dharmic journey

Introduction to Gautama the Buddha

2006-12-03T12:11:00.000+08:00

Siddartha Gautama (563-480 BC) was born as a prince in a small state in northern India in what is now Nepal. According to legend, several soothsayers predicted that if he stayed home he would become a universal king, but if he left he would become a Buddha. His mother died after one week, and Siddartha was brought up by her sister. His father surrounded him with every luxury. At the age of 16 Siddartha married Yasodhara, his cousin of the same age, and spent his time in the pleasure gardens of the palace.

When Gautama was 29 he saw the four signs which led to his renunciation of the world---first, an old person, then a sick person, then a corpse being carried to a funeral, and finally a begging monk in a yellow robe. Gautama began to contemplate the meaning of life with its inevitable decay, suffering, and death; like the monk he too must find a solution to these problems. Therefore he decided to renounce everything, and he left the palace immediately after the birth of his first son.

For a while he sought enlightenment by mortifying the flesh; fasting and eating only one seed a day, he became so thin that his bones stuck out. Weak from hunger, he fainted and almost died. Then he decided that this was not the way to enlightenment. He began to beg for food and concentrated on meditation. When he gave up the austerities, his five companions in spiritual aspiration left him in disgust.

One day when he was 35 he sat under a banyan tree with the resolve not to get up until he was enlightened. Perceiving that Siddartha wanted to pass beyond his control, the tempter Mara and his armies attacked him in various ways, but each time Gautama concentrated on the ten perfections (charity, morality, renunciation, wisdom, effort, patience, truth, determination, universal love, and equanimity) and received divine protection. Mara tried to persuade him to give up his struggle and live. However, Gautama identified the ten armies of Mara as follows: lust, dislike for the spiritual, hunger and thirst, craving, laziness, cowardice, doubt, inflexibility, glamour, and finally exalting oneself while despising others. Gautama said that by conquering these one could attain bliss and that he would rather die than be defeated. Mara retired, and Gautama went into deeper meditation, realizing his former lifetimes, becoming clairvoyant, and intuiting the psychological insights that became his principal teachings.

At first people did not know what to call him and asked him if he was a god, a devil, an angel, a person or what. Gautama replied simply, "I am awake." Thus he became known as the Buddha, which means the awakened one or the enlightened one.

The first sermon included here are the words of the Buddha when he spoke in the deer park at Benares as recorded in the SAMYUTTA-NIKAYA V:420, one of the collections of the SUTTA PITAKA, the largest of the "three baskets" of early Buddhist texts. Hearing this brief discourse, the five previous companions, who were at first skeptical of Buddha's new claims, were convinced and became the first five "perfected ones" in his order.

The order of monks or disciples grew, and soon the Buddha was sending out 60 of them in different directions to spread the teachings. The Buddha fulfilled his promise to return to talk with King Bimbisara after his enlightenment, and he was converted also. Although his father, King Suddhodana, did not like the idea of the Buddha begging for food, he accepted it, and many of his relatives became followers as well. Some of the wealthy built monasteries for the order.

Ananda, the Buddha's cousin and closest disciple, pleaded that women be allowed to join the order, and finally the order of nuns was established. Another cousin, Devadatta, wanted to become the Buddha's successor; but when he was rejected, he tried three times to kill Gautama but failed. Then Devadatta tried to split the order. However, two of the greatest disciples, Sariputta and Moggallana, were able to persuade those who had followed him to return to the Buddha. Devadatta became ill, and as he was dying the Buddha forgave him.

When he was about 80 years old the Buddha became seriously ill himself, but felt that he should not die until he had prepared the order for his departure. Thus he fought off the illness. Ananda asked for instructions, but the Buddha said that he had not presented "the closed fist of the teacher." In other words, he had not held back any of the teachings. Not even Sariputta nor Moggallana were to be his successor; rather everything was to be decided by majority vote. He suggested that they take refuge in the teachings, but they might abolish minor rules if they wished.

Finally the Buddha instructed a friend named Cunda to prepare him a meal, which was either pork or mushrooms trodden by pigs; the leftovers were to be buried, and the other monks were to be given something else. Soon after eating this meal, the Buddha became very sick with violent pains. The Buddha declared that Cunda was to be honored as equal to the one who had given him the last meal before his enlightenment. Finally he asked the monks three times if they had any questions, but none of them spoke. Then the Buddha said his last words, "Transient are all conditioned things. Work out your salvation with diligence." The body of Gautama was cremated a week later, and an argument over the relics of the Buddha was settled peacefully by dividing them into eight portions.

The Buddha's First Sermon

English version by Sanderson Beck

These two extremes, monks, are not to be practiced
by one who has gone forth from the world.
What are the two?

That joined with the passions and luxury---
low, vulgar, common, ignoble, and useless,
and that joined with self-torture---
painful, ignoble, and useless.

Avoiding these two extremes the one who has thus come
has gained the enlightenment of the middle path,
which produces insight and knowledge,
and leads to peace, wisdom, enlightenment, and nirvana.

And what, monks, is the middle path, by which
the one who has thus come has gained enlightenment,
which produces knowledge and insight,
and leads to peace, wisdom, enlightenment, and nirvana?

This is the noble eightfold way, namely,
correct understanding, correct intention,
correct speech, correct action, correct livelihood,
correct attention, correct concentration,
and correct meditation.

This, monks, is the middle path, by which
the one who has thus come has gained enlightenment,
which produces insight and knowledge,
and leads to peace, wisdom, enlightenment, and nirvana.

Now this, monks, is the noble truth of pain:
birth is painful; old age is painful;
sickness is painful; death is painful;
sorrow, lamentation, dejection, and despair are painful.
Contact with unpleasant things is painful;
not getting what one wishes is painful.

In short the five groups of grasping are painful.

Now this, monks, is the noble truth of the cause of pain:
the craving, which leads to rebirth,
combined with pleasure and lust,
finding pleasure here and there,
namely the craving for passion,
the craving for existence,
and the craving for non-existence.

Now this, monks, is the noble truth
of the cessation of pain:
the cessation without a remainder of craving,
the abandonment, forsaking, release, and non-attachment.

Now this, monks, is the noble truth
of the way that leads to the cessation of pain:
this is the noble eightfold way, namely,
correct understanding, correct intention,
correct speech, correct action, correct livelihood,
correct attention, correct concentration,
and correct meditation.

"This is the noble truth of pain":
Thus, monks, among doctrines unheard before,
in me insight, wisdom, knowledge, and light arose.

"This noble truth of pain must be comprehended."
Thus, monks, among doctrines unheard before,
in me insight, wisdom, knowledge, and light arose.

"It has been comprehended."
Thus, monks, among doctrines unheard before,
in me insight, wisdom, knowledge, and light arose.

"This is the noble truth of the cause of pain":
Thus, monks, among doctrines unheard before,
in me insight, wisdom, knowledge, and light arose.

"The cause of pain must be abandoned."
Thus, monks, among doctrines unheard before,
in me insight, wisdom, knowledge, and light arose.

"It has been abandoned."
Thus, monks, among doctrines unheard before,
in me insight, wisdom, knowledge, and light arose.

"This is the noble truth of the cessation of pain":
Thus, monks, among doctrines unheard before,
in me insight, wisdom, knowledge, and light arose.

"The cessation of pain must be realized."
Thus, monks, among doctrines unheard before,
in me insight, wisdom, knowledge, and light arose.

"It has been realized."
Thus, monks, among doctrines unheard before,
in me insight, wisdom, knowledge, and light arose.

"This is the noble truth
of the way that leads to the cessation of pain":
Thus, monks, among doctrines unheard before,
in me insight, wisdom, knowledge, and light arose.

"The way must be practiced."
Thus, monks, among doctrines unheard before,
in me insight, wisdom, knowledge, and light arose.

"It has been practiced."
Thus, monks, among doctrines unheard before,
in me insight, wisdom, knowledge, and light arose.

As long as in these four noble truths
my due knowledge and insight
with the three sections and twelve divisions
was not well purified, even so long, monks,
in the world with its gods, Mara, Brahma,
its beings with ascetics, priests, gods, and men,
I had not attained the highest complete enlightenment.

This I recognized.

And when, monks, in these four noble truths
my due knowledge and insight
with its three sections and twelve divisions
was well purified, then monks,
in the world with its gods, Mara, Brahma,
its beings with ascetics, priests, gods, and men,
I had attained the highest complete enlightenment.

This I recognized.

Knowledge arose in me;
insight arose that the release of my mind is unshakable:
this is my last existence;
now there is no rebirth.

Copyright 1996 by Sanderson Beck
WISDOM OF CHINA AND INDIA Contents
DHAMMAPADA (PATH OF TRUTH)
Buddha and Buddhism ETHICS OF CIVILIZATION

Buddhism in America

2006-11-08T23:36:00.000+08:00

Excerpts from "The Lotus in the New World: Buddhism in America", Part One - The Three Jewels, featuring Geshe Michael Roach. This has been a work in progress since 1997 and donations are welcome via Paypal (mediaworkscorp@yahoo.com) to support production of all planned 4 one hour episodes. Thanks for your help. (http://www.mediaworkscorp.com)

Resolute Determination is the Eighth Mental Perfection

2006-11-02T02:41:00.000+08:00

Only determination can completely fulfill the other mental perfections!
It's characteristic is an unwavering decision, it's function is to overcome
it's opposites, & it's manifestation is unfaltering persistence in this task...
The proximate cause of determination is strong willpower to succeed!
Only the vigour of resolute determination lifts any praxis to perfection...

When the Future Buddha turned his back to the trunk of the Bodhi tree,
then he right there made this mighty decision:
'Let just the blood & flesh of this body dry up & let the skin & sinews
fall from the bones. I will not leave this seat before having attained the
absolute supreme Enlightenment!' So determined did he invincibly seat
himself, which not even 100 earthquakes could make him waver from.
Jataka Nidana

A female lay follower (Upasika) at the time of the Buddha kept the
precepts, comprehended the nature of impermanence, the consequent
fragility of the body and thereby won stream-entry (Sotapanna).
After passing away, she re-arised as the favorite attendant of Sakka,
the king of Gods. Reviewing her own merit, she remembered her prior
admonition to herself:

‘Let this body break up as it may,
herein will not be any excuse or
relaxation of the effort...!!!’

Whose mind is like a rock, unwavering, immovable,
without a trace of lust of urging towards the attractions,
without a trace of aversion of pushing away the repulsive,
from what, can such a refined mind ever suffer ?
Udana IV - 4

Using the tools of Faith, Morality, Effort, Determination,
Meditation and true Understanding of this Dhamma,
one gradually perfect first knowledge & then behavior.
So equipped & aware, one may eliminate all of this great
heap of suffering once and for all ...
Dhammapada 144

What is being determined for right Motivation ?
The decision for being motivated by withdrawal,
The decision for being motivated by good-will,
The decision for being motivated by harmlessness:
This is being determined for right Motivation.
Samyutta Nikaya XLV 8

My mind is firm like a rock,
unattached to sensual things,
no shaking in the midst of a
world, where all is decaying.
My mind has been thus well developed,
so how can suffering ever touch me?
Theragatha 194

The four determinations:
One should not neglect the Dhamma,
One should guard well the Truth,
One should be devoted to Withdrawal,
and one should train only for Peace.
Majjhima Nikaya 140

Fearing being predestined for Hell if he became a King, who had to
punish criminals violently, the Bodhisatta determined not to show any
intelligence, and play dump, deaf and cripple for sixteen years, only
showing his abilities, when he was on the verge of being buried alive!
This was his ultimate perfection of resolute determination...
The Basket of Conduct: Cariyapitaka

India enshrines Buddha's remains after 2000 years

2006-10-31T15:35:00.000+08:00

By Laura MacInnis, The Star (Reuters), Oct 29, 2006

MUMBAI, India -- Thousands of Buddhists gathered in Mumbai on Sunday to lay to rest part of the ashes and bones of Lord Buddha in a ceremony resurrected after almost 2000 years.

<< A boy stands next to a crystal to be put up atop the dome above, as he attends a Buddhist ceremony in a newly constructed pagoda in Mumbai yesterday. Thousands of Buddhists gathered for the ceremony held to lay to rest part of the ashes and bones of Lord Buddha

Monks in flowing orange robes chanted hymns from scriptures as the remains were lowered into a shallow pit on top of a 90-ft high stone dome, as part of celebrations to mark the 2,550th anniversary of the spiritual leader's enlightenment.

Organisers of the ceremony said this was the first time in around 2,000 years that Buddha's mortal remains were being enshrined.

"The relics now kept in this magnificent pagoda came from an ancient dome discovered during an archaeological expedition in south India in early-1900s," Acharya S.N. Goenka told reporters.

After Buddha's death, his remains were divided and kept in eight separate domes built by his disciples across Asia.

They were later taken by Buddhist convert Indian emperor Asoka, who placed them in many smaller domes about 2000 years ago.

The remains being enshrined on Sunday were found in an ancient pagoda in southern India in 1920 and have been kept in a Buddhist monastery for over 85 years, before being handed over for enshrining.

Buddhists, some of whom came from other parts of the world, including the United States, Britain, Australia and Cambodia, sat in meditation inside the dome, which can accommodate 8,000 people, many looking up in the direction of the roof where the remains of their guru lay.

According to believers, the enshrined relics of their leader emit spiritual energy and vibrations which helps meditation.

The organisers said the newly-constructed dome was unique as it was not only the world's largest stone dome unsupported by pillars, but was built with millions of inter-locking stones using ancient architectural techniques.

"No cement, concrete or metal has been used. There are no pillars to support the dome which is 280 feet in diameter," said Subhash Chandra, a Buddhist and an Indian media baron.

China takes heat after tragic flight of Tibetan teenager

2006-10-27T00:36:00.000+08:00

By Daniel Pepper, The CSMonitor, Oct 25,2006

The shooting death of a would-be refugee by a Chinese patrolman places the Middle Kingdom's human rights record under scrutiny.

NEW DELHI, India -- The two teenage girls were best friends. In their tiny farming village in Tibet, they had stayed up late many nights over four years plotting their escape.

SAFELY IN INDIA: Three Buddhist nuns (right to left) Dechen Palmo, Tenzin Dolma, and Tenzin Wangmo were among 41 Tibetan refugees who arrived in New Delhi Sunday.
DANIEL PEPPER

Kelsang Namtso had become a Buddhist nun just last year, at the tender age of 16. Her friend, Dolma Palkyi, 16, wanted to go to India, and meet the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, before taking her vows.

Dolma says she managed to save nearly $1,400 for the arduous journey through the Himalayas. Half would go to the smugglers. In early September, the girls loaded their backpacks with yak butter, cheese, and barley, and finally set off.

Seventeen days later, Kelsang lay dying in the snow after an attack, captured by Western tourists' cameras, that is becoming an international incident and a stain on China's human rights record.

The girls' journey began with a two-day truck ride west from the Tibetan capital city of Lhasa. They joined a group of 73 others, led by two smugglers, making the mountain crossing. For the next two weeks, the group walked mostly at night and slept during the day, at times braving high winds and deep snow.

As morning dawned on Sept. 30, Kelsang was trudging through chest-deep snow. Her pack was nearly empty. "For the last three days we had no food," says Thupten Tsering, a monk who is seeking religious freedom in India. At a press conference Monday in New Delhi, he and others recounted their escape for the first time.

The group was walking single file and had just reached the 18,753-foot Nangpa La Pass when they heard the distinct "zing" of bullets passing on either side. "They were shooting all around," says Tenzin Wangmo, one of three nuns walking directly behind Kelsang. They never saw the Chinese policemen. "When the shooting was going on I just prayed to His Holiness the Dali Lama to kindly save us," she recounted softly.

When a bullet hit young Kelsang, she collapsed into the snow, crying that she had been hit and asked for help. But the nuns themselves were weak with cold, fatigue, and hunger. Still Ms. Wangmo says she made an attempt to grab the fallen woman's arm and pull her along. She was unsuccessful, she says: "There was a monk from the group who said, 'She is dead - if we don't run away we will all be finished.' "

When the shooting started they dropped everything - a sleeping mat and what little extra clothing they had carried on their backs - and ran until evening. That night, lacking food and blankets, they huddled together for warmth.

The next day they walked until finding a small group of nomads with three tents who agreed to sell them provisions. From there they met up with other members of the group with whom they walked for five more days before arriving at the Tibetan refugee center in Katmandu, Nepal (see story).

"We were best friends," says Dolma Palkyi, who was separated from her teenage friend at the time of the shooting and only heard of her death days later. "Still, I cannot believe it," she says, wiping away the tears, "I've lost everything."

About half the group was captured by Chinese police. The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced the death of a second victim, a 23-year-old male, days later in a hospital, stating he died from "oxygen shortage." China's official news agency, Xinhua, reported on Oct. 12 that Chinese police opened fire in self-defense after the Tibetans attacked them.

Human rights groups say the Tibetans were unarmed, and that the male victim died from gunshot wounds.

"This has been going on for a long time, says Tenzin Norgay of the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy in India. "But today China cannot escape it. The bubble that they created has burst."

Rights groups don't know how many refugees die along the way each year, but they say a significant number fall into crevasses, die of hunger, or are shot by Chinese police.

But never before has such an event been documented so well. A Romanian cameraman and other Western tourists who were in the region to climb Cho Oyu, about 12 miles west of Mount Everest, say they saw the Chinese patrolmen shoot the Tibetan refugees. (www.protv.ro/filme/exclusive-footage-of-chinese-soldiers-shooting-at-tibetan-pilgrims.html)

The plight of these rural Tibetan refugees brings to light the hardships suffered by the estimated 2,500 to 4,000 Tibetans who try to reach India every year via Nepal, paying smugglers to bring them to India because obtaining the official travel permits and a passport can be too difficult. Most come seeking an audience with the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, who resides in Dharamsala, in northern India.

"Our aim only is to get the blessing of His Holiness the Dalai Lama," says Ms. Wangmo, one of the nuns. "We were planning to go back afterwards, but now it won't be possible after the trouble in the pass. If we go back to Tibet, the Chinese will definitely arrest us."

The nun killed was typical of the many Tibetan refugees who make the journey: she was poor, young, and religiously motivated. At least half of those making the journey from Tibet are children, sent by parents who want their children to grow up with a strong Tibetan identity and who often cannot afford school fees at home. Among the group of Tibetans that just arrived in India, the youngest was a 7-year-old girl, Deki Pantso, who came without her parents.

Most Tibetan refugees prefer to make the journey in the winter, when there is deep snow in the passes between Nepal and Tibet and the chances of being caught by Chinese patrolmen are diminished. The International Campaign for Tibet, a Washington advocacy group, estimates that 80 percent of refugees attempt to cross between October and April, when the mountain glaciers are frozen over.

