流五百生。

If you come to understand this, you will realize how old Hyakujõ would have enjoyed five hundred rebirths as a fox.

Mumon's Verse 頌曰

不落不昧 Not falling, not ignoring:

兩采一賽 Two faces of one die.

不昧不落 Not ignoring, not falling:

千錯萬錯 A thousand errors, a million mistakes.

Source: http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/zen/mumonkan.htm

Notes

The last picture is Buddha Amitabha, the Buddha of Infinite Light who resides in the Pure Realm of Sukhavati (Tibetan, Dewachen.) The facing page is the Prayer for Rebirth in Sukhavati which uses the description of that realm from the Sukhavati sutras for the visualization. See below for the prayer transcribed and translated.

ཡོཾ་ཡ་མི་དྷེ་ཝ་ཧྲིཿ is Buddha Amitabha's mantra. Om-ah-mi-deh-wa-rhi, more or less.

Short Sukhavati Prayer

Transcription:

EMAHO

No-tsar sang-gyä nang-wa ta-yä dangyä-su jo-wo tug-je chen-po dangyön-du sem-pa tug-chen tob-nam-lasang-gyä chang-sem pag-me kor-gi-kor.De-kyi no-tsar pag-du me-pa-yide-wa-chen-she-cha-wä shin-kam-derdag-ni di-nä tse-pö-jur-ma-tagkye-wa shen-kyi bar-ma chö-pa-ru.De-ru kye-nä nang-tä shäl-tong shogde-kä dag-ki mön-lam tab-pa-dichog-chu’i sang-gyä chang-sem tam-chä-kyigeg-me trub-par chin-ji-lab-tu-sol.

TAYATA BENTSA DRI AWA BODHA NA YE SOHA

Translation:

EMAHO The wondrous Buddha of Infinite Light. To his right is the Lord of Great Compassion (Chenrezig), and to his left stands the Bodhisattva of Great Power (Vajrapani). All are surrounded by countless Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. There is miraculous, immeasurable happiness and joy in the Buddha field called Dewachen. Instantly, when I pass from this life, without taking another birth, may I be reborn in Dewachen and see Amitabha’s face. Having made this aspiration prayer, by all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of the ten directions, may I be blessed with unhindered accomplishment.

TAYATA BENTSA DRI AWA BODHA NA YE SOHA

This and other prayers and texts can be found at Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche's website: www.rinpoche.com

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Follow-up

Not much to write, except that it's been a wonderful day, a good day, and one of hope, if not promise.

Here's the NY Times' recap: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/nyregion/new-york-city-climate-change-march.html?_r=0.

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Scenes from a march

These are just random notes from today and some pics. I'm beat, but it's a good beat!

Running late, but at 12:22, still in the 70s. Not much movement, but chatted with a Raging Granny.

An hour later, we began moving! At 1:30, we're up to 70th!

Strangely moved. There is an abiding poignance in the presence of a throng in support of an aim like this.

 

Oh, damn. Singing "This Land is Your Land". I'll be bawling like a baby in a second.

 

 

Made it to the end! Now to head back uptown and catch my bus back (and 40 winks).

 

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Sources on Climate Change and Environmental Pollution

Before I head out, here is some reading:

Climate change:

http://www.ipcc.ch/

http://climate.nasa.gov/

http://epa.gov/climatechange/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/science/earth/push-for-new-pact-on-climate-change-is-plagued-by-old-divide-of-wealth.html?_r=0

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/09/how-to-talk-about-climate-change-so-people-will-listen/375067/

Water Pollution:

Oil spills

http://www.itopf.com/knowledge-resources/documents-guides/environmental-effects/

http://oils.gpa.unep.org/facts/oilspills.htm

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_spills

Add one more to that: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/19/wyoming-oil-spills_n_5850060.html?ir=Green

Ocean pollution

http://marinebio.org/oceans/ocean-dumping/

http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/critical-issues-marine-pollution/

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_pollution

River ways, estuaries, aquifers

http://www.environmental-expert.com/water-wastewater/water-resources/articles/keyword-river-pollution-22117

http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/w/water_pollution.htm

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/pollution/

Air pollution

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/pollution-overview/

http://www.who.int/topics/air_pollution/en/

http://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/Air_Pollution_Statistics

 

...and more to come.

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Why I'm marching tomorrow

En route to New York City.

Tomorrow is the People's Climate March. It does not exhilarate me that I will be walking with a huge throng of humanity with some dim hope that world leaders will take note and take steps to reverse the damage done and continuing to be done to the environment. If anything, I liken this to a funeral march for the human race and the other species we're destroying and have destroyed.

My feelings are conflicted at several different levels. An optimist by nature, I find my view of humanity grows dimmer over time. We fight over religion, politics, and bullshit. We put everything into the context of socio-economics or political might and never give a thought to the idea that nature really doesn't give a shit for our political parties or nonsensical religious leanings nor our mutual hatred for one another.