The United States and the European Union have condemned the shooting and urged China to investigate the incident thoroughly. But so far Canada has delivered the harshest rebuke. On Oct. 18 Canada's foreign minister, Peter MacKay, expressed his "abhorrence and dismay for this terrible incident that happened at the border. Canada strongly condemns this act of violence against unarmed civilians as an egregious violation of human rights."

Tenzin Norgay, with the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Dharamsala wondered whether this would lead to more governments pressuring China to improve their human rights record. "I fear it might be another event come and gone. Public memory is very short."

On Rationalizing Negligence

2006-10-04T14:06:00.000+08:00

by Lafcadio Hearne

Kusa-Hibari

His cage is exactly two Japanese inches high and one inch and a half wide: its tiny wooden door, turning upon a pivot, will scarcely admit the tip of my little finger. But he has plenty of room in that cage - room to walk, and jump, and fly, for he is so small that you must look very carefully through the brown-gauze sides of it in order to catch a glimpse of him. I have always to turn the cage round and round, several times, in a good light, before I can discover his whereabouts, and then I usually find him resting in one of the upper corners - clinging, upside down, to his ceiling of gauze.

Imagine a cricket about the size of an ordinary mosquito - with a pair of antennae much longer than his own body, and so fine that you can distinguish them only against the light. Kusa-Hibari, or 'Grass-Lark' is the Japanese name of him; and he is worth in the market exactly twelve cents: that is to say, very much more than his weight in gold. Twelve cents for such a gnat-like thing! ... By day he sleeps or meditates, except while occupied with the slice of fresh eggplant or cucumber which must be poked into his cage every morning... to keep him clean and well fed is somewhat troublesome: could you see him, you would think it absurd to take any pains for the sake of a creature so ridiculously small.

But always at sunset the infinitesimal soul of him awakens: then the room begins to fill with a delicate and ghostly music of indescribable sweetness - a thin, silvery rippling and trilling as of tiniest electric bells. As the darkness deepens, the sound becomes sweeter - sometimes swelling till the whole house seems to vibrate with the elfish resonance - sometimes thinning down into the faintest imaginable thread of a voice. But loud or low, it keeps a penetrating quality that is weird... All night the atomy thus sings: he ceases only when the temple bell proclaims the hour of dawn.

Now this tiny song is a song of love - vague love of the unseen and unknown. It is quite impossible that he should ever have seen or known, in this present existence of his. Not even his ancestors, for many generations back, could have known anything of the night-life of the fields, or the amorous value of song.

They were born of eggs hatched in a jar of clay, in the shop of some insect-merchant: and they dwelt thereafter only in cages. But he sings the song of his race as it was sung a myriad years ago, and as faultlessly as if he understood the exact significance of every note. Of course he did not learn the song. It is a song of organic memory - deep, dim memory of other quintillions of lives, when the ghost of him shrilled at night from the dewy grasses of the hills. Then that song brought him love - and death. He has forgotten all about death: but he remembers the love. And therefore he sings now - for the bride that will never come.

So that his longing is unconsciously retrospective: he cries to the dust of the past - he calls to the silence and the gods for the return of time... Human lovers do very much the same thing without knowing it. They call their illusion an Ideal: and their phantom of organic memory. The living present has very little to do with it... Perhaps this atom also has an ideal, or at least the rudiment of an ideal; but, in any event, the tiny desire must utter its plaint in vain.

The fault is not altogether mine. I had been warned that if the creature were mated, he would cease to sing and would speedily die. But night after night, the plaintive, sweet, unanswered trilling touched me like a reproach - became at last an obsession, an affliction, a torment of conscience; and I tried to buy a female. It was too late in the season; there were no more kusa-hibari for sale, - either males or females. The insect-merchant laughed and said, 'He ought to have died about the twentieth day of the ninth month.' (It was already the second day of the tenth month.) But the insect-merchant did not know that I have a good stove in my study, and keep the temperature at above 75 degrees F. Wherefore my grass-lark still sings at the close of the eleventh month, and I hope to keep him alive until the Period of Greatest Cold. However, the rest of his generation are probably dead: neither for love nor money could I now find him a mate. And were I to set him free in order that he might make the search for himself, he could not possibly live through a single night, even if fortunate enough to escape by day the multitude of his natural enemies in the garden - ants, centipedes, and ghastly earth-spiders.

Last evening - the twenty-ninth of the eleventh month - an odd feeling came to me as I sat at my desk: a sense of emptiness in the room. Then I became aware that my grass-lark was silent, contrary to his wont. I went to the silent cage, and found him lying dead beside a dried-up lump of egg-plant as gray and hard as a stone. Evidently he had not been fed for three or four days; but only the night before his death he had been singing wonderfully - so that I foolishly imagined him to be more than usually contented. My student, Aki, who loves insects, used to feed him; but Aki had gone into the country for a week's holiday, and the duty of caring for the grass-lark had devolved upon Hana, the housemaid. She is not sympathetic, Hana the housemaid. She says that she did not forget the mite - but there was no more eggplant, and she dutifully expressed contrition. But the fairy-music had stopped: and the stillness reproaches; and the room is cold, in spite of the stove.

Absurd!... I have made a good girl unhappy because of an insect half the size of a barley-grain! The quenching of that infinitesimal life troubled me more than I could have believed possible... Of course, the mere habit of thinking about a creature's wants - even the wants of a cricket - may create, by insensible degrees, an imaginative interest, an attachment of which one becomes conscious only when the relation is broken. Besides, I had felt so much, in the hush of the night, the charm of the delicate voice - telling of one minute existence dependent upon my will and selfish pleasure, as upon the favour of a god - telling me also that the atom of ghost in the tiny cage, and the atom of ghost within myself, were forever but one and the same in the deeps of the Vast of being... And then to think of the little creature hungering and thirsting, night after night and day after day, while the thoughts of his guardian deity were turned to the weaving of dreams! How bravely, nevertheless, he sang on to the very end - an atrocious end, for he had eaten his own legs!.. May the gods forgive us all - especially Hana the housemaid!

Yet, after all, to devour one's own legs for hunger is not the worst that can happen to a being cursed with the gift of song. There are human crickets who must eat their own hearts in order to sing.

Compassion and the Individual

2006-09-28T00:33:00.000+08:00

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

The Purpose of Life

One great question underlies our experience, whether we think about it consciously or not: What is the purpose of life? I have considered this question and would like to share my thoughts in the hope that they may be of direct, practical benefit to those who read them.

I believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. From the moment of birth, every human being wants happiness and does not want suffering. Neither social conditioning nor education nor ideology affect this. From the very core of our being, we simply desire contentment. I don't know whether the universe, with its countless galaxies, stars and planets, has a deeper meaning or not, but at the very least, it is clear that we humans who live on this earth face the task of making a happy life for ourselves. Therefore, it is important to discover what will bring about the greatest degree of happiness.

How to achieve happiness

For a start, it is possible to divide every kind of happiness and suffering into two main categories: mental and physical. Of the two, it is the mind that exerts the greatest influence on most of us. Unless we are either gravely ill or deprived of basic necessities, our physical condition plays a secondary role in life. If the body is content, we virtually ignore it. The mind, however, registers every event, no matter how small. Hence we should devote our most serious efforts to bringing about mental peace.

From my own limited experience I have found that the greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion.

The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater our own sense of well-being becomes. Cultivating a close, warmhearted feeling for others automatically puts the mind at ease. This helps remove whatever fears or insecurities we may have and gives us the strength to cope with any obstacles we encounter. It is the ultimate source of success in life.

As long as we live in this world we are bound to encounter problems. If, at such times, we lose hope and become discouraged, we diminish our ability to face difficulties. If, on the other hand, we remember that it is not just ourselves but everyone who has to undergo suffering, this more realistic perspective will increase our determination and capacity to overcome troubles. Indeed, with this attitude, each new obstacle can be seen as yet another valuable opportunity to improve our mind!

Thus we can strive gradually to become more compassionate, that is we can develop both genuine sympathy for others' suffering and the will to help remove their pain. As a result, our own serenity and inner strength will increase.

Our need for love

Ultimately, the reason why love and compassion bring the greatest happiness is simply that our nature cherishes them above all else. The need for love lies at the very foundation of human existence. It results from the profound interdependence we all share with one another. However capable and skillful an individual may be, left alone, he or she will not survive. However vigorous and independent one may feel during the most prosperous periods of life, when one is sick or very young or very old, one must depend on the support of others.

Interdependence, of course, is a fundamental law of nature. Not only higher forms of life but also many of the smallest insects are social beings who, without any religion, law or education, survive by mutual cooperation based on an innate recognition of their interconnectedness. The most subtle level of material phenomena is also governed by interdependence. All phenomena, from the planet we inhabit to the oceans, clouds, forests and flowers that surround us, arise in dependence upon subtle patterns of energy. Without their proper interaction, they dissolve and decay.

It is because our own human existence is so dependent on the help of others that our need for love lies at the very foundation of our existence. Therefore we need a genuine sense of responsibility and a sincere concern for the welfare of others.

We have to consider what we human beings really are. We are not like machine-made objects. If we were merely mechanical entities, then machines themselves could alleviate all of our sufferings and fulfill our needs. However, since we are not solely material creatures, it is a mistake to place all our hopes for happiness on external development alone. Instead, we should consider our origins and nature to discover what we require.

Leaving aside the complex question of the creation and evolution of our universe, we can at least agree that each of us is the product of our own parents. In general, our conception took place not just in the context of sexual desire but from our parents' decision to have a child. Such decisions are founded on responsibility and altruism—the parents' compassionate commitment to care for their child until it is able to take care of itself. Thus, from the very moment of our conception, our parents' love is directly involved in our creation.

Moreover, we are completely dependent upon our mother's care from the earliest stages of our growth. According to some scientists, a pregnant woman's mental state, be it calm or agitated, has a direct physical effect on her unborn child.

The expression of love is also very important at the time of birth. Since the very first thing we do is suck milk from our mother's breast, we naturally feel close to her, and she must feel love for us in order to feed us properly; if she feels anger or resentment her milk may not flow freely.

Then there is the critical period of brain development from the time of birth up to at least the age of three or four, during which time loving physical contact is the single most important factor for the normal growth of the child. If the child is not held, hugged, cuddled or loved, its development will be impaired and its brain will not mature properly.

Since a child cannot survive without the care of others, love is its most important nourishment. The happiness of childhood, the allaying of the child's many fears and the healthy development of its self- confidence all depend directly upon love.

Nowadays, many children grow up in unhappy homes. If they do not receive proper affection, in later life they will rarely love their parents and, not infrequently, will find it hard to love others. This is very sad.

As children grow older and enter school, their need for support must be met by their teachers. If a teacher not only imparts academic education but also assumes responsibility for preparing students for life, his or her pupils will feel trust and respect and what has been taught will leave an indelible impression on their minds. On the other hand, subjects taught by a teacher who does not show true concern for his or her students' overall well-being will be regarded as temporary and not retained for long.

Similarly, if one is sick and being treated in hospital by a doctor who evinces a warm human feeling, one feels at ease and the doctor's desire to give the best possible care is itself curative, irrespective of the degree of his or her technical skill. On the other hand, if one's doctor lacks human feeling and displays an unfriendly expression, impatience or casual disregard, one will feel anxious, even if he or she is the most highly qualified doctor and the disease has been correctly diagnosed and the right medication prescribed. Inevitably, patients' feelings make a difference to the quality and completeness of their recovery.

Even when we engage in ordinary conversation in everyday life, if someone speaks with human feeling we enjoy listening, and respond accordingly; the whole conversation becomes interesting, however unimportant the topic may be. On the other hand, if a person speaks coldly or harshly, we feel uneasy and wish for a quick end to the interaction. From the least to the most important event, the affection and respect of others are vital for our happiness.

Recently I met a group of scientists in America who said that the rate of mental illness in their country was quite high around twelve percent of the population. it became clear during our discussion that the main cause of depression was not a lack of material necessities but a deprivation of the affection of others.

So, as you can see from everything I have written so far, one thing seems clear to me: whether or not we are consciously aware of it, from the day we are born, the need for human affection is in our very blood. Even if the affection comes from an animal or someone we would normally consider an enemy, both children and adults will naturally gravitate towards it.

I believe that no one is born free from the need for love. And this demonstrates that, although some modern schools of thought seek to do so, human beings cannot be defined as solely physical. No material object, however beautiful or valuable, can make us feel loved, because our deeper identity and true character lie in the subjective nature of the mind.

Developing compassion

Some of my friends have told me that, while love and compassion are marvelous and good, they are not really very relevant. Our world, they say, is not a place where such beliefs have much influence or power. They claim that anger and hatred are so much a part of human nature that humanity will always be dominated by them. I do not agree.

We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are "news"; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored.

So far I have been discussing mainly the mental benefits of compassion, but it contributes to good physical health as well. According to my personal experience, mental stability and physical well-being are directly related. Without question, anger and agitation make us more susceptible to illness. On the other hand, if the mind is tranquil and occupied with positive thoughts, the body will not easily fall prey to disease.

But of course it is also true that we all have an innate self-centeredness that inhibits our love for others. So, since we desire the true happiness that is brought about by only a calm mind, and since such peace of mind is brought about by only a compassionate attitude, how can we develop this? Obviously, it is not enough for us simply to think about how nice compassion is! We need to make a concerted effort to develop it; we must use all the events of our daily life to transform our thoughts and behavior.

First of all, we must be clear about what we mean by compassion. Many forms of compassionate feeling are mixed with desire and attachment. For instance, the love parents feel for their child is often strongly associated with their own emotional needs, so it is not fully compassionate. Again, in marriage, the love between husband and wife—particularly at the beginning, when each partner still may not know the other's deeper character very well—depends more on attachment than genuine love. Our desire can be so strong that the person to whom we are attached appears to be good, when in fact he or she is very negative. In addition, we have a tendency to exaggerate small positive qualities. Thus when one partner's attitude changes, the other partner is often disappointed and his or her attitude changes too. This is an indication that love has been motivated more by personal need than by genuine care for the other individual.

True compassion is not just an emotional response but a firm commitment founded on reason. Therefore, a truly compassionate attitude towards others does not change even if they behave negatively.

Of course, developing this kind of compassion is not at all easy! As a start, let us consider the following facts:

Whether people are beautiful and friendly or unattractive and disruptive, ultimately they are human beings, just like oneself. Like oneself, they want happiness and do not want suffering. Furthermore, their right to overcome suffering and be happy is equal to one's own. Now, when you recognize that all beings are equal in both their desire for happiness and their right to obtain it, you automatically feel empathy and closeness for them. Through accustoming your mind to this sense of universal altruism, you develop a feeling of responsibility for others: the wish to help them actively overcome their problems. Nor is this wish selective; it applies equally to all. As long as they are human beings experiencing pleasure and pain just as you do, there is no logical basis to discriminate between them or to alter your concern for them if they behave negatively.

Let me emphasize that it is within our power, given patience and time, to develop this kind of compassion. Of course, our self-centeredness, our distinctive attachment to the feeling of an independent, self-existent "I: works fundamentally to inhibit our compassion. Indeed, true compassion can be experienced only when this type of self-grasping is eliminated. But this does not mean that we cannot start and make progress now.

How we can start

We should begin by removing the greatest hindrances to compassion: anger and hatred. As we all know, these are extremely powerful emotions and they can overwhelm our entire mind. Nevertheless, they can be controlled. If, however, they are not, these negative emotions will plague us—with no extra effort on their part!—and impede our quest for the happiness of a loving mind.

So as a start, it is useful to investigate whether or not anger is of value. Sometimes, when we are discouraged by a difficult situation, anger does seem helpful, appearing to bring with it more energy, confidence and determination.

Here, though, we must examine our mental state carefully. While it is true that anger brings extra energy, if we explore the nature of this energy, we discover that it is blind: we cannot be sure whether its result will be positive or negative. This is because anger eclipses the best part of our brain: its rationality. So the energy of anger is almost always unreliable. It can cause an immense amount of destructive, unfortunate behavior. Moreover, if anger increases to the extreme, one becomes like a mad person, acting in ways that are as damaging to oneself as they are to others.

It is possible, however, to develop an equally forceful but far more controlled energy with which to handle difficult situations.

This controlled energy comes not only from a compassionate attitude, but also from reason and patience. These are the most powerful antidotes to anger. Unfortunately, many people misjudge these qualities as signs of weakness. I believe the opposite to be true: that they are the true signs of inner strength. Compassion is by nature gentle, peaceful and soft, but it is also very powerful. It is those who easily lose their patience who are insecure and unstable. Thus, to me, the arousal of anger is a direct sign of weakness.

So, when a problem first arises, try to remain humble and maintain a sincere attitude and be concerned that the outcome is fair. Of course, others may try to take advantage of you, and if your remaining detached only encourages unjust aggression, adopt a strong stand. This, however, should be done with compassion, and if it is necessary to express your views and take strong countermeasures, do so without anger or ill-intent.

You should realize that even though your opponents appear to be harming you, in the end, their destructive activity will damage only themselves. In order to check your own selfish impulse to retaliate, you should recall your desire to practice compassion and assume responsibility for helping prevent the other person from suffering the consequences of his or her acts.

Thus, because the measures you employ have been calmly chosen, they will be more effective, more accurate and more forceful. Retaliation based on the blind energy of anger seldom hits the target.

Friends and enemies

I must emphasize again that merely thinking that compassion and reason and patience are good will not be enough to develop them. We must wait for difficulties to arise and then attempt to practice them.

And who creates such opportunities? Not our friends, of course, but our enemies. They are the ones who give us the most trouble. So if we truly wish to learn, we should consider enemies to be our best teacher!

For a person who cherishes compassion and love, the practice of tolerance is essential, and for that, an enemy is indispensable. So we should feel grateful to our enemies, for it is they who can best help us develop a tranquil mind! Also, it is often the case in both personal and public life, that with a change in circumstances, enemies become friends.

So anger and hatred are always harmful, and unless we train our minds and work to reduce their negative force, they will continue to disturb us and disrupt our attempts to develop a calm mind. Anger and hatred are our real enemies. These are the forces we most need to confront and defeat, not the temporary "enemies" who appear intermittently throughout life.

Of course, it is natural and right that we all want friends. I often joke that if you really want to be selfish, you should be very altruistic! You should take good care of others, be concerned for their welfare, help them, serve them, make more friends, make more smiles. The result? When you yourself need help, you find plenty of helpers! If, on the other hand, you neglect the happiness of others, in the long term you will be the loser. And is friendship produced through quarrels and anger, jealousy and intense competitiveness? I do not think so. Only affection brings us genuine close friends.

In today's materialistic society, if you have money and power, you seem to have many friends. But they are not friends of yours; they are the friends of your money and power. When you lose your wealth and influence, you will find it very difficult to track these people down.

The trouble is that when things in the world go well for us, we become confident that we can manage by ourselves and feel we do not need friends, but as our status and health decline, we quickly realize how wrong we were. That is the moment when we learn who is really helpful and who is completely useless. So to prepare for that moment, to make genuine friends who will help us when the need arises, we ourselves must cultivate altruism!

Though sometimes people laugh when I say it, I myself always want more friends. I love smiles. Because of this I have the problem of knowing how to make more friends and how to get more smiles, in particular, genuine smiles. For there are many kinds of smile, such as sarcastic, artificial or diplomatic smiles. Many smiles produce no feeling of satisfaction, and sometimes they can even create suspicion or fear, can't they? But a genuine smile really gives us a feeling of freshness and is, I believe, unique to human beings. If these are the smiles we want, then we ourselves must create the reasons for them to appear.

Compassion and the world

In conclusion, I would like briefly to expand my thoughts beyond the topic of this short piece and make a wider point: individual happiness can contribute in a profound and effective way to the overall improvement of our entire human community.

Because we all share an identical need for love, it is possible to feel that anybody we meet, in whatever circumstances, is a brother or sister. No matter how new the face or how different the dress and behavior, there is no significant division between us and other people. It is foolish to dwell on external differences, because our basic natures are the same.

Ultimately, humanity is one and this small planet is our only home. If we are to protect this home of ours, each of us needs to experience a vivid sense of universal altruism. It is only this feeling that can remove the self-centered motives that cause people to deceive and misuse one another. If you have a sincere and open heart, you naturally feel self-worth and confidence, and there is no need to be fearful of others.

I believe that at every level of society—familial, tribal, national and international—the key to a happier and more successful world is the growth of compassion. We do not need to become religious, nor do we need to believe in an ideology. All that is necessary is for each of us to develop our good human qualities.

I try to treat whoever I meet as an old friend. This gives me a genuine feeling of happiness. It is the time to help create a happier world.

The Elimination of Anger

2006-09-24T22:02:00.000+08:00

Those often absorbed in such accusations as:
'He/She/They abused, hurt, did me or us wrong..'
whether right or wrong!, such foolish ones only
prolong own pain by being obsessed by own anger!
However!!!
Those freed of these forever fruitless accusations:
'He/She/They abused, hurt, did me or us wrong'
noting: Whether right or wrong: What good does this do?
such clever ones stop own pain by relinquishing all anger.

Not by anger is Hate ever quenched..
Only by Friendliness is Hate always quenched..
This Ancient Law is an Eternal... Truth!

Dhammapada 3+4+5

What good does any accusation
- whether right or wrong -
do to anybody ? Nothing...!!!
On the contrary: It burns up Mind,
inflames ill-will, infects with hate!
In short: The way to the Downfall!
Hate brings great misfortune,
hate churns up and harms the mind;
this fearful danger deep within
this most people do not understand.Itivuttaka 84

The Elimination of Anger

Tags: buddhism | buddha | anger | dharma

10 mental perfections

2006-09-20T13:05:00.000+08:00

The Mental Perfections (paramis = paramitas) are:

1: Generosity (Dana)
2: Morality (Sila)
3: Withdrawal (Nekkhamma)
4: Understanding (Panna)
5: Enthusiastic Energy (Viriya)
6: Patient Forbearance (Khanti)
7: Honesty & Truthfulness (Sacca)
8: Resolute Determination (Adhitthana)
9: Kind Friendliness (Metta)
10: Balanced Equanimity (Upekkha)

The Buddha said:
'So few as these only, are these supreme mental qualities,
which matures Awakening. There is nothing elsewhere
beyond them! Be thorough, firm & complete in them...'

These 10 mental perfections are developed to three levels:

I: Those who awakens as disciples = Savaka-Bodhis
give all possessions away including wife and kids...

II: Those who awakens as Solitary Buddhas = Pacekkha-Buddhas
give an organ, limb or eye away...

III: Those who awakens as Perfect Buddhas = SammasamBuddhas
give even their own life away.

The basic perfection of generosity is the relinquishing of one's children,
wives, and belongings, such as wealth; the intermediate perfection of
giving, the relinquishing of one's own limbs; and the ultimate perfection
of giving, the relinquishing of one's own life. The three stages in the
perfection of morality should be understood as the non-transgression
of morality on account of the three: children and wife, limbs, and life;
the three stages in the perfection of withdrawal, as the withdrawal of
those three bases after cutting off attachment to them; the three stages
in the perfection of understanding, as the discrimination between what
is beneficial and harmful to beings after rooting out craving for one's
belongings, limbs, and life; the three stages in the perfection of energy,
as striving for the relinquishing of the aforementioned things; the three
stages in the perfection of patience, as the endurance of obstacles to
one's belongings, limbs, and life; the three stages in the perfection of
Honesty, as the non-abandoning of honesty on account of one's belongings,
limbs, & life; the three stages of perfection of determination, as unshakeable
determination despite the destruction of one's belongings, limbs, & life,
bearing in mind that perfections ultimately succeed through a unflinching
determination; the three stages in the perfection of friendliness, as the
maintaining of friendliness towards any who destroy one's belongings; the
three stages in the perfection of equanimity, as maintaining an attitude of
impartial neutrality towards beings & constructions, whether they are helpful
or harmful in regard to the aforementioned three: belongings, limbs, and life.
In this way the analysis of the mental perfections should be understood.

Source: Commentary on the Basket of behaviour. Translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi in
Discourse on the All-Embracing Net of Views

Emptiness and Existence

2006-09-10T11:26:00.000+08:00

by Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama

To generate the type of love and compassion that motivates you to seek buddhahood, not for yourself but for the sake of others, first you must confront suffering by identifying its types. This is the first noble truth. From the time we are born to the time we die we suffer mental and physical pain, the suffering of change, and pervasive suffering of uncontrolled conditioning. The second and third noble truths lead us to understand the causes of suffering and whether or not those causes can be removed. The fundamental cause of suffering is ignorance—the mistaken apprehension that living beings and objects inherently exist.

We all have a valid, proper sense of self, or “I,” but then we additionally have a misconception of that “I” as inherently existing. Under the sway of this delusion, we view the self as existing under its own power, established by way of its own nature, able to set itself up.

However, if there were such a separate I—self-established and existing in its own right—it should become clearer and clearer under the light of competent analysis as to whether it exists as either mind or body, or the collection of mind and body, or different from mind and body. In fact, the closer you look, the more it is not found. This turns out to be the case for everything, for all phenomena. The fact that you cannot find them means that those phenomena do not exist under their own power; they are not self-established.

Sometime during the early sixties when I was reflecting on a passage by Tsongkhapa [founder of the Gelugpa school to which the Dalai Lama belongs] about unfindability and the fact that phenomena are dependent on conceptuality, it was as if lightning coursed within my chest. Here is the passage:

A coiled rope's speckled color and coiling are similar to those of a snake, and when the rope is perceived in a dim area, the thought arises, “This is a snake.” As for the rope, at that time when it is seen to be a snake, the collection and parts of the rope are not even in the slightest way a snake. Therefore, that snake is merely set up by conceptuality.

In the same way, when the thought “I” arises in dependence upon mind and body, nothing within mind and body—neither the collection which is a continuum of earlier and later moments, nor the collection of the parts at one time, nor the separate parts, nor the continuum of any of the separate parts—is in even the slightest way the “I.” Also there is not even the slightest something that is a different entity from mind and body that is apprehendable as the “I.” Consequently, the “I” is merely set up by conceptuality in dependence upon mind and body; it is not established by way of its own entity.

The impact lasted for a while, and for the next few weeks whenever I saw people, they seemed like a magician's illusions in that they appeared to inherently exist but I knew that they actually did not. That experience, which was like lightning in my heart, was most likely at a level below completely valid and incontrovertible realization. This is when my understanding of the cessation of the afflictive emotions as a true possibility became real.

Nowadays I always meditate on emptiness in the morning and bring that experience into the day's activities. Just thinking or saying “I,” as in "I will do such and such,” will often trigger the feeling. But still I cannot claim full understanding of emptiness.

A consciousness that conceives of inherent existence does not have a valid foundation. A wise consciousness, grounded in reality, understands that living beings and other phenomena—minds, bodies, buildings, and so forth—do not inherently exist. This is the wisdom of emptiness. Understanding reality exactly opposite to the misconception of inherent existence, wisdom gradually overcomes ignorance.

Remove the ignorance that misconceives phenomena to inherently exist and you prevent the generation of afflictive emotions like lust and hatred. Thus, in turn, suffering can also be removed. In addition, the wisdom of emptiness must be accompanied by a motivation of deep concern for others (and by the compassionate deeds it inspires) before it can remove the obstructions to omniscience, which are the predispositions for the false appearance of phenomena—even to sense consciousness—as if they inherently exist.

Therefore, full spiritual practice calls for cultivating wisdom in conjunction with great compassion and the intention to become enlightened in which others are valued more than yourself. Only then may your consciousness be transformed into the omniscience of a Buddha.

Selflessness

Both Buddhists and non-Buddhists practice meditation to achieve pleasure and get rid of pain, and in both Buddhist and non-Buddhist systems the self is a central object of scrutiny. Certain non-Buddhists who accept rebirth accept the transitory nature of mind and body, but they believe in a self that is permanent, changeless and unitary. Although Buddhist schools accept rebirth, they hold that there is no such solid self. For Buddhists, the main topic of the training in wisdom is emptiness, or selflessness, which means the absence of a permanent, unitary and independent self or, more subtly, the absence of inherent existence either in living beings or in other phenomena.

The Two Truths

To understand selflessness, you need to understand that everything that exists is contained in two groups called the two truths: conventional and ultimate. The phenomena that we see and observe around us can go from good to bad, or bad to good, depending on various causes and conditions. Many phenomena cannot be said to be inherently good or bad; they are better or worse, tall or short, beautiful or ugly, only by comparison, not by way of their own nature. Their value is relative. From this you can see that there is a discrepancy between the way things appear and how they actually are. For instance, something may—in terms of how it appears—look good, but, due to its inner nature being different, it can turn bad once it is affected by
conditions. Food that looks so good in a restaurant may not sit so well in your stomach. This is a clear sign of a discrepancy between appearance and reality.

These phenomena themselves are called conventional truths: they are known by consciousness that goes no further than appearances. But the same objects have an inner mode of being, called an ultimate truth, that allows for the changes brought about by conditions. A wise consciousness, not satisfied with mere appearances, analyzes to find whether objects inherently exist as they seem to do but discovers their absence of inherent existence. It finds an emptiness of inherent existence beyond appearances.

Empty of What?

Emptiness, or selflessness, can only be understood if we first identify that of which phenomena are empty. Without understanding what is negated, you cannot understand its absence, emptiness.

You might think that emptiness means nothingness, but it does not. Merely from reading it is difficult to identify and understand the object of negation, what Buddhist texts speak of as true establishment or inherent existence. But over a period of time, when you add your own investigations to the reading, the faultiness of our usual way of seeing things will become clearer and clearer.

Buddha said many times that because all phenomena are dependently arisen, they are relative—their existence depends on other causes and conditions and depends on their own parts. A wooden table, for instance, does not exist independently; rather, it depends on a great many causes such as a tree, the carpenter who makes it, and so forth; it also depends upon its own parts. If a wooden table or any phenomenon really were not dependent—if it were established in its own right—then when you analyze it, its existence in its own right should become more obvious, but it does not.

This Buddhist reasoning is supported by science. Physicists today keep discovering finer and finer components of matter, yet they still cannot understand its ultimate nature. Understanding emptiness is even deeper. The more you look into how an ignorant consciousness conceives phenomena to exist, the more you find that phenomena do not exist that way. However, the more you look into what a wise consciousness understands, the more you gain affirmation in the absence of inherent existence.

Do Objects Exist?

We have established that when any phenomenon is sought through analysis, it cannot be found. So you may be wondering whether these phenomena exist at all. However, we know from direct experience that people and things cause pleasure and pain, and that they can help and harm. Therefore, phenomena certainly do exist; the question is how? They do not exist in their own right, but only have an existence dependent upon many factors, including a consciousness that conceptualizes them.

Once they exist but do not exist on their own, they necessarily exist in dependence upon conceptualization. However, when phenomena appear to us, they do not at all appear as if they exist this way. Rather, they seem to be established in their own right, from the object's side, without depending upon a conceptualizing consciousness.

When training to develop wisdom, you are seeking through analysis to find the inherent existence of whatever object you are considering—yourself, another person, your body, your mind, or anything else. You are analyzing not the mere appearance but the inherent nature of the object. Thus it is not that you come to understand that the object does not exist; rather, you find that its inherent existence is unfounded. Analysis does not contradict the mere existence of the object. Phenomena do indeed exist, but not in the way we think they do.

What is left after analysis is a dependently existent phenomenon. When, for example, you examine your own body, its inherent existence is negated, but what is left is a body dependent on four limbs, a trunk, and a head.
If Phenomena Are Empty, Can They Function?

Whenever we think about objects, do we mistakenly believe that they exist in their own right? No. We can conceive of phenomena in three different ways. Let us consider a tree. There is no denying that it appears to inherently exist, but:

1. We could conceive of the tree as existing inherently, in its own right.
2. We could conceive of the tree as lacking inherent existence.
3. We could conceive of the tree without thinking that it inherently exists or not.

Only the first of those is wrong. The other two modes of apprehension are right, even if the mode of appearance is mistaken in the second and the third, in that the tree appears as if inherently existent.

If objects do not inherently exist, does this mean that they cannot function? Jumping to the conclusion that because the true nature of objects is emptiness, they are therefore incapable of performing functions such as causing pleasure or pain, or helping or harming, is the worst sort of misunderstanding, a nihilistic view. As the Indian scholar-yogi Nagarjuna says in his Precious Garland, a nihilist will certainly have a bad transmigration upon rebirth, whereas a person who believes, albeit wrongly, in inherent existence goes on to a good transmigration.

Allow me to explain. You need a belief in the consequences of actions to choose virtue in your life and discard nonvirtue. For the time being, the subtle view of the emptiness of inherent existence might be too difficult for you to understand without falling into the trap of nihilism, where you are unable to understand that phenomena arise in dependence on causes and conditions (dependent-arising). Then for the sake of your spiritual progress it would be better for now to set aside trying to penetrate emptiness. Even if you mistakenly believe that phenomena inherently exist, you can still develop an understanding of dependent-arising and apply it in practice. This is why even Buddha, on occasion, taught that living beings and other
phenomena inherently exist. Such teachings are the thought of Buddha's scriptures, but they are not his own final thought. For specific purposes, he sometimes spoke in nonfinal ways.

In What Way Is Consciousness Mistaken?

Because all phenomena appear to exist in their own right, all of our ordinary perceptions are mistaken. Only when emptiness is directly realized during completely focused meditation is there no false appearance. At that time, the dualism of subject and object has vanished, as has the appearance of multiplicity; only emptiness appears. After you rise from that meditation, once again living beings and objects falsely appear to exist in and of themselves, but through the power of having realized emptiness, you will recognize the discrepancy between appearance and reality. Through meditation you have identified both the false mode of appearance and the false mode of apprehension.

Let us return to the central point: All of us have a sense of "I" but we need to realize that it is only designated in dependence upon mind and body. The selflessness that Buddhists speak of refers to the absence of a self that is permanent, partless, and independent, or, more subtly, it can refer to the absence of inherent existence of any phenomenon. However, Buddhists
do value the existence of a self that changes from moment to moment, designated in dependence upon the continuum of mind and body. All of us validly have this sense of “I.” When Buddhists speak of the doctrine of selflessness, we are not referring to the nonexistence of this self. With this “I,” all of us rightfully want happiness and do not want suffering. It is when we exaggerate our sense of ourselves and other phenomena to mean something inherently existent that we get drawn into many, many problems.

Summary for Daily Practice

As an exercise in identifying how objects and beings falsely appear, try the following:

1. Observe how an item such as a watch appears in a store when you first notice it, then how its appearance changes and becomes even more concrete as you become more interested in it, and finally how it appears after you have bought it and consider it yours.
2. Reflect on how you yourself appear to your mind as if inherently existent. Then reflect on how others and their bodies appear to your mind.

Tenzin Gyatso is the Fourteen Dalai Lama of Tibet. This selection is from How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph.D. http://www.shambhalasun.com

[buddhism] | [dalai lama] | [emptiness]

Dealing with Anger and Making Progress

2006-08-31T20:54:00.000+08:00

by B.F.

An inmate in federal prison, B. F. is one of the few people allowed to pursue higher education. He wrote this to me recently... Ven. Chodron

A few days ago, I was in my business management class, getting ready to take the final exam, when the woman next to me pointed out another person sitting in front of us, and said, "During the mid-term a few weeks ago, I saw her cheating, using some notes she had. That makes me so mad! Does it make you as mad as it makes me?"

"That's on her," I replied. "If I let every person sitting in the classroom 'make me mad,' I wouldn't have any time to learn anything. She's just cheating herself anyway." I paused and then continued, "After twelve years of being incarcerated, very little actually makes me really mad. I try not to give other people the power to make me mad. I'm the one who makes myself mad when I give someone else that power."

There was much more to the discussion, but I tried to point out, "Don't let things that other people do make you angry, especially if they aren't directed at you or don't an influence on your life. Yeah, the other girl cheated. So? Karma takes all into account, so the other person was creating the cause for her own unpleasant results."

The point of this story? I realized how much I've changed due to the Dharma.

Source

Compassion and the Individual

2006-08-23T20:56:00.000+08:00

by His Holiness Dalai Lama

One great question underlies our experience, whether we think about it consciously or not: What is the purpose of life? I have considered this question and would like to share my thoughts in the hope that they may be of direct, practical benefit to those who read them.

I believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. From the moment of birth, every human being wants happiness and does not want suffering. Neither social conditioning nor education nor ideology affect this. From the very core of our being, we simply desire contentment. I don't know whether the universe, with its countless galaxies, stars and planets, has a deeper meaning or not, but at the very least, it is clear that we humans who live on this earth face the task of making a happy life for ourselves. Therefore, it is important to discover what will bring about the greatest degree of happiness.

How to achieve happiness

For a start, it is possible to divide every kind of happiness and suffering into two main categories: mental and physical. Of the two, it is the mind that exerts the greatest influence on most of us. Unless we are either gravely ill or deprived of basic necessities, our physical condition plays a secondary role in life. If the body is content, we virtually ignore it. The mind, however, registers every event, no matter how small. Hence we should devote our most serious efforts to bringing about mental peace.

From my own limited experience I have found that the greatest degree of inner tranquillity comes from the development of love and compassion.

The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater our own sense of well-being becomes. Cultivating a close, warmhearted feeling for others automatically puts the mind at ease. This helps remove whatever fears or insecurities we may have and gives us the strength to cope with any obstacles we encounter. It is the ultimate source of success in life.

As long as we live in this world we are bound to encounter problems. If, at such times, we lose hope and become discouraged, we diminish our ability to face difficulties. If, on the other hand, we remember that it is not just ourselves but everyone who has to undergo suffering, this more realistic perspective will increase our determination and capacity to overcome troubles. Indeed, with this attitude, each new obstacle can be seen as yet another valuable opportunity to improve our mind!

Thus we can strive gradually to become more compassionate, that is we can develop both genuine sympathy for others' suffering and the will to help remove their pain. As a result, our own serenity and inner strength will increase.

Our need for love

Ultimately, the reason why love and compassion bring the greatest happiness is simply that our nature cherishes them above all else. The need for love lies at the very foundation of human existence. It results from the profound interdependence we all share with one another. However capable and skillful an individual may be, left alone, he or she will not survive. However vigorous and independent one may feel during the most prosperous periods of life, when one is sick or very young or very old, one must depend on the support of others.

Interdependence, of course, is a fundamental law of nature. Not only higher forms of life but also many of the smallest insects are social beings who, without any religion, law or education, survive by mutual cooperation based on an innate recognition of their interconnectedness. The most subtle level of material phenomena is also governed by interdependence. All phenomena, from the planet we inhabit to the oceans, clouds, forests and flowers that surround us, arise in dependence upon subtle patterns of energy. Without their proper interaction, they dissolve and decay.

It is because our own human existence is so dependent on the help of others that our need for love lies at the very foundation of our existence. Therefore we need a genuine sense of responsibility and a sincere concern for the welfare of others.

We have to consider what we human beings really are. We are not like machine-made objects. If we were merely mechanical entities, then machines themselves could alleviate all of our sufferings and fulfil our needs. However, since we are not solely material creatures, it is a mistake to place all our hopes for happiness on external development alone. Instead, we should consider our origins and nature to discover what we require.

Leaving aside the complex question of the creation and evolution of our universe, we can at least agree that each of us is the product of our own parents. In general, our conception took place not just in the context of sexual desire but from our parents' decision to have a child. Such decisions are founded on responsibility and altruism -- the parents' compassionate commitment to care for their child until it is able to take care of itself. Thus, from the very moment of our conception, our parents' love is directly involved in our creation.

Moreover, we are completely dependent upon our mother's care from the earliest stages of our growth. According to some scientists, a pregnant woman's mental state, be it calm or agitated, has a direct physical effect on her unborn child.

The expression of love is also very important at the time of birth. Since the very first thing we do is suck milk from our mother's breast, we naturally feel close to her, and she must feel love for us in order to feed us properly; if she feels anger or resentment her milk may not flow freely.

Then there is the critical period of brain development from the time of birth up to at least the age of three or four, during which time loving physical contact is the single most important factor for the normal growth of the child. If the child is not held, hugged, cuddled or loved, its development will be impaired and its brain will not mature properly.

Since a child cannot survive without the care of others, love is its most important nourishment. The happiness of childhood, the allaying of the child's many fears and the healthy development of its self- confidence all depend directly upon love.

Nowadays, many children grow up in unhappy homes. If they do not receive proper affection, in later life they will rarely love their parents and, not infrequently, will find it hard to love others. This is very sad.

As children grow older and enter school, their need for support must be met by their teachers. If a teacher not only imparts academic education but also assumes responsibility for preparing students for life, his or her pupils will feel trust and respect and what has been taught will leave an indelible impression on their minds. On the other hand, subjects taught by a teacher who does not show true concern for his or her students' overall well-being will be regarded as temporary and not retained for long.

Similarly, if one is sick and being treated in hospital by a doctor who evinces a warm human feeling, one feels at ease and the doctor's desire to give the best possible care is itself curative, irrespective of the degree of his or her technical skill. On the other hand, if one's doctor lacks human feeling and displays an unfriendly expression, impatience or casual disregard, one will feel anxious, even if he or she is the most highly qualified doctor and the disease has been correctly diagnosed and the right medication prescribed. Inevitably, patients' feelings make a difference to the quality and completeness of their recovery.

Even when we engage in ordinary conversation in everyday life, if someone speaks with human feeling we enjoy listening, and respond accordingly; the whole conversation becomes interesting, however unimportant the topic may be. On the other hand, if a person speaks coldly or harshly, we feel uneasy and wish for a quick end to the interaction. From the least to the most important event, the affection and respect of others are vital for our happiness.

Recently I met a group of scientists in America who said that the rate of mental illness in their country was quite high around twelve percent of the population. it became clear during our discussion that the main cause of depression was not a lack of material necessities but a deprivation of the affection of others.

So, as you can see from everything I have written so far, one thing seems clear to me: whether or not we are consciously aware of it, from the day we are born, the need for human affection is in our very blood. Even if the affection comes from an animal or someone we would normally consider an enemy, both children and adults will naturally gravitate towards it.

I believe that no one is born free from the need for love. And this demonstrates that, although some modern schools of thought seek to do so, human beings cannot be defined as solely physical. No material object, however beautiful or valuable, can make us feel loved, because our deeper identity and true character lie in the subjective nature of the mind.

Developing compassion

Some of my friends have told me that, while love and compassion are marvelous and good, they are not really very relevant. Our world, they say, is not a place where such beliefs have much influence or power. They claim that anger and hatred are so much a part of human nature that humanity will always be dominated by them. I do not agree.

We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are "news"; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored.

So far I have been discussing mainly the mental benefits of compassion, but it contributes to good physical health as well. According to my personal experience, mental stability and physical well-being are directly related. Without question, anger and agitation make us more susceptible to illness. On the other hand, if the mind is tranquil and occupied with positive thoughts, the body will not easily fall prey to disease.

But of course it is also true that we all have an innate self-centeredness that inhibits our love for others. So, since we desire the true happiness that is brought about by only a calm mind, and since such peace of mind is brought about by only a compassionate attitude, how can we develop this? Obviously, it is not enough for us simply to think about how nice compassion is! We need to make a concerted effort to develop it; we must use all the events of our daily life to transform our thoughts and behavior.

First of all, we must be clear about what we mean by compassion. Many forms of compassionate feeling are mixed with desire and attachment. For instance, the love parents feel for their child is often strongly associated with their own emotional needs, so it is not fully compassionate. Again, in marriage, the love between husband and wife -- particularly at the beginning, when each partner still may not know the other's deeper character very well -- depends more on attachment than genuine love. Our desire can be so strong that the person to whom we are attached appears to be good, when in fact he or she is very negative. In addition, we have a tendency to exaggerate small positive qualities. Thus when one partner's attitude changes, the other partner is often disappointed and his or her attitude changes too. This is an indication that love has been motivated more by personal need than by genuine care for the other individual.

True compassion is not just an emotional response but a firm commitment founded on reason. Therefore, a truly compassionate attitude towards others does not change even if they behave negatively.

Of course, developing this kind of compassion is not at all easy! As a start, let us consider the following facts:

Whether people are beautiful and friendly or unattractive and disruptive, ultimately they are human beings, just like oneself. Like oneself, they want happiness and do not want suffering. Furthermore, their right to overcome suffering and be happy is equal to one's own. Now, when you recognize that all beings are equal in both their desire for happiness and their right to obtain it, you automatically feel empathy and closeness for them. Through accustoming your mind to this sense of universal altruism, you develop a feeling of responsibility for others: the wish to help them actively overcome their problems. Nor is this wish selective; it applies equally to all. As long as they are human beings experiencing pleasure and pain just as you do, there is no logical basis to discriminate between them or to alter your concern for them if they behave negatively.

Let me emphasize that it is within our power, given patience and time, to develop this kind of compassion. Of course, our self-centeredness, our distinctive attachment to the feeling of an independent, self-existent "I: works fundamentally to inhibit our compassion. Indeed, true compassion can be experienced only when this type of self-grasping is eliminated. But this does not mean that we cannot start and make progress now.

How we can start

We should begin by removing the greatest hindrances to compassion: anger and hatred. As we all know, these are extremely powerful emotions and they can overwhelm our entire mind. Nevertheless, they can be controlled. If, however, they are not, these negative emotions will plague us -- with no extra effort on their part! -- and impede our quest for the happiness of a loving mind.

So as a start, it is useful to investigate whether or not anger is of value. Sometimes, when we are discouraged by a difficult situation, anger does seem helpful, appearing to bring with it more energy, confidence and determination.

Here, though, we must examine our mental state carefully. While it is true that anger brings extra energy, if we explore the nature of this energy, we discover that it is blind: we cannot be sure whether its result will be positive or negative. This is because anger eclipses the best part of our brain: its rationality. So the energy of anger is almost always unreliable. It can cause an immense amount of destructive, unfortunate behavior. Moreover, if anger increases to the extreme, one becomes like a mad person, acting in ways that are as damaging to oneself as they are to others.

It is possible, however, to develop an equally forceful but far more controlled energy with which to handle difficult situations.

This controlled energy comes not only from a compassionate attitude, but also from reason and patience. These are the most powerful antidotes to anger. Unfortunately, many people misjudge these qualities as signs of weakness. I believe the opposite to be true: that they are the true signs of inner strength. Compassion is by nature gentle, peaceful and soft, but it is also very powerful. It is those who easily lose their patience who are insecure and unstable. Thus, to me, the arousal of anger is a direct sign of weakness.

So, when a problem first arises, try to remain humble and maintain a sincere attitude and be concerned that the outcome is fair. Of course, others may try to take advantage of you, and if your remaining detached only encourages unjust aggression, adopt a strong stand. This, however, should be done with compassion, and if it is necessary to express your views and take strong countermeasures, do so without anger or ill-intent.

You should realize that even though your opponents appear to be harming you, in the end, their destructive activity will damage only themselves. In order to check your own selfish impulse to retaliate, you should recall your desire to practice compassion and assume responsibility for helping prevent the other person from suffering the consequences of his or her acts.

Thus, because the measures you employ have been calmly chosen, they will be more effective, more accurate and more forceful. Retaliation based on the blind energy of anger seldom hits the target.

Friends and enemies

I must emphasize again that merely thinking that compassion and reason and patience are good will not be enough to develop them. We must wait for difficulties to arise and then attempt to practice them.

And who creates such opportunities? Not our friends, of course, but our enemies. They are the ones who give us the most trouble. So if we truly wish to learn, we should consider enemies to be our best teacher!

For a person who cherishes compassion and love, the practice of tolerance is essential, and for that, an enemy is indispensable. So we should feel grateful to our enemies, for it is they who can best help us develop a tranquil mind! Also, it is often the case in both personal and public life, that with a change in circumstances, enemies become friends.

So anger and hatred are always harmful, and unless we train our minds and work to reduce their negative force, they will continue to disturb us and disrupt our attempts to develop a calm mind. Anger and hatred are our real enemies. These are the forces we most need to confront and defeat, not the temporary "enemies" who appear intermittently throughout life.

Of course, it is natural and right that we all want friends. I often joke that if you really want to be selfish, you should be very altruistic! You should take good care of others, be concerned for their welfare, help them, serve them, make more friends, make more smiles. The result? When you yourself need help, you find plenty of helpers! If, on the other hand, you neglect the happiness of others, in the long term you will be the loser. And is friendship produced through quarrels and anger, jealousy and intense competitiveness? I do not think so. Only affection brings us genuine close friends.

In today's materialistic society, if you have money and power, you seem to have many friends. But they are not friends of yours; they are the friends of your money and power. When you lose your wealth and influence, you will find it very difficult to track these people down.

The trouble is that when things in the world go well for us, we become confident that we can manage by ourselves and feel we do not need friends, but as our status and health decline, we quickly realize how wrong we were. That is the moment when we learn who is really helpful and who is completely useless. So to prepare for that moment, to make genuine friends who will help us when the need arises, we ourselves must cultivate altruism!

Though sometimes people laugh when I say it, I myself always want more friends. I love smiles. Because of this I have the problem of knowing how to make more friends and how to get more smiles, in particular, genuine smiles. For there are many kinds of smile, such as sarcastic, artificial or diplomatic smiles. Many smiles produce no feeling of satisfaction, and sometimes they can even create suspicion or fear, can't they? But a genuine smile really gives us a feeling of freshness and is, I believe, unique to human beings. If these are the smiles we want, then we ourselves must create the reasons for them to appear.

Compassion and the world

In conclusion, I would like briefly to expand my thoughts beyond the topic of this short piece and make a wider point: individual happiness can contribute in a profound and effective way to the overall improvement of our entire human community.

Because we all share an identical need for love, it is possible to feel that anybody we meet, in whatever circumstances, is a brother or sister. No matter how new the face or how different the dress and behavior, there is no significant division between us and other people. It is foolish to dwell on external differences, because our basic natures are the same.

Ultimately, humanity is one and this small planet is our only home. If we are to protect this home of ours, each of us needs to experience a vivid sense of universal altruism. It is only this feeling that can remove the self-centered motives that cause people to deceive and misuse one another. If you have a sincere and open heart, you naturally feel self-worth and confidence, and there is no need to be fearful of others.

I believe that at every level of society -- familial, tribal, national and international -- the key to a happier and more successful world is the growth of compassion. We do not need to become religious, nor do we need to believe in an ideology. All that is necessary is for each of us to develop our good human qualities.

I try to treat whoever I meet as an old friend. This gives me a genuine feeling of happiness. It is the time to help create a happier world.

The Need To Win

2006-08-21T16:34:00.000+08:00

from The Way of Chuang Tzu [xix,4], Thomas Merton Translation

When an archer is shooting for nothing
He has all his skill.
If he shoots for a brass buckle
He is already nervous.
If he shoots for a prize of gold
He goes blind
Or sees two targets-
He is out of his mind!

His skill has not changed. But the prize
Divides him. He cares.
He thinks more of winning
Than of shooting -
And the need to win
Drains him of power.

Emptiness

2006-08-18T20:53:00.000+08:00

by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Emptiness is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience. It adds nothing to and takes nothing away from the raw data of physical and mental events. You look at events in the mind and the senses with no thought of whether there's anything lying behind them.

This mode is called emptiness because it's empty of the presuppositions we usually add to experience to make sense of it: the stories and world-views we fashion to explain who we are and the world we live in. Although these stories and views have their uses, the Buddha found that some of the more abstract questions they raise -- of our true identity and the reality of the world outside -- pull attention away from a direct experience of how events influence one another in the immediate present. Thus they get in the way when we try to understand and solve the problem of suffering.

Say for instance, that you're meditating, and a feeling of anger toward your mother appears. Immediately, the mind's reaction is to identify the anger as "my" anger, or to say that "I'm" angry. It then elaborates on the feeling, either working it into the story of your relationship to your mother, or to your general views about when and where anger toward one's mother can be justified. The problem with all this, from the Buddha's perspective, is that these stories and views entail a lot of suffering. The more you get involved in them, the more you get distracted from seeing the actual cause of the suffering: the labels of "I" and "mine" that set the whole process in motion. As a result, you can't find the way to unravel that cause and bring the suffering to an end.

If, however, you can adopt the emptiness mode -- by not acting on or reacting to the anger, but simply watching it as a series of events, in and of themselves -- you can see that the anger is empty of anything worth identifying with or possessing. As you master the emptiness mode more consistently, you see that this truth holds not only for such gross emotions as anger, but also for even the most subtle events in the realm of experience. This is the sense in which all things are empty. When you see this, you realize that labels of "I" and "mine" are inappropriate, unnecessary, and cause nothing but stress and pain. You can then drop them. When you drop them totally, you discover a mode of experience that lies deeper still, one that's totally free.

To master the emptiness mode of perception requires training in firm virtue, concentration, and discernment. Without this training, the mind tends to stay in the mode that keeps creating stories and world views. And from the perspective of that mode, the teaching of emptiness sounds simply like another story or world view with new ground rules. In terms of the story of your relationship with your mother, it seems to be saying that there's really no mother, no you. In terms of your views about the world, it seems to be saying either that the world doesn't really exist, or else that emptiness is the great undifferentiated ground of being from which we all came to which someday we'll all return.

These interpretations not only miss the meaning of emptiness but also keep the mind from getting into the proper mode. If the world and the people in the story of your life don't really exist, then all the actions and reactions in that story seem like a mathematics of zeros, and you wonder why there's any point in practicing virtue at all. If, on the other hand, you see emptiness as the ground of being to which we're all going to return, then what need is there to train the mind in concentration and discernment, since we're all going to get there anyway? And even if we need training to get back to our ground of being, what's to keep us from coming out of it and suffering all over again? So in all these scenarios, the whole idea of training the mind seems futile and pointless. By focusing on the question of whether or not there really is something behind experience, they entangle the mind in issues that keep it from getting into the present mode.

Now, stories and world views do serve a purpose. The Buddha employed them when teaching people, but he never used the word emptiness when speaking in these modes. He recounted the stories of people's lives to show how suffering comes from the unskillful perceptions behind their actions, and how freedom from suffering can come from being more perceptive. And he described the basic principles that underlie the round of rebirth to show how bad intentional actions lead to pain within that round, good ones lead to pleasure, while really skillful actions can take you beyond the round altogether. In all these cases, these teachings were aimed at getting people to focus on the quality of the perceptions and intentions in their minds in the present -- in other words, to get them into the emptiness mode. Once there, they can use the teachings on emptiness for their intended purpose: to loosen all attachments to views, stories, and assumptions, leaving the mind empty of all greed, anger, and delusion, and thus empty of suffering and stress. And when you come right down to it, that's the emptiness that really counts.

Source: http://world.std.com/~metta/lib/modern/emptiness.html

Suffering of Love

2006-08-16T12:34:00.000+08:00

By Tam Lac Tran Quy Anh

Once, I would rather tumble in the realms of suffering,
To endure infinite kalpas of torture and pain…
Once, I would rather blind myself of the light
Than have you missing from my life

Once, I was so foolish at how much I searched
As I ignorantly hunted you down for gain
Once, I have killed your heart by millionfold
So that I would endured aeons of torture and craving
Once, I mindlessly planted sixfold debt,
As aging and dying recycled me

Once, the beat of your heart haunted each new rebirth
With every second of my helpless sorrow
Once, I regretted having fallen into love’s trap
As it was such torment which bounded my feet together

Once, Images of your face were tattooed deep into my soul.
As it hammered me down to the wheels of samsara screaming
Once, I was crucified to the grand cross of birth and death
Because of the stupidity of how much I foolishly loved you

Once, I could not imagine what life would be like
Without the water of love for the basking of a swimming fish
Once, I asked the birds in the sky what freedom felt like
Yet all I could do was imagine the loosening of my cuffs
Once, I trembled with weak desperate hopes at night.
Half hoping to forget you, half hoping to die once more

Once, I could not let go of my mundane desires
Because fear delude my functioning
Once, it seemed I was the corps of yesteryear

As Karmic retribution become unstoppable
Once, warnings of hell constantly cracked into my skull,
Dragging me further away from the heavenly surface
Oh Such cruelty that each life brought your voice to my ears.
Each breath brought your face to my eyes.
It was blinding, it horribly deafening!
Once, I was drowning in my own sea of tears
Gripping onto anything I could grasp from phoney heroes
Once, I had given up all faith of saviour,
To surrender to the numbness of the cold

But oh what treasure I have today, lord Tathagata!
…The name that strangely soothes my frustration,
like the relief of a million years’ agony.
Like an ant carrying the massive ancient globe…
I have carried love’s burden since the dawn of time.

Incompetent language unable to describe the bliss of today
For Liberation is beyond all meaningful words,

Today is the day that I finally hear of the cure of my illness
And the illness of others just as I who suffer under obsessive love
I now see all sentients beings who have journeyed my road
How they have crawled their way up this steep mountain
To finally overlook the billions burning from below
The incalculable number of wanderers at the bottom
Are just 1 millionth of the actual size who truly suffer

What joy it is to finally meet the Dharma
To be rescued from one’s own stupidity
Now I finally see the vastness of true love and its compassion
True love is the noble love for all sentient beings I have finally learnt,
Love and Kindness is what transcends the infatuation of gods and men.

May all beings escape the suffering of love to see the larger picture.

Namo Shakyamuni Buddha!

By ©Jessica Tran
Lay Buddhist Student Tam Lac
23 January 2005 www.buddhamind.tk

Discourse on Happiness

2006-08-15T00:54:00.000+08:00

Mahamangala Sutta (Suttanipata 1)

I heard these words of the Buddha one time when the Lord was living in the vicinity of Shravasti at the Anathapindika mona-stery in the Jeta Park. Late at night a deva appeared whose light and beauty made the whole Jeta Grove shine radiantly. After paying respects to the Buddha, the deva asked him a question in the form of a verse:

"Many gods and men are eager to know
what are the greatest blessings
which can bring about a peaceful and happy life.
Please, Tathagata, will you teach us?"

(This is the Buddha's answer):
"Not to be associated with the foolish ones,
to live in the company of wise people
and to honor those who are worth honoring-
this is the greatest happiness.

"To live in a good environment,
to have planted good seeds
and to realize that you are on the right path-
this is the greatest happiness.

"To have a chance to learn,
and to be skillful in your profession or craft
and to know how to practice the precepts and loving speech-
this is the greatest happiness.

"To be able to support your parents,
to cherish your own family
and to have a job that you like-
this is the greatest happiness.

"To live correctly, to be generous in giving,
to be able to give support to relatives and friends
and to live a life of blameless conduct-
this is the greatest happiness.

Discourse on Happiness

"To avoid doing bad things,
to avoid being caught by alcoholism or drugs
and to be diligent in doing good things-
this is the greatest happiness.

"To be humble and polite,
to be grateful, and content with a simple life
and not to miss the occasion to learn the dharma
this is the greatest happiness.

"To persevere and be open to change,
to have regular contact with monks and nuns
and to participate in dharma discussions-
this is the greatest happiness.

"To live diligently and attentively,
to perceive the Noble Truths
and to realize Nirvana-
this is the greatest happiness.

"To live in the world,
with your heart undisturbed by the world,
with all sorrows ended, dwelling in peace,
this is the greatest happiness.

"He or she who accomplishes this
will remain unvanquished wherever she goes.
Always he will be safe and happy-
This is the greatest happiness."

Mahamangala Sutta (Suttanipata 1)

The Body, Speech and Mind of a Buddha

2006-08-11T08:51:00.000+08:00

The Body of a Buddha
What is a Buddha? A Buddha is someone who has abandoned all unwholesome action, all obstructions to knowledge and their remnants. When one abandons unwholesome action, an imprint remains on the mind which acts as an obstructions to knowledge, just as when one drops an onion from one's hand, a smell remains on it. The Buddha has abandoned even the last remnants of these obstructions to knowledge. He perceives the reality of all phenomena directly and has fully developed compassion through meditation, so he spontaneously works for the welfare of all beings. Over countless aeons, he has accumulated limitless merit through the practice of the perfections of giving, ethics, practice and effort and has meditated with a firmly stabilized mind on the antidote to the conception of an inherently existent self-emptiness.
From the point of view of Tantra, he meditated on deity yoga, employing the many subtle and powerful means of Tantra, which enables one to attain Buddhahood in one lifetime.
Although there may be countless Buddhas in any aeon, in the present aeon 1002 Buddhas are to appear as such, of whom four have already appeared. They are already enlightened, but take birth as humans to demonstrate the twelve deeds of a Buddha and guide sentient beings towards enlightenment. The tantric path to enlightenment is peculiar to Shakyamuni's teaching and is otherwise very rare. Shakyamuni taught the sutras to ordinary disciples, in the form of a Buddha. However, he taught superior disciples the tantras in the form of a king or in the aspect of various meditational deities.
There are many ways of representing the body of the Buddha. Though they may reveal different aspects, all are the Buddha's body in nature and offerings made to them are equal to those made to Buddhas themselves. Thus, the Buddha may be portrayed as a monk, like Buddha Shakyamuni, as slightly wrathful meditational deities such as Heruka, or Guhyasamaja, or as female deities such as dakinis, as wrathful male or female deities with ugly forms and animal heads, or as embracing consorts. There are also occasions when Shakyamuni Buddha is represented as a rabbit or an elephant, recalling exemplary deeds he performed in such lives during his career as a Bodhisattva.
Similarly, religious images are also made of Arhats, those beings who have attained personal liberation, religious protectors and Lamas. If the image is a statue, it can be made of any material, whether clay, stone, wood or metal and while there are no restrictions on size, it must strictly adhere to the prescribed proportions and so forth. Whatever material is used, such images should be respected equally, a statue should not be valued more highly than another because it is made of gold and the other of clay. The same is true of two-dimensional images, which in Tibet were most commonly paintings on cloth, block prints or murals.

The Buddha's Speech or Dharma
From the point of view of experience, the Dharma is ultimately the abandonment of afflictions and obstructions to knowledge in a being's mental continuum. The way to attain this true cessation is to follow a true path. The means of communicating this understanding is the speech of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, which in written form comprises the collection of scriptures. Both of these are also referred to as the Dharma. When the Buddha spoke, countless beings each found in his words what benefitted him or her most and could understand it in his or her own language.
Shortly after the Buddha's passing away, memorised collections of his teachings were recited in four different Indian languages, including Sanskrit. Later these were translated into Tibetan, Chinese, Mongolian, Korean, Japanese and so forth. The Tibetan canon includes the Kangyur, about 108 volumes consisting of translations of Buddha's own words, and the Tengyur, about 200 volumes of commentries to teachings contained in the Kangyur composed by Indian scholars, and some commentaries to those written by later Tibetan scholars. Recently, translations of Buddhist texts have also begun to appear in Western languages. No matter what language is used to convey them, what distinguishes such texts or teachings is that their meaning is conducive to sentient beings' achieving enlightenment. This is reflected in the subjects dealt with by Buddhist teaching. The Buddha is said to have given 84,000 instructions, which elaborate on all the afflictions and the means of overcoming them. When condensed, these can be included in the Three Baskets of Doctrine- so called because the original palm-leaf texts in India were contained in baskets. The Basket of Discourses explains the three trainings of ethics, meditative stabilization and wisdom, the Basket of Discipline explains ethical discipline and meditative stabilization, and the Basket of Knowledge explains the divisions of phenomena.
When the Buddha was passing away, some people complained that he was leaving nothing behind to show them the way to enlightenment. To this the Buddha replied that they would find what they needed in the texts recording the meaning of his words.
To show appreciation and respect towards the Buddha's teachings, some texts were written out in gold, silver and other precious substances, especially the Discourse on the Perfection of Wisdom. In general, scriptures are kept carefully in a high clean place, also to denote respect. In temples, the statue of the Buddha, which may form the principal object of offering, is generally flanked by high stacks of books of scriptures which represent his speech.

The Buddha's Mind
To represent the Buddha's mind, which is free of all obstacles and has acquired all knowledge, and to gain merit by paying respect to it, people have built stupas.
The many aspects of a stupa symbolize many things, such as the ten wholesome actions, great compassion and the ability to help all sentient beings.
Stupas were erected at the sites of Buddha Shakyamuni's birth, renunciation, attainment of enlightenment and his passing into Parinirvana, as well as being built over the relics of previous Buddhas.
Circumbulating them is a means of accumulating merit. In Magadha, an Indian kingdom at the time of the Buddha, there was an old stupa reduced to a mere mound. The Buddha circumbulated it, and when asked why, answered that there were holy relics within it.
In response to a question from the gods of the Heaven of Thirty-three, the Buddha explained what to place as relics in a stupa.
These are the four types of relics:
- Mantras written out on paper
- Physical relics of a Buddha such as hair or nails, or objects used by him
- Fragments of his bones, teeth and so forth
- Other relics remaining after his cremation
After the Buddha's passing away and the cremation of his body, the people of many kingdoms argued over possession of his remains. A disciple finally settled the dispute by dividing the remains into eight, each portion being enshrined in a stupa in each kingdom. The custom of erecting stupas over the remains of great saints and lamas also continued in Tibet. In some cases, for example the Dalai Lamas, the whole body was enshrined.
Stupas can be of any size and can be made of any suitable material. Relics, other than the four described above, such as statues, clothes or scriptures are also acceptable. For example, in Tibet, sets of thousands of stamped clay images would commonly be made to be placed in stupas.

Ancient Rahimin drawing found in Bamiyan

2006-08-09T18:44:00.000+08:00

Tokyo, Aug 09: Japanese researchers said they found a seventh-century painting of a mythological Persian bird in Afghanistan`s Bamiyan ruins, showing the region`s Buddhism was influenced by pre-Islamic Iran.

The team unearthed an image of what appears to be a Simorgh, the giant and powerful bird that figures prominently in Zoroastrian-era Iranian legends.

The faded painting emerged after Japanese researchers removed soot from a Buddhist cave in Bamiyan, the region where Taliban Islamic extremists dynamited the world`s tallest standing Buddha statues in 2001.

"This is the first time a vivid image of this creature was confirmed" in Bamiyan, an expert involved in the project at Japan`s national research institute for cultural properties told reporters.

"This image shows that Iranian myth and Persian views were reflected in Bamiyan Buddhism. It indicates the influence of people from SOGD, the areas north of Afghanistan which covers what are now Uzbekistan and Tajikistan," he said.

However, the Japanese team called for more research, saying that some scholars believed the image could instead be a griffin from Greek mythology. Alexander the great conquered Afghanistan in the fourth century BC.

The picture portrays the creature with an eagle`s head, wings and a lion`s torso of gold, silver, blue and red facing off with a bull.

Inside the same cave, researchers also found a design of a boar and a lion facing each other.

Researching Buddhism And Facts Surrounding The Popular Philosophy

2006-08-08T02:16:00.000+08:00

By: Marcus Grant iSnare Expert Author

Searching for Little Known Buddhism Facts

Buddhism is a popular religion and philosophy that originated thousands of years ago in Asia. The popularity of Buddhism has spread and followers from many countries are involved in this philosophy. Buddhism has an estimated three hundred million followers, and is something that many individuals are interested in learning about, but they do not necessarily know where to start.

The history of and facts about Buddhism are taught in many schools around the world. However, there are additional ways to learn the facts about Buddhism. To research Buddhism, traditional methods should be followed. There is a variety of different locations and resources for obtaining information concerning the philosophy of Buddhism.

The internet is a convenient and interesting way to find alot information on every topic imaginable, including the history of Buddhism its teachings which have helped it to develop a worldwide following. With numerous online encyclopedias available, you are certain to find information and little known facts concerning Buddhism. In addition to online encyclopedias, performing an internet search is a sure fire way to produce many resources and references pertaining to Buddhism. By simply typing in "Buddhism", you will be surprised at the number of websites and reference guides that will appear.

One of the best ways to learn about the history of, and interesting facts about, Buddhism is to visit a website that is operated by followers of Buddhism. One of the best websites to obtain general information on Buddhism and facts surrounding its history is http://www.buddhanet.net/index.html. BuddhaNet is an online educational network for individuals who follow Buddhism or are interested in learning more about it. The BuddaNet site is easy to navigate and designed for individuals of all ages. They have an ebook section which is completely free for all site visitors to read and use as a reference. The ebook section contains information and articles on mediation, history, teachings, and more. A large amount of information can be obtained from this website. Although this website is a great educational tool for teaching individuals about Buddhism and facts surrounding the philosophy, there are additional online resources that are just as helpful. Completing an online search is the best way to find and sort through each of them.

In addition to the internet, libraries generally offer a large amount of books or other printed materials concerning the history and teaching of buddhism. The amount of materials associated with Buddhism and facts concerning its history and practice will most likely depend on the size of the library. It usually the case that smaller libraries are limited in the number of books that they carry. If you do not find what you are looking for, do not give up. Many libraries various cities or counties are connected to a network of other libraries. Therefore, many books may be exchanged or borrowed by different library locations.

In addition to printed materials found in the library, there are number of Buddhism books that can be purchased from traditional book stores. Some of these books may be used for reference; many of the books found on today’s market include titles dealing Buddhist views, beliefs, or ways that Buddhism has positively impacted a group or an individual. Many printed materials can be purchased from conventional or online book stores. Books, VHS Tapes, DVDs, or audio cassettes tapes may be purchased from many online Buddhism websites.

Learning the history of Buddhism and facts concerning the philosophy is a fairly easy process. In addition to learning useful information, you may even find yourself wishing to become a believer or follower of Buddhism

Marcus Grant http://www.buddhism-history.com http://www.buddhismhistory.org

Two Elements of Effective Prayer

2006-08-02T11:09:00.000+08:00

By Thich Nhat Hanh

Effective prayer is made up of many elements, but there are two that seem the most important. The first is to establish a relationship between ourselves and the one we are praying to. It is the equivalent of connecting the electrical wire when we want to communicate by telephone.

The one who prays and the one prayed to are two realities that cannot be separated from each other. This is basic in Buddhism, and I’m quite sure that in every religion there are those who have practiced for a long time and have this understanding. They can see that God is in our heart. God is us and we are God. The entire visualization gatha goes like this:

The one who bows and the one who is bowed to
are both, by nature, empty.
Therefore the communication between us
is inexpressibly perfect.

The first element of an effective method of prayer is the communication between ourselves and the one we are praying to. Because we and the one we are praying to are interconnected, our communication is not dependent on time or space. When we meditate on this, communication is realized straight away and we are linked. At that point, there is electricity in the wire.

We know that when a television station sends its signal up to the telecommunications satellite and it is beamed back down to our television set, a certain amount of time is necessary for the waves to be transmitted through space. But the communication of prayer lies completely outside of space and time. We don’t need a satellite. We do not have to wait one or two days for there to be a result; the result is instant. When you make instant coffee, although you call it “instant,” you have to boil the water, you need time to make your coffee. Only then can you drink the coffee. But in prayer, we do not need to wait any time at all, even an instant.

The second element we need for prayer is energy. We have connected the telephone wire, now we need to send an electric current through it.

In prayer, the electric current is love, mindfulness and right concentration. Mindfulness is the real presence of our body and our mind. Our body and our mind are directed toward one point, the present moment. If this is lacking, we are not able to pray, no matter what our faith. If you are not present, who is praying?

To pray effectively, our body and mind must dwell peacefully in the present moment. When you have mindfulness, then you have concentration. This is the condition that will lead to prajña, the Sanskrit word for insight and transcendent wisdom. Without that, our prayer is just superstition.

Excerpt from The Energy of Prayer: How to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice by Thich Nhat Hanh (2006, Parallax Press, parallax.org). Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

Tibet to study rare Buddhist leaf scriptures

2006-07-29T23:10:00.000+08:00

Xinhua, Lhasa, July 28, 2006

Tibet has launched a two-year project to study and preserve a bundle of Buddhist scriptures that were written on leaves more than 1,000 years ago and brought to the region from India.

There are some 4,300 pages of the rare tree-leaf Buddhist Sanskrit scripture in 426 volumes, said Hu Chunhua, a top official of the region quoting figures provided by the local cultural heritage administration.

The documents were brought to Tibet from India between the 7th and 13th centuries and have remained quite well preserved, said Cewang Jinme, president of the Tibet Academy of Social Sciences.

The scriptures are inscribed on stripes of leaves of the 'pattra' tree, which is native to tropical climates and similar to a palm tree. The tree's leaves are easily transportable and durable.

A steel pen was used to etch the Sanskrit words directly on to the leaves, which themselves became a Buddhist symbol of brightness as the scriptures brought enlightenment.

The inscribed strips contain narratives of ancient Indian literature, legal codes and classic Buddhist writings.

Most of the leaf-inscribed scriptures are stored in major monasteries, museums and research institutes in Lhasa, Xigaze and Shannan, said Hu, adding that they are better preserved than others that remained in India where many decayed in the hot, humid climate or were lost in wars.

Hu said Tibetan researchers would carry out a thorough survey of all the scriptures written on 'pattra' leaves.

"Some of the pieces are in the hands of private collectors and smaller monasteries and remain undocumented," said Hu.

They will also make photocopies of all the documents to facilitate their study by Sanskrit specialists, he said.

"It's important to train more Sanskrit professionals in order to preserve the ancient documents," said Lhagba Puncog, secretary-general of China Tibetology Research Centre.

He said only 10 people in Tibet can read the language. Four Tibetan specialists have enrolled in Beijing University to study Sanskrit and they are expected to later train more language professionals.

The preservation project is jointly sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the China Tibetology Research Centre.

Buddhism reflects many perspectives

2006-07-24T10:46:00.000+08:00

by Alfred Bloom

The fundamental message of Buddhism is the truth of suffering and release from suffering here and hereafter.

There are said to be 84,000 teachings or paths to communicate its message. This numerical symbol suggests that there is, in effect, a way for everyone to gain spiritual liberation, despite their limited capacities or defilements.

Hence, we see a great diversity of beliefs, concepts, literature, myths, legends and practices in Buddhism that have developed in its 2,600-year history in response to the needs of the people of many cultures. For early Western observers it seemed a "veritable jungle of superstitions." For those who came to understand it more deeply and accurately, it was a creative faith that adapted to varying environments wherever it spread. This explains the wide variety of religious styles of Buddhism over the world.

While there is a unified perspective on life among Buddhists, it can be viewed as a diamond that has many facets, each gleaming according to the angle of light. Each facet glows at the appropriate time. It is notable that while Buddhist philosophy can be quite complex, it has developed a wealth of stories, parables, doctrines, poetry, symbols and rituals to enable ordinary persons to grasp its insights.

Consequently, we find, even in Hawaii, a diversity of Buddhist traditions and sects which serve the many peoples who have come here. Yet, all these groups maintain their universality and commonality, coming together to commemorate important events in Buddhist history such as Buddha's birthday and the day of his enlightenment, as well as his first sermon, which launched Buddhism into history.

The figure of 84,000 teachings is also applied beyond Buddhism, recognizing that any faith or teaching that brings consolation and significant spiritual insight is ultimately an expression of the highest truth of Buddhism. Over history Buddhism has been a tolerant, accepting tradition, often absorbing native religions into itself.

The Buddhist view of reality distinguishes the inconceivable dimension of cosmic truth and the sphere of conventional truth of everyday experience and language. On the conventional level everything is seen as relative, subject to causes and conditions. The Buddhist understanding of reality and human knowledge transforms all religious teaching to symbols as expressions of belief but not in themselves necessarily the final truth.

Everything is a finger pointing to the moon, pointing to something beyond itself.

As a consequence of this view, Buddhism has had little conflict with other religions through its history, and there have been no Buddhist religious wars. Buddhism itself has been persecuted and constrained because of its egalitarian implications and its implicit criticism of contemporary societies by its offer of a brighter world beyond this life.

Buddhists have advocated peace by first encouraging people to become peaceful within themselves through the practice of reflection or meditation in some form.

Presently, many temples observe Obon in our community, reminding us, whatever our ethnic or historical descent, of our debt to our many ancestors who shared their wisdom with us. The gala festive music and dancing should not obscure the depth and meaning of the spiritual tradition that inspires it.

Buddhism revives in Mongolia's grasslands

2006-07-21T10:37:00.000+08:00

By Lindsay Beck

KHARKHORIN, Mongolia (Reuters) - When Gendenjav Choijamts thinks of praying, he thinks of vodka.

The 62-year-old monk at Mongolia's oldest Buddhist monastery remembers when his father and his friends had to pretend they were gathering for a drinking session to hide the fact they were gathering in prayer.

"My father was a monk but because people were persecuted for that; it wasn't widely known," he said in the lush green grounds of Erdene Zuu, which dates from the 16th century.

"He was a herder. He hid his shrine and would chant in secret in the evening," he said.

Monastic life, which took hold in Mongolia in the 1500s, was nearly wiped out within 15 years of communist rule, mostly during Stalinist purges in the 1930s when an estimated 17,000 lamas were executed.

But since the country emerged from decades of Soviet dominance, the Yellow Hat sect of Buddhism -- also practiced in Tibet -- is making a comeback.

In 1990, three monasteries were allowed to reopen. The number quickly mushroomed to 170 across the country.

Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, has visited Mongolia five times since the early 1990s, most recently in 2002, when he delivered religious discourses to thousands of followers.

The word 'dalai' itself means 'ocean' in Mongolian, and the title of Dalai Lama, or "Ocean of Wisdom" was bestowed in the 1500s by Genghis Khan descendant Altan Khan, who ordered Mongols to practice Buddhism.

Traditionally many Mongolians have practiced Shamanism, which still has a strong following in the north of the country.

FURTIVE PRAYER

Erdene Zuu monastery, in the grasslands on the edge of the ancient capital of Kharkhorin, some 230 miles southwest of Ulan Bator, housed 1,500 lamas before it was destroyed in 1936.

But on the vast plains and valleys of the world's most sparsely populated country, the traditions survived.

"We used to hide the shrine in a big chest. When it was dark we would light the butter lamps," said Baasan-Suren Khandsuren.

At 27, he is head lama at the monastery, whose grounds are marked out from the surrounding grasslands by a border of 108 stupas, which managed to survive the purges.

When he came to the monastery in 1991, shortly after it reopened, there were just 17 monks. Now there are 65.

At the time, Baasan-Suren was 12 years old.

"In Mongolia, there are very old monks and very young monks," he said, alluding to the generation raised during the communist era, when gatherings of prayer were replaced by meetings of the state cooperative.

When Baasan-Suren entered the monastery he was following the footsteps of his grandfather, who managed to salvage religious artifacts from the grounds after it was closed.

"When I visited my grandfather's home, I looked at the Buddhist statues and had a very warm feeling about those items," he said, interrupting an interview to fish into his robes to answer his mobile phone. "It took a lot of courage to keep all those things during communist times."

MORNING CHANTING

At 12, Baasan-Suren had to forsake standard education for religious teachings. Now, he has established a religious school to allow the 33 boys currently taught there the privilege of both.

As he speaks from his office, housed in a ger, the traditional round tent of herders, little boys run wild around the grounds, playing and pushing and hiking up their maroon robes to show off on a chin-up bar as they wait for the morning chanting to begin.

Among the tourists milling around the grounds are visitors from Ulan Bator, some are also devoted Buddhists.

"I always have my prayer beads with me," said 50-year-old Tserendulam Tserennad-mid, her sunhat and sweatsuit marking her out as a city-dweller in the country where nearly half the 2.7 million population are nomadic herders.

Next to the monastery's main shrine, a monk staffs a small table where adherents come to order chantings.

As the sun burns off the night chill, a boy blows a conch shell and the monks begin their morning prayers.

Gendenjav Choijamts is glad to be among them.

"This is a good change," he said of the renewed traditions.

"When you don't have religion, you lose your compassion."

Offering a Buddhism for everyone

2006-07-18T12:22:00.000+08:00

A Lutz practitioner brings the ancient faith's tenets and beliefs to those seeking greater peace.

By SHERYL KAY
Published July 7, 2006

LUTZ - In a quiet lakefront back yard, a small group learns and meditates with the sweet smell of incense wafting through the air.

Every Wednesday evening for the past 20 years, Dr. Lucjan Shila has led a sangha, a Buddhist meditation group, in Lutz. Buddhist tenets are shared, chanting is heard, meditations are experienced.

Shila, 55, a natural medicine practitioner, was raised in the Catholic Church, but says he had great difficulty accepting things on blind faith.

"You know, it was that blessed-are-those-that-don't-see-but-still-believe traditional education," Shila said. "It wasn't that I was a doubter. I just felt compelled for myself to know it was so."

When he was 12, Shila picked up his first books on Buddhism and found a sacred system based on acquiring spiritual experiences for oneself. For the first time a theological path made perfect sense to him, and it stayed with him until he left home at 17 and joined a Buddhist retreat in New York.

Buddhism is an ancient set of philosophies and life practices that originated 2,500 years ago with Siddhartha Gautama, the son of a king in Lumbini, India. After many years of meditation, contemplation, and often existing under very austere self-imposed living conditions, Siddhartha eventually reached a state of enlightenment, wherein he became "the Buddha," the awakened one.

For the next 40 years, the Buddha taught thousands of followers those tenets that became a part of his being while meditating, such as compassion and moral actions. He told them to not simply accept his visions of truth, but rather to go and experience his teachings for themselves.

Over the centuries many versions of Buddhism have evolved. Shila learned and now practices a form called Vajrayana, and within that, a rare system called Dzogchen.

"It's an entirely nonsectarian way of practicing Buddhism," Shila said. "It's not that it's a departure, but it dispenses with a lot of the ritual and cultural elements and directly approaches the core issues of Buddhism."

Shila noted that two general forms of Buddhism are practiced worldwide: the monastic form, where practitioners live together in retreats and monasteries away from secular society, and the nonmonastic form, where believers live integrated into everyday society. Shila and the other members of the Lutz sangha fall into the latter group, and Shila said it is that form of Buddhism that is in fact more difficult to practice.

"It's difficult to maintain the purity of your ethics while engaged in daily life, so that's why a lot of people go to monasteries" he said. "In many occupations you can do it. You just need to be clean and honest in what you do."

John Geders, a business consultant from Brandon, had attended many meditation and chanting services at other Buddhist temples in the past. But because of the language barrier, he often could not experience the full impact of the service.

At Shila's meditation and teaching group, Geders, 58, made an instant and transforming connection.

"It's really turned me around," he said.

Before he was able to employ the Buddhist concept of compassion for all, Geders said he was often angry, which then led to depression. Now, he said, he sees the world with more "loving kindness and joy," which has brought him closer to family and friends.

Geders said he also has benefited enormously from the actual meditations that go on during the sangha, as well as those he does alone at home.

"I feel very settled now, peaceful," he said. "It's just this calm inside."

Meditation, Shila said, is a fundamental ingredient in the Buddhist concept of experiencing intrinsic awareness. When meditating, the practitioner is narrowing the mind's attention to a very focused point.

"We practice meditation to train the mind to do what we want it to do, even when there are distractions," he said.

Shila's sanghas are open to the public, and while donations are welcome, there is no charge to attend. For more information, see the sangha's Web page at www.clearlightdharma.org.

Buddhist says study and meditation lead to clarity

2006-07-16T21:04:00.000+08:00

First published: Saturday, July 15, 2006

David Rook: Teacher at Shambhala Meditation Center and former Buddhist representative at the Hubbard Interfaith Sanctuary at the College of Saint Rose.

Background: 49, born in Oakland, Calif. Moved to the Capital Region when he was 3 (his father was an appointee of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller). Majored in biology at University at Albany, worked for state Department of Social Services in Buffalo, received an MBA from University at Buffalo, returned to Albany in early 1990s, graduated from Albany Law School and now is an attorney with Thuillez, Ford, Gold, Johnson and Butler in Albany. He and his wife, Ellen, live in Slingerlands and have three daughters: Sonya, Maya and Tara.

What was your religious upbringing?

I was christened Unitarian. From the time I was 7 or 8, my family did not relate to any church. When I was 13, my mother embraced the Catholic religion and I did, too. She had brain cancer and suffered and faded away. However, when I asked the priests for answers, they were very nice but were ill-equipped to answer the questions. I became a scientist.

How did you encounter Buddhism?

I had a friend at UAlbany with whom I ventured to a Buddhist retreat center in Vermont. Intuitively, meditation seemed like a reasonable thing to do. I met the religious leader there, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

When I was in Seattle in 1979, someone gave me meditation instruction and Trungpa's writings. Gradually, I engaged in more rigorous Buddhist training in America and Canada. They were long periods of study combined with meditation practice. I am an American Buddhist.

What does Shambhala mean and how was the center formed in Albany?

The vision of Shambhala is to enable men and women to express the dignity of human existence and to lead meaningful lives within a flourishing culture. It involves meditation, Buddhist studies and contemplative arts. It is an international organization of Tibetan lineage. In this area, the chapter was formed in 1981, and we met in people's homes. The Shambhala Meditation Center of Albany has been at the Holy Names Campus Arts Center since January 2003. We offer regular sitting meditation every Thursday night. Richard Reoch, president of Shambhala International, is scheduled to visit us Nov. 1.

What distinguishes Buddhism from other religions?

In Buddhism, nothing is accepted as faith, including the notion of "me" or "I." The No. 1 concern is to be fully present with the suffering and chaos in the world rather than viewing it as a problem. Buddhism addresses suffering and death straight on. It basically says we are confused and it tries to reduce confusion a little bit.

At its fundamental level, Buddhism is meant to look at the nature of your mind. From that perspective, meditation is a tool and it is neutral. The practice of meditation brings you back to the current moment.

-- Azra Haqqie

Rainbow warrior

2006-07-16T20:59:00.000+08:00

by GEERT DE WEYER

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama was recognised at the age of three as the reincarnation of his predecessor.
Picture: Phil Wilkinson

IT IS day two of the Dalai Lama's week-long visit to Belgium, and the cramped smile on his face speaks volumes. Would he please pose in front of a colourful - and rather dreadful - mural? For a moment he seems on the verge of moving, but then he shakes his head and replies that the painting is too ugly to pose in front of. He continues with a tale of how he was once speaking to a Japanese friend about tasteless paintings such as this one, and "that friend later had to spend the night in a room with monstrous illustrations," he laughs. "He didn't sleep a wink."

The security guards and his entourage stand around the Tibetan leader, waiting, shepherding him along and only just stopping short of tugging on his sleeve. "Your Holiness, it is time to go," he is told softly, but decisively. The Dalai Lama is in his element. His programme includes an interview with yours truly and a meeting with representatives from the Catholic, Islamic and Jewish faiths, but the jack-in-the-box, as the security guards call him, still finds time to jump out of the car to say hello to some passers-by.

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama (Mongolian for 'ocean of wisdom'), was recognised at the age of three as the reincarnation of his predecessor. At four he was crowned in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, to be the leader of his people. By six he was a monk, being educated with a view to helping his country through difficult periods of political conflict. Then, on March 17, 1959, the Dalai Lama, regarded as the most eminent authority in the Buddhist world and the head of state of Tibet, was forced to flee his beloved homeland. A Tibetan uprising had brought about a crackdown by the Chinese, which left the 24-year-old holy leader and his entourage running for their lives. They escaped to India, where the country's first prime minister, Pandit Nehru, offered political asylum to the Dalai Lama and 80,000 other Tibetans. The exiled leader was also given a place to live, in Dharamsala, which has remained his home to this day.

Now the Dalai Lama spends his time travelling the world. He has been to Scotland twice in the past two years. On his most recent visit, last November, he praised the Scottish Parliament and devolution as well as discussing personal ethics for modern life. He says that the purpose of his international tours is to draw attention to his philosophy; the Chinese say it is to promote Tibetan independence.

He has written dozens of books on the themes of a balanced life, compassion, universal responsibility and accountability, world peace and religious tolerance. His most recent book, however, fits into an entirely different discipline. It debates the beginning of the universe, genetic manipulation and the evolution of species. Entitled The Universe in a Single Atom (Lannoo, 2005), it delves into the common ground between spirituality and recent discoveries in physics, biology and even quantum mechanics.

The Dalai Lama admits that he is a soul in search of the truth - which, he says, owing to new scientific insights, may turn out to be different than originally thought. "Buddhism is based on discovery and experimentation," he says. "Buddha himself taught us that we should have the freedom to experiment, and it is important how we view the reality all around us. From one perspective you only see a limited view of reality, which changes completely when you look at it from another angle. So what is reality? Yet in both cases we are discussing the same universal reality. Now that concept becomes complicated if I view that reality from my Buddhist state. But it differs from other traditions and cultures, where other philosophies prevail. That, too, is reality."

The Dalai Lama stands by the concept of 'one truth, one religion', saying, "For me, Buddhism is the only truth and the only religion. But my Christian brothers and sisters say the same about Christianity. Result: different truths and different religions. That makes things difficult. Therefore we should try to operate from only one religion or truth."

This may seem like a strange pronouncement, but the Dalai Lama believes that we in the West are better off sticking to our own religion rather than shopping around. "As a Westerner, you have a culture of your own. That culture is heavily influenced by Christianity. For that reason it is healthier to continue in the same tradition. Otherwise frustration will result," he says.

"Some people have a different opinion or look towards other traditions. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as you are convinced that your own religion has no more effect on you. But I would hope that one does not criticise one's own traditions. You have to keep showing respect, because religion is good and a source of inspiration to many people."

But the Dalai Lama's favourite topic is science, sparked by his discovery as a child, more than 60 years ago, of a copper telescope, a wind-up clock and illustrated books about the First World War, which had been hidden at his official winter residence, the Potala Palace. For the last 20 years, he has brought Buddhism into line with modern scientific thinking."We don't discuss reincarnation, karma or nirvana with scientists. That is a different area. We talk about cosmology, psychology. Those are themes that Buddhism covers, and it is useful to learn about the most recent scientific findings. It enlarges our knowledge. It is not that we want to convert scientists or non-believers to Buddhism, or that scientists are trying to make non-believers of us," he laughs.

"Modern scientists are starting to realise that life is fed by constructive and destructive emotions, so now they are studying emotion. Experiments are being done with students meditating for half an hour every day. After three weeks a difference can already be observed in their behaviour. That knowledge serves humankind," he says. "In our institute we have introduced science as a subject for a select group of monks. In the end we hope it can become a full-time study. We need that type of knowledge."

He accepts the view that the human race, while materially successful, is failing spiritually. "We are capable of much, but when something goes wrong it leads to catastrophe, depression, suicide... Despite our intelligence, we have a tendency to concentrate on one point. For example, if your mother were to die, for a whole day you can think of nothing else. And you grow towards depression. But when you take into account the fact that your mother died without pain, or in a happy way, and that you have many friends who can offer support, that should be a consolation and cause for new inspiration."

The Dalai Lama also believes that we lack balance as a result of too much stress, emphasising the importance of education. "From pre-school onwards, people have to learn to stay balanced. Many direct all their hope towards making money, but when something goes wrong in that regard they get depressed and can end up homeless or frustrated," he says.

Buddhism also has its conservative side, and sex is a thorny issue. I ask him why religions often have so many problems with sexuality and expect their followers to lead celibate lives. His Holiness's entourage look a bit startled at the question, but the Dalai Lama answers with almost visible pleasure. "Buddhism and Catholicism have reasons for preferring celibacy. One of those is that we can practise detachment. You see, desire and attachment can be obstacles for our spirituality. We need to watch out for that."

And homosexuality? He laughs. "All forms of sexuality are viewed as undesirable behaviour for monks and nuns." Why? He laughs loudly. "The goal of sex is reproduction."

My comment that it may be pleasurable all the same is met with a sharp giggle. The entourage giggle along, albeit a little uncomfortably. Then he says, "The point is that when you decide to take your religion or tradition seriously, you should follow its principles. But if you do not have that interest it is up to you to decide what you want to do. I think anything can be done then, as long as it is consensual. Then there is no problem if men do it with men, women with women."

The conversation moves back to the topic of Tibet. Last year the Dalai Lama was not welcome here in Belgium. The Chinese were being difficult, and to avoid a political row Belgian officials chose the easy option. "It was clear to me that it was not a good moment for the government," he says with a shrug, "No problem, I thought, I'll go there next year."

Meanwhile, he remains hopeful about the Chinese attitude towards Tibet, suggesting that the country will have to go along with the international trend of increasing openness, human rights and religious freedom. The Dalai Lama is sure about it: the regime is changing. "Very, very slowly," he emphasises, "but change it does." He says that many Chinese these days show respect, admiration and interest in Buddhism, and he is sure that the government will too. It is only a matter of time. He also believes that there are already changes within the government. For the first time in 60 years, there was a conference on Buddhism and there is even some talk of opening Buddhist schools. "That makes me happy. It is a clear sign that China may be striving towards a more open, more democratic society, even if it is a slow process. I am not seeking separation, I am only looking for a solution for us and the Chinese. Distrust is the biggest obstacle between any two parties."

One area of regret for him is in the gradual disappearance of the Tibetan language. "In that sense there is definitely a cultural genocide in progress, intentional or not. Naturally, the Chinese population is growing very quickly, and they are looking for areas, such as Tibet, that are suitable for the Chinese," he says.

He takes hope from talks that have taken place with Chinese government officials in the last four years. "Formerly, contact and communications with them were officially denied. Those talks are still being held. They help ease the distrust," he says. "We will see where it leads."

Awaken the Sleeping Buddha Within

2006-07-11T11:13:00.000+08:00

by M N Kundu

When the Buddha announced his impending exit from the sphere of mortality, his dear disciple Ananda burst into tears. "Lord, you have been the polestar of our spiritual path so far.

Whom should we contact for guidance and higher instructions when you will not be there in the land of the living?" he asked. The Buddha replied: "Atmadeepo bhava" — Be light unto yourself.

Your wavering, questioning self must be silenced at the still point of concentrated consciousness. Amidst the darkness of worldly delusion only the emanation of radiance from within — like the full moon — can bring enlightenment.

Guru Purnima symbolises emanation of inner illumination, the awakening of the sleeping Buddha within. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna advised his dear disciple Arjuna: "Lift yourself up with the help of your self".

You are your best friend, philosopher and guide, at the same time you can be your worst enemy as well. Arjuna was never advised to seek refuge in a guru.

Rather, he was advised to rise above all religious rituals and seek refuge in Him, the embodiment of eternal Being, the pure Consciousness, and real Self behind the apparent ripples of delusion.

The concept of seeking the light within is perfectly in tune with scientific spirituality. Whenever we sincerely seek intuitive guidance from within we create a magnetic pool to attract the requisite energy vibrations of infinite potentiality hidden within us.

Each soul is potentially divine and we need to awaken this divinity through concentrated efforts and continuous aspiration. This is spirituality. No one else can make us gain the same; we need to source it from inside.

In the Mahabharata, when Dronacharya refused to accept Eklavya as his disciple, the boy made an image of Dronacharya and started practising archery in front of the image.

Consequently, he mastered the art of archery as good as Arjuna who was the best direct disciple of Dronacharya, through assiduous practice and intuitive skills

The secret lies in intense aspiration leading to requisite release of the potential hidden within through the psycho-logy of faith in a guru despite the physical absence of the guru in the learning process.

Aurobindo had an experience in cosmic consciousness due to his intense aspiration and soul searching. He never had a guru. Although he received instructions on yoga from Bhaskar Lele, he never accepted him as his guru and his teachings did not lead him to self-realisation.

A true guru can be instrumental in transformation of our ego into divine self and release of divine consciousness through the mechanism of faith.

But the dogmatic claim of the essentiality of a guru in the spiritual path falls apart on closer scrutiny. The life of the Buddha, Christ, Ramakrishna, Auro-bindo, Ramana Maharshi and others bear ample testimony to the fact.

Guru Purnima, therefore, is an occasion for awakening of our inner illumination in full beam for manifestation of the divinity already within us.

http://spirituality.indiatimes.com

I am a simple Buddhist monk: Dalai Lama

2006-07-09T20:08:00.000+08:00

by Percy Fernandez, TIMES NEWS NETWORK, July 6, 2006

Dharmsala, India -- As a young boy of 25, the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso arrived in India 46 years ago. He turned 71 on the July 6, 2006. Last year, three days after his birthday he delightfully spoke at length on Mao, his boyhood memories, his commitment to spreading human values and his admiration for the Chinese people in an exclusive interview.

Contrary to rumour mills that the Dalai Lama is ailing, this reporter found the spiritual leader hale and hearty, strong and robust and with a firm grip. He is swift, full of life, and laughs his heart out. He is undoubtedly awe-inspiring, yet most humble. Most importantly he has a great sense of humour.

Much has changed since 2005. Early this year, the Dalai Lama expressed his desire to visit China on a 'pilgrimage' and wanted to observe the changes from the time he fled Tibet as a young boy.

He was really happy with the Berne round of talks between Tibet and China in Switzerland last June since the resumption of direct contacts since 2002.

But he continues to be problematic for the Chinese leadership. They are irritated whenever he travels to the US or incensed whenever he visits Japan, China's historical enemy. Hundreds of students from Taiwan and other countries descend to McLeodganj, above Dharamsala to receive his teachings and blessings. Recently, India's foreign secretary Shyam Saran called on the Dalai Lama at his official residence and not much is known about what transpired between them.

Because of his peripatetic schedule his doctors have advised him rest and hence the Dalai Lama has cancelled his European tour beginning from Helsinki next week. Later this year, in September the Dalai Lama will attend the largest gathering of Nobel Peace Prize winners in Denver alongside Desmond Tutu, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Aung San Suu Kyi among others.

Curiously, the tickets for the Denver gathering will go on sale on the July 6 and so is the reopening of Nathu La. And it happens to be the birthday of the Dalai Lama.

Many many happy returns of the day. You have just completed 70 years. How does it feel to look back?

Like any other human being, some painful experiences and some satisfactory. But it has been more of satisfaction even in a life of exile that has brought me and my people a lot of opportunities.

I have had a chance to meet so many people from various walks of life. It has been very helpful in enriching my own way of thinking. I think I have made a little contribution to the Tibetan issue, its people and Tibetan culture. These are sources of my satisfaction.

Promotions of human values, religious harmony and peace have been my three commitments to humanity. I have been able to promote them through my writings, lectures and speeches.

I carry different names like counterrevolutionary, god king, Nobel Laureate and splittist among others. In the sixties, the Chinese media described me a wolf in a Buddhist robe, a great honour for someone who practiced tolerance and patience.

Tibetans think that you are also a political leader apart from their spiritual head.

It is almost 400 years after the Dalai Lama became the spiritual and temporal head of Tibetans. In my case, at the age of 16, I took the responsibility of both.

After we came to India, during the early sixties, we adopted a draft constitution which says that the Dalai Lama's powers can be abolished by two-thirds of majority in the assembly.

Three years back, we already established an elected political leadership. Since then my position is one of semi-retirement. May be, I am an ex-politician. But you don't mix the kind of politics which I involve with party politics. My politics is one of nationalist struggle.

What lies at the core of your identity?

A simple Buddhist monk. In my dreams, I feel that I am a Buddhist monk, not the Dalai Lama. Most people describe me as a Nobel Laureate. Many invite me because I am a Nobel Laureate and not because I am a monk or the Dalai Lama. They do that may be to ward off the Chinese pressure.

Once Bishop Desmond Tutu told me that it was difficult for him to reach the White House and after he received the Nobel Peace Prize, the path was cleared for his visit. (Laughs)

The life of late Pope John Paul II and yours have been compared. The Pope fiercely campaigned against the Communist empire. Did your find similarities in the cause both of you were pursuing?

His Holiness Pope John Paul II was a man I held in high regard. His experience in Poland and my own difficulties with communists gave us an immediate ground.

The Pope was very sympathetic to the Tibetan problem. Of course, as the head of an institution trying to establish good relations with China and seriously concerned about the status of millions of Christians in china he could not express this publicly or officially.

But right from the start of our friendship he revealed to me privately that he had a clear understanding of the Tibetan problem because of his own experience of communism in Poland. This gave me great personal encouragement.

Do you think tolerance and non-violence succeeds in this world?

Ultimately yes. It depends on situations. It will take time. In spite of taking time, it is the only way. Every issue is a complex one. There is no easy solution.

In the twentieth century leaders like Stalin, Hitler or Chairman Mao, took the simple method of elimination but never achieved their goals. It is impossible to eliminate all your enemies because you eliminate one, another will be born. It is possible may be in animals, but not with human beings.

If a father is eliminated, his children and grand children may carry those memories.

They will carry a sense of revenge. Bin Laden, if we handle him with hatred and handle violently, there will be 100 Bin Laden in ten or twenty years. It is possible.

Gandhi's idea of non-violence was not only morally correct but also practically realistic.

This violence somehow has to stop. From where should it stop? It is very difficult to expect from the other side to stop. This side, we should create some positive atmosphere.

In our own Tibetan case, we are fully committed towards non-violence and the middle-way approach. Even though we have been victims, we have created a conducive atmosphere. Now the powerful side, the Chinese side, has to act.

The Chinese say development inside Tibet is necessary because of globalization. What are your views?

Whether you call it globalization or economic development, some form of development is necessary. We need development and it is most welcome. But the Chinese way of development is concentrated only in pockets, like in India. Everybody is concentrating in Bangalore.

The rural India is still undeveloped. India is predominantly agriculture based. I have a strong feeling that rural India must transform.

In Taiwan, the farming and agriculture is mechanized, all of them have good education and health and the standard of living is good. India should also develop in this manner.

This reminds me of one conversation with one Chinese leader in 1954-55 in Shanghai, then Mayor and later the Foreign Minister.

He told me one late evening that he has no interest in further developing Shanghai. The countryside is not developed in Tibet.

Skewed development may create a gap between the rich and poor which is not good. I was told by a Tibetan recently the present population in Lhasa is 300,000 and according to a plan, Lhasa city should expand to 800,000. Out of the 300,000, only 100,000 are Tibetans and the rest are Chinese.

The real economic development of the local Tibetans and their economy is really in question if you analyze in depth and look at the picture carefully and closely. The real picture will emerge when people will be able to speak without fear.

In a recent televised interview, you said you liked Chairman Mao, what made you say that?

Yes. He is quite calm and composed. When he speaks, each word carries some weight. Some people talk a lot and convey little. Each word of Chairman Mao's carried some meaning.

I was impressed with him. Though my knowledge of Chinese was limited, I could understand the importance of what he said through a good Chinese interpreter. Mao considered me almost like my son.

He was very close to me. I was impressed by his simplicity. He used wear worn-out clothes. Not like Zhou Enlai who looks to be very honest.

Later several books and documents have portrayed a different picture of Mao as a tyrant and one who was responsible for 800,000 deaths of Chinese in the recent book Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and her husband, Jon Halliday....

Do you think the current Chinese leadership has acquired a forward looking policy to find a solution for the Tibetan issue?

I think the Chinese policy on the Tibetan issue is linked to their overall policy. The current leadership has changed and the situation is different than what it used to be thirty years before.

Much has progressed. In the early fifties, they just emphasized the importance of ideology regardless of the reality. After Deng Xiaoping, reality has become more important, which I think has been a remarkable change.

It has been like two steps forward and one step backward, though I am not a specialist on China. On the Tibet issue, there has been no clear policy by the Chinese government. They also know 99% of Tibetans are against Chinese rule.

I think the Chinese government eventually will realize this. But then they themselves don't know how to tackle it. So the only way out for them is to politically tighten the grip and sanction lots of economic incentives.

They think this is the best policy. I don't think this will work. People in Basque (Spain) are economically well off but politically not satisfied.

Similarly in Quebec (Canada) in spite of a separatist movement, people want Quebec to remain in Canada. And also the case with Scotland.

They would want to remain with Great Britain provided they are satisfied. if people are satisfied, they would want to remain within Great Britain.

Political dominance will not succeed. Tibet will remain within People's Republic of China, that's my middle way of approach.

Give us meaningful autonomy, give us respect and trust us. In the meantime, economic development can continue and we will see what will benefit us. It is important a nation handles its citizens with respect.

The Chinese leadership seems to be unhappy because you keep meeting world leaders and going to countries who they don't like, for example Japan and Taiwan?

(Laughs) In that case, India should get protests on a daily basis. I am a guest of the Indian government for the past 46 years. (Laughs) The Indian Government has been taking care of the Tibetan community in the maximum possible way, including preservation of Tibetan culture.

The preservation of Tibetan culture, particularly Tibetan spirituality is quite successful. I think the most important part is Buddhist study and knowledge, it has been fruitful particularly in south India. They have major Buddhist learning centres. I gave some teachings last year to 12000 monks. Most of them were students which was very encouraging.

Do you think time is on your side when it comes to the Tibetan issue?

Oh.I don't think. I don't think. It is difficult to say although people from China as a whole are changing. In the transformation takes place quite rapidly, it will lead to a more positive outlook.

It will take time. May be 5 years, 10 years, or may be 20 years. If it should take 20 years then the survival of Tibet itself is in question. In Lhasa, the local population has become a minority.

The Tibetan language is not in use. Chinese is used in the shops, restaurants and everywhere. The official language is Chinese. Those students who have scored well in Tibetan are not promoted.

Only those Tibetans who speak Chinese get jobs easily. The present generation of Tibetans prefer to speak Chinese because of their job prospects.

Do you have something to say to the Chinese people?

Some of our Chinese brothers, even if they have a big letter in front of them can't read if they don't want to. Also they will only listen what they want to hear. Strange.

I have always admired the Chinese people and respect them. China is a great nation, the most populous nation and a very important member in the global community. They have an important role in the world.

Their 5000 year old history and civilization is equally important. There have been lots of ups and downs in the 20th century for them. Since 1949 there has been some stability.

But looking at stability alone is not sufficient. They must bring more openness, rule of law, democracy, religious freedom, human rights; these are important for their own interest and to be respected as important members of humanity. A closed society always creates fear amongst themselves and outside.

Take for example India and her big neighbour. It is a closed society, a nuclear power. Nuclear power is fine, but there should be freedom. It will be much better if it had religious freedom, transparency and rule of law, isn't? Perhaps I am conveying on behalf of India. What do you think?

Annie's sweet dreams of new temple

2006-07-05T14:57:00.000+08:00

SCOTS singing star Annie Lennox has given her backing to plans to create a Buddhist temple and cultural centre in Edinburgh. The singer wrote to a Buddhist friend to support the idea of a city temple. Ani Rinchen Khandro, has known the songwriter for 12 years. She said: "Annie's in town to receive a doctorate so it's good karma that I happen to be in [Edinburgh] at the same time. We're meeting to talk about the plans." The idea first surfaced late last year when Tibetan monks set their sights on converting a derelict church in Edinburgh's Old Town into a Buddhist temple and cultural centre. Blackfriars Street United Presbyterian Church was put on the market after lying empty for more than a decade. Although an anonymous Scots philanthropist submitted an offer for the building on behalf of the group earlier this year, the sale has been delayed. In her letter, the 51-year-old pop star wrote: "A facility such as this - a veritable peace centre - in the capital city of Scotland would be so appropriate, bearing in mind that culturally Edinburgh is regarded as a groundbreaking, finger-on-the-pulse, kind of place. "It would be a valuable asset to the local community, giving people the opportunity to join together in a positive and helpful way."

The Lesson of the Sand Mandala

2006-07-02T14:18:00.000+08:00

By DAVID WATERS, Scripps Howard News Service, June 28, 2006

Memphis, TN (USA) -- A few years ago, my wife and I took our two American sons to see 11 Tibetan Buddhist nuns. Not since Gulliver sailed to the land of Lilliputians has there been the potential for such a culture clash.

The nuns, driven from Tibet by Communist Chinese, live in exile at a nunnery in Nepal, but they were touring North America. When my sons arrived, exiled from the TV, the nuns were demonstrating the meditative ritual of making a sand mandala.

A sand mandala is a sacred masterpiece, a large geometrical design created meticulously with millions of grains of hand-crushed, vegetable-dyed marble.

The nuns sat silently and still for hours, leaning almost prostrate over an elaborate blueprint as they applied several grains at a time. The nuns said they don't worry that a sneeze or breeze will turn their design into dunes. They had yet to meet my 4-year-old son, Luke.

If the world were a chair, Luke couldn't live in it. His boisterous little body seems finely tuned to the fact that he's living on a rotating rock hurtling through space.

As Luke bounced precariously around the edge of the most amazing sandbox he ever saw, I was sure I was about to witness my first international incident. The nuns didn't seem to notice. Buddhists believe that practicing proper forms of concentration is the final step on the path to nirvana - perfect peace and happiness.

Apparently, these nuns are well along Buddha's path.

Buddha gave up a life of luxury to follow his path to enlightenment 2,500 years ago. He taught that people could find perfect peace and happiness by breaking attachments to worldly things.

This was long before the Home Shopping Network. And Buddha never encountered Zach, my brand-name-wearing, high-tech-craving 15-year-old son.

I thought Zach would be enthralled by the mandala. He's a talented artist. He's also the creature of a blockbuster, theme-park culture that turns beanbag toys into icons and religious objects into knickknacks.

So when he saw the mandala, he was a bit disappointed. "That's it?" he said. He figured something that takes days to construct at least would be something he could walk through. Then he found out what the nuns were going to do with the mandala when they finished it. Disappointment dissolved into disbelief.

Tuesday afternoon, after spending hours carefully constructing the mandala, the nuns swept the sand into a bowl and tossed it into a nearby lake. That's part of the ritual of making a mandala, a final act of letting go of the material in favor of the spiritual.

"But they could frame it and keep it," Zach said. "They could sell it and make some money."

I was a bit confused, too, at first. Why destroy it? But as I concentrated on the mandala, I felt a peace about it.

Someone somewhere still believes that beauty is a creation, not a collection. That holiness is a process, not a product. That what is sacred is not for sale.

How To Do A Meditation Retreat

2006-06-29T15:50:00.000+08:00

In the Buddhist cultures of Southeast Asia, the faithful traditionally mark the days of the full moon, half moon, and new moon by visiting temples, meditating, making offerings, and observing the precepts. In the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions, observing the Sabbath can be a profound weekly practice of letting go of work and ordinary concerns and turning hearts and minds toward spiritual matters. In a kind of extended Sabbath or “holy day,” retreats are times for dedicating oneself to spiritual life, and their roots are ancient. Some Christians look for inspiration to Jesus’ desert retreat in enacting their own retreat of prayer, contemplation, and renewal. Each year, the monks of Southeast Asia remain in retreat for the rainy season, as monastics have traditionally done, going back to the time of the Buddha.

Retreat is not only for the professionals, though. Anyone can undertake a retreat and reap its healing and transforming benefits. Think of it as a learning, growthful experience, or as a service to your highest, deepest, wise spiritual self. It is a gift to yourself and a gift to your loved ones, your colleagues, and all whom you encounter, who will benefit from your increase in focus, energy, physical and spiritual health, and productivity.

I went on my first retreat one weekend in 1968, while a freshman at the University of Buffalo. I had read some books about meditation, and I had heard about the teacher, Philip Kapleau Roshi, and about Zen in some Gestalt workshops I had attended that year, and was favorably impressed by the depth and clarity of the teachings, and by Kapleau Roshi’s wisdom and serene presence. But after the weekend was over, I was not able to keep up the practice on my own.

I only learned how to meditate on a daily basis a few years later, by going to several ten-day Vipassana (insight) meditation courses in India during the early Seventies. The master U Goenka was the teacher, and he stressed the continuity and simplicity of practice. At the beginning, it was tough going. The retreats were silent, austere, and physically and psychologically demanding. We slept on mats, and there were no flush toilets, no hot water, no diversions, no news from the outside world, no meals after noon in accordance with the tradition of monastics at the time of the Buddha. The day began at 4 am, and we meditated for twelve one-hour periods, in which we determined to sit without movement and follow the breath. This was interrupted only occasionally with some chanting or an interview or a dharma talk or a meal.

For the first five or six days, I struggled with the discomfort and pain of trying to sit still and relax in the midst of mosquitoes and extreme heat, but then something mysteriously happened, and I began to experience peace, relaxation and even bliss. My mind was sharply focused as a laser beam, and my awareness seemed incandescent, as never before. When I later told my teacher that, he laughed and said, "Beginner's luck! Don't get too excited, just keep meditating."

Without this valuable experience of actually doing meditation in a protected environment under the guidance of an experienced teacher, I doubt I would have been able to continue with daily practice and month in and month out, through whatever doubts, difficulties, challenges and distractions came along the way. Going to occasional refresher retreats with Goenka-ji and other Vipassana teachers during that decade kept me going. Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield were very helpful in leading retreats in America in the late Seventies that I could really enjoy.

I recommend spiritual retreat both to enter a particular practice path, and also as a way to recharge the inner battery, remain motivated, and overcome the inevitable hindrances and obstacles to going deeper on your spiritual path. Undertaking a personal retreat can benefit one on so many levels. If you want to experience an authentic Buddhist meditation retreat, try one of the Vipassana retreats, Zen sesshins, or Dzogchen retreats that you can participate in at a low cost throughout the country, for a period of time of between a weekend and three months in duration. There are also excellent hermitages where one can practice spiritually in solitude and nature, but I recommend that you experience group retreat and learn from a teacher before going off for too long on your own.

In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a tradition for committed practitioners to make a three-year, three-month, three-day "Great Retreat" once in a lifetime. In the Eighties, I twice completed this Great Retreat at the Dzogchen monastery and hermitage of my teacher Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. The group of dharma students retreating there, most of whom were Westerners, did nothing but meditate, pray, chant, study, and practice Tibetan yoga and "noble silence," which includes periods with no eye-contact, no reading, no writing. The beauty of "noble silence" is that it greatly deepens one's sense of solitude and facility for contemplation. We were ordained as monks or nuns for that period, during which time we took vows of celibacy, poverty, and obedience to our teachers, shaved our heads, and wore maroon and yellow Tibetan Buddhist monastic robes. We lived under the direct guidance of Khyentse Rinpoche and his colleague, the beloved teacher Dudjom Rinpoche.
Our lives were ordered by a precise schedule, which broke the typical day into two- or three-hour periods, beginning with our 4 am wake-up gong, during which I, along with the other students, meditated and practiced alone in our five-by-nine foot cells sparsely furnished with only a bed, an altar, and a storage trunk. Some years our bed was actually a meditation seat -- historically known in Tibet as "the Box” -- in which we sat up all night doing Tibetan dream yoga and clear light practice. For some periods of time, we concentrated on Tibetan tantric yoga exercises to awaken the energy body, develop inner heat (so-called "mystic incandescence"), and purify karma. During this time, we sat outside in the garden daily for two hours before dawn, dressed only in shorts, even in the winter. There was also a short work period every day after the lunch hour, during which some of us gardened, cleaned, and did household chores in the cloister, while others worked on translations, and copied scriptures and study materials.

We had no weekends, days off, or vacations. But we did celebrate Buddhist holidays, visits by grand lamas, initiations and empowerments, and auspicious full moon days, with various and extensive rituals, tantric feasts, round-the-clock chanting, and elaborate offering ceremonies.

As severe as all the regulation and structure may sound, retreats are set up this way for a reason, and offer great benefit to the retreatant: life becomes much simpler when pared down to the most basic routines, such as waking up to a gong, living according to a schedule marked by bells throughout the day, and wearing the same clothes and hairdo year in and year out -- not to mention remaining entirely cloistered and focused solely on one's spiritual life.

While such retreats are logistically difficult for most people to manage, there are many opportunities at Buddhist centers today to enter deeply into the same practices I learned while on retreat. American practice centers offer an abundance of weekend, weeklong, and ten-day meditation retreats. Even one-day "retreats" are available. I myself lead two dozen retreatseach year, through my Dzogchen Center. And I continue to spend at least two or three weeks every year in personal meditation retreat. The seclusion helps me reconnect more deeply with myself, my prayer life, and spiritual practice, and keeps me in touch with my teachers and lineage. And just as important, it integrates my spirituality into the path of everyday life throughout the rest of the year.

There are many kinds of retreat. There are meditation retreats, yoga retreats, wilderness and travel retreats; prayer retreats, writing retreats; solitary retreats and group retreats, men’s retreats and women’s retreats and young people’s retreats; activists’ retreats, business people’s retreats, artists’ retreats, parents’ retreats, and family retreats; there are silent retreats, there are seminar-like studious retreats; there are prayer vigil retreats and healing retreats and vision quest retreats; there are fasting retreats, there are special-diet retreats (vegetarian, kosher, fruitarian, etc.); there are retreats centered on specific subjects or practices.

Retreats can be undertaken according to different kinds of guidelines. They can be done by time, such as a one-day or weekend retreat, a weeklong retreat, a month retreat, a 100-day retreat, a one year or three year retreat, etc. They can be undertaken according to place, limits, subject matter, activity, etc. Some retreats provide tightly structured schedules, while others leave retreatants with a lot of free time.

In order to choose a retreat, you could ask your spiritual friends for suggestions and recommendations, or your spiritual director if you have one. Or ask yourself questions like: What are my aspirations for doing retreat, what are my spiritual interests and experience, and what environment would best facilitate their actualization? What are my limitations, physical, mental, financial, time-wise, etc.? Do I want to be silent and solitary, or am I looking for new like-minded friends? Some retreats are silent, with minimal (overt) interaction with other retreatants, while others facilitate group sharing through discussions, group practices, evening activities, etc.

For how long should I retreat? This will depend a lot upon your prior retreat experience. For some people, it may be best to start small with a half-day, daylong, or weekend retreat rather than jumping into a week or ten days of silence and/or solitude. What kind of structure would suit me: many scheduled activities, or lots of open time for my own established practices and interests? What kind of surroundings would be most conducive? (Workshop center or retreat center? Urban or rural? Basic or luxurious accommodations?) Do I need to conduct other activities while on retreat, or can I sequester myself entirely from the world during that period of time? What specific practices might I like to engage in? Do I want and need lots or little teaching? How much personal guidance or time with teachers and mentors?

There are various kinds of Buddhist retreats; each stress different kinds of practices, different schedules and practices. In our quarterly Dzogchen Center intensive retreats, we structure our time, place and activity and attitude according to the what I call the Ten S’s.

The Ten S’s:

1.        Silence
2.        Solitude, seclusion
3.        Self-discipline, morality
4.        Slowing down/stillness
5.        Softness, gentleness
6.        Sati (mindfulness)
7.        Self-inquiry
8.        Satya (truth)
9.        Selflessness, unselfishness
10.      Sacred Outlook

The first three are mostly outer; the second four internal; and the last three are innermost guidelines. Using this structure, you can really do a retreat almost anytime you choose, and structure it according to what is most conducive to accomplishing your goals during the period of time you can set aside for this worthwhile pursuit. One could even do this at home, by freeing oneself from all obligations, commitments, and responsibilities; turning off the phone, email, radio, and doing a news fast; and simply turning inwards for some period of time.

Solitude and loneliness are not necessarily synonymous. The great Tibetan master of old Marpa sang: “When I am alone in the mountains, I am never alone. All the Buddha and gurus accompany me. I feel blessed and delighted!”

I love to go on retreat. I think it is one of the greatest spurs to spiritual growth and realization. The secret of spiritual life is actually doing it; this means practice, not mere theory, belief, or membership. Take the opportunity to try it for yourself. I think you’ll love it.

Walking Meditation

2006-06-28T13:58:00.000+08:00

On-line Instruction with Charles MacInerney

Walking Meditation is a wonderful initiation for beginners into the art of Meditation. It is easy to practice, and enhances both physical, mental and spiritual well-being. It is especially effective for those who find it difficult to sit still for long periods of time. Some people enjoy practicing in a beautiful outdoor setting, like a park. Others prefer to practice indoors, due to poor weather, or desire for privacy.

Walking Meditation should generally be practiced for between 15 minutes to 1 hour. A 20 minute walking meditation can also be used as a break between two 20 minute sitting meditations, allowing 1 hour of meditation without placing undue demands on the practitioner.

You can practice indoors by walking around the perimeter of your largest room. If you practice outdoors choose a scenic and quiet setting. Walk without a destination. Wander aimlessly without arriving, being somewhere rather than going somewhere.

Start out walking a little faster than normal, and gradually slow down to a normal walking speed, and then continue to slow down until you start to feel artificial or off balance. Speed up just enough to feel comfortable, physically and psychologically. At first you may need to walk fairly fast to feel smooth in your gait, but with practice, as your balance improves, you should be able to walk more slowly.

Be mindful of your breathing, without trying to control it. Allow the breath to become diaphragmatic if possible, but always make sure your breathing feels natural, not artificial. Allow the breath to become circular, and fluid.

Walk with 'soft vision' allowing the eyes to relax and focus upon nothing, while aware of everything. Smile softly with your eyes (see Mirror Exercise in Vision Chapter for details). Gradually allow the smile to spread from your eyes to your face and throughout your body. This is called an "organic smile" or a "thalamus smile". Imagine every cell of your body smiling softly. Let all worry and sadness fall away from you as you walk.

Walk in silence, both internal and external.

Be mindful of your walking, make each step a gesture, so that you move in a state of grace, and each footprint is an impression of the peace and love you feel for the universe. Walk with slow, small, deliberate, balanced, graceful foot steps.

After a while, when both the breath and the walking have slipped into a regular pattern of their own accord, become aware of the number of footsteps per breath. Make no effort to change the breath, rather lengthen or shorten the rhythm of your step just enough so that you have 2, 3 or 4 steps per inhalation and 2, 3 or 4 steps per exhalation. Once you have discovered your natural rhythm, lock into it, so that the rhythm of the walking sets the rhythm for the breath like a metronome.

After several weeks of regular practice you may experiment with the ratios adding a foot step to your exhalation and later to your inhalation as well. Whatever ratio of steps-to-breath that you settle on, it should feel comfortable, and you should be able to maintain it for the duration of the meditation comfortably. After several months you may find your lung capacity improving. If you are comfortable, lengthen your breath an extra step but avoid trying to slow the breath too much or you will do more harm than good.

Notice the beauty of your surroundings, both externally and internally. Smile with every cell in your body.

The Essence of Buddhism

2006-06-26T21:44:00.000+08:00

What is the essence of the Buddha's teachings?

Simply speaking, it is to avoid harming others and to help them as much as possible. Another way of expressing this is the oft-quoted verse:

Abandon negative action;
Create perfect virtue;
Subdue your own mind.
This is the teaching of the Buddha.

By abandoning negative actions, such as hurting others, and destructive motivations, such as anger, attachment, and closed-mindedness, we stop harming ourselves and others. By creating perfect virtue, we develop beneficial attitudes, such as equanimity, love, compassion, and joy, and act constructively. By subduing our minds and understanding reality, we leave behind all false projections, thus making ourselves calm and peaceful.

We can also speak of the essence of the Buddha's teachings as they are explained in the Four Noble Truths: the truth of suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering and its causes, and the path to that cessation. When Buddha spoke about suffering, he meant that we have unsatisfactory experiences. Even the happiness we have does not last forever, and that situation is unsatisfactory. The causes of our problems lie not in the external environment and those inhabiting it, but in our own mind. The disturbing attitudes and negative emotions, such as clinging attachment, anger, and ignorance are the real source of our unhappiness. Since these are based on misconceptions about the nature of reality, they can be removed from our mindstream. We then abide in the blissful state of nirvana, which is the absence of all unsatisfactory experiences and their causes. A path exists to realize reality and increase our good qualities. The Buddha described this path, and we have the ability to actualize it.

The path is often described by the Three Higher Trainings: Ethical Discipline, Meditative Stabilization, and Wisdom. First, we must become a good human being who functions well in society and lives harmoniously with others. The Higher Training of Ethical Discipline enables us to do this. Because our actions and speech are now calmer, we can proceed to tame the mind by developing single-pointed concentration or the Higher Training of Meditative Stabilization. This leads us to cut the root of suffering, the ignorance grasping at inherent existence, and for this we develop the Higher Training in Wisdom, so that we can perceive reality as it is.

The Three Higher Trainings can be subdivided into the Noble Eight-fold Path. Ethical Discipline includes: 1) right speech: true, kind, and appropriate speech; 2) right activity: actions which do not harm others; and 3) right livelihood: obtaining our subsistence -- food, clothing, and so forth -- by non-harmful and honest means. The Higher Training of Meditative Stabilization includes: 4) right effort: effort to counteract the disturbing attitudes and negative emotions by meditating on the path; 5) right mindfulness: counteracting laxity and excitement in our meditation; and 6) right samadhi: the mind that can remain fixed one-pointedly upon virtuous objects. The Higher Training of Wisdom includes: 7) right view: the wisdom realizing emptiness, and 8) right thought: the mind that can explain the path clearly to others and is motivated by the wish for them to be free from suffering.

The essence of the Buddhist path is also contained in the three principal aspects of the path: the determination to be free, the altruistic intention (bodhicitta), and the wisdom realizing reality. Initially, we must have the determination to be free from the confusion of our problems and their causes. Then, seeing that other people also have problems, with love and compassion we will develop an altruistic intention to become a Buddha so that we will be capable of helping others most effectively. To do this, we must develop the wisdom that understands the true nature of ourselves and other phenomena and thus eliminates all false projections.

What is the goal of the Buddhist path?

The Buddhist path leads us to discover a state of lasting happiness for both ourselves and others by freeing ourselves from cyclic existence, the cycle of constantly recurring problems that we experience at present. We are born and die under the influence of ignorance, disturbing attitudes, and contaminated actions (karma). Although all of us want to be happy, and we try hard to get the things that will make us happy, no one is totally satisfied with his or her life. And although we all want to be free from difficulties, problems come our way without our even trying. People may have many good things going for them in their lives, but when we talk with them for more than five minutes, they start telling us their problems. Those of us who are in this situation, who are not yet Buddhas, are called "sentient beings."

The root cause of cyclic existence is ignorance: we do not understand who we are, how we exist or how other phenomena exist. Unaware of our own ignorance, we project fantasized ways of existing onto ourselves and others, thinking that everyone and everything has some inherent nature and exists independently, in and of itself. This gives rise to attachment, an attitude that exaggerates the good qualities of people and things or superimposes good qualities that are not there and then clings to those people or things, thinking they will bring us real happiness. When things do not work out as we expected or wished they would, or when something interferes with our happiness, we become angry. These three basic disturbing attitudes -- ignorance, attachment, and anger -- give rise to a host of other ones, such as jealousy, pride, and resentment. These attitudes then motivate us to act, speak, or think. Such actions leave imprints on our mindstreams, and these imprints then influence what we will experience in the future.

We are liberated from the cycle of rebirth by generating the wisdom realizing emptiness or selflessness. This wisdom is a profound realization of the lack of a solid, independent essence in ourselves, others, and everything that exists. It eliminates all ignorance, wrong conceptions, disturbing attitudes, and negative emotions, thus putting a stop to all misinformed or contaminated actions. The state of being liberated is called nirvana or liberation. All beings have the potential to attain liberation, a state of lasting happiness.

What are the Three Jewels? How do we relate to them? What does it mean to take refuge in the Three Jewels?

The Three Jewels are the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. A Buddha is one who has purified all the defilements of the mind -- the disturbing attitudes, negative emotions and their seeds, the imprints of the actions motivated by them, and the stains of these disturbing attitudes and negative emotions. A Buddha has also developed all good qualities, such as impartial love and compassion, profound wisdom, and skillful means of guiding others. The Dharma is the preventive measures that keep us from problems and suffering. This includes the teachings of the Buddha and the beneficial mental states that practicing the teachings leads to. The Sangha are those beings who have direct nonconceptual understanding of reality. Sangha can also refer to the community of ordained people who practice Buddha's teachings, but this sangha is the conventional representation of the Sangha Jewel, and is not the one we take refuge in.

Our relationship to the Three Jewels is analogous to a sick person who seeks help from a doctor, medicine, and nurses. We suffer from various unsatisfactory circumstances in our lives. The Buddha is like a doctor who correctly diagnoses the cause of our problems and prescribes the appropriate medicine. The Dharma is our real refuge, the medicine that cures our problems and their causes. By helping us along the path, the Sangha is like the nurse who assists us in taking the medicine.

Taking refuge means relying wholeheartedly on the Three Jewels to inspire and guide us toward a constructive and beneficial direction in our lives. Taking refuge does not mean passively hiding under the protection of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Rather, it is an active process of moving in the direction that they show us and thus improving the quality of our life.

When people take refuge, they clarify to themselves what direction they are taking in life, who is guiding them, and who their companions are on the path. This eliminates the indecision and confusion arising from uncertainty about their spiritual path. Some people window-shop for spirituality: Monday they use crystals, Tuesday they do channeling, Wednesday they do Hindu meditation, Thursday they do Hatha Yoga, Friday they have holistic healing, Saturday they do Buddhist meditation, and Sunday they use Tarot cards. They learn a lot about many things, but their attachment, anger, and closed-mindedness don't change much. Taking refuge is making a clear decision about what our principal path is. Nevertheless, it is possible to practice the Buddha's teachings and to benefit from them without taking refuge or becoming a Buddhist.

Must we be a Buddhist to practice what the Buddha taught?

No. The Buddha gave a wide variety of instructions, and if some of them help us live to better, to solve our problems and become kinder, then we are free to practice them. There is no need to call ourselves Buddhists. The purpose of the Buddha's teachings is to benefit us, and if putting some of them into practice helps us live more peacefully with ourselves and others, that is what's important.

Not Far From Buddhahood

2006-06-25T11:44:00.000+08:00

A university student while visiting Gasan asked him: "Have you even read the Christian Bible?"

"No, read it to me," said Gasan.

The student opened the Bible and read from St. Matthew: "And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these...Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself."

Gasan said: "Whoever uttered those words I consider and enlightened man."

The student continued reading: "Ask and it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh, is shall be opened."

Gasan remarked: "That is excellent. Whoever said that is not far from Buddhahood."

Can thai buddhism be saved from superstition?

2006-06-22T13:12:00.000+08:00

Mayura Wilainum-chokchai remembers having little interest in the extensive TV news coverage of the funeral of the Venerable Buddhadasa Bhikku 13 years ago. She had never heard of the monk before and simply assumed Buddhadasa was one of many famous Luang pu, senior monks with sacred powers.

Now 26, Mayura sees things very differently. She recently left her job as a graphic designer with a Japanese company in order to pursue graduate studies in the United States. Upon her return to Thailand, she plans to enter the teaching profession, starting a new life spreading Buddhadasa's dharma to the younger generation.

"I want to bring Buddhism to the attention of young people," she says. "I was almost too old when I learnt that Buddhist teachings can benefit someone