Do I think we're doomed? A not insignificant part of me feels that a large amount of the human family is bound for extinction and not unreasonably so. Our religions have not saved us and will not. Religion is by it's very nature exclusive, despite what adherents of this or that group may say. God may love each of His children infinitely, but his kids are dumber than dirt. They shit in their bed and blame the neighbors. My religion accepts everyone, they say, who accepts my savior, this text, that group of tenets; as for everyone else? They're just a bunch of poor saps who are to be pitied because they haven't found, and therefore cannot share in, this remarkable vision and bliss. I don't think Nature cares.

Or this conservative political party is all about maximizing profits, free enterprise, and making sure the rest of the country, if not the world, is on the same page. That other party wants to create a welfare state and hates freedom! Et cetera, ad nauseum. Again, I don't think Nature gives two shits.

Well, those people over there are kind of stupid. They might be nice, but they're awfully slow to adopt our ways. Someone needs to show them the right way to do things. Let's invade them and show them real civilization! At this point, I'd wipe humanity out with a tsunami. However, oddly, Nature isn't vengeful. We are the ones who want to mold the world, the universe into our image. And that comes at a cost.

We've known for decades that humanity is, has been at a tipping point. Look to the writings of Rachel Carson, John Muir, and others. Bucky Fuller extended a sliver of hope in his "Utopia or Oblivion"; he posited, in 1969, that we still had a sliver of time in which to transition from killingry and a fear-based approach to existence and relations to livingry and a longing-based approach out of a shared interest in survival. Fuller was much more optimistic than I.

The sad point is that the human race is stupid. I wish I could say that I'm not, but I am, too! My carbon footprint might be close to nil, but it hasn't always been nor will it always be. But it's not just that I'm thinking about. I'm thinking of how stupid I've been, how insensitive, how selfish, throughout my life. I might be less so now, but perhaps that's only in degree and kind. Our issues began when we prioritized the right of us over them, and by extension, me over you.

So give up any pretense by continuing down this path? I don't think so. Even if we are doomed by our myopia and retardation of species-size order, once we as individuals recognize that we can turn ourselves around (a literal revolution), then we have a moral imperative to share this with others that maybe there might be an alternative to the downward spiral and the possibility of freeing up space for others to grow and flourish where we will not or cannot.

At the same time, while living solely a "virtuous" (and I'm using the term in its original meaning; as with "te" in the Chinese "Tao te Ching", virtue connotes ability or power to do and implied in that we can append the phrase "what is appropriate") life is admirable, there is a genuine necessity to share with others and support others who need the support and who, in the face of monumental catastrophe will need it. I'm not marching because I think politicians and so-called leaders will do anything. I'm marching because solidarity may just help us survive in other ways, perhaps in even more critical ways that are not so easily defined or given to articulation.

If there are enough people engaged in a movement, a movement-toward or forward, to an aim, then there's a chance that others may be inspired to whatever degree to experiment and try it out. I say this warily, since we are stupid and because more often than not, we go to war or oppress one another when we start movements. Maybe it's better to just leave this at the level of a huge experiment in which maybe people will try to make room for alternatives to the usual group think that tends to overrun our foggy minds and confused hearts.

I'm not interested in a Buddhist solution, by the way. Buddhists can be just as thick, violent, and myopic as all others. I say this because I get called a Buddhist a lot and I suppose technically, I am one; however, I don't want to be an "-ist" of any stripe, nor do I want to represent a group, nor do I necessarily have a lot of use for institutions that privilege their perspective over others, and if you think Buddhists don't do that, think again. My note that Buddhists can be just as violent? Look at examples from Buddhist countries across their histories. Yes, this includes Tibet. If you're interested in contemporary history, look no farther than Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

I don't actually know that we have any solutions. Yes, yes, if we pray and meditate hard enough, God will supply the answer, but we've been aware of the answers for at least a century. Don't over-reproduce, don't put more stress on farmland than the ecosystem can sustain (not just in terms of monocultural agriculture, subsistence farming, but also planting and harvesting what is appropriate to the climate, soil, and regional environment and culture), don't dump poison into aquifers and waterways, don't fill the air with particulate matter lungs can't handle.

 

 

We say we didn't know any better. A load of bullshit, if there ever was one. Humans have exploited one another for as long as there have been humans. We've damaged each other and laid waste to land, water, and air throughout history and as the population has exploded, that damage has grown in kind and degree of intensity. And no, there never was a Golden Age of peace and prosperity in this world. We've had sequential permutations of oppression and exploitation since day two, most likely.

Why do I continue to see the best in others despite this? Because individually we aren't monolithically hopeless. I often hear from westerners how we should be more like traditional communities that have more communal based societies where the collective good is the supreme goal. This is simplistic and we've seen that the development of communities is no more a panacea than touting the supremacy of the individual over all. It misses out on the messiness that communities are groups of individuals who share a goal or set of values, beliefs, ideals.

Yes, a community may be mostly pacific, like a monastery. Or that same community may take up arms to forcibly convert others who don't share the same salvafic goal. I'm not against community, I just don't like automatic assertions that one approach fits all. It may be that if solutions are to be enacted to meet the myriad crises of climate change, a multifaceted and cross-disciplinary set of solutions will have to happen.

I'll be posting more throughout the next couple of days on this blog, on Facebook. I'll be publishing pictures from the march and references people can use as food for thought.

 

 

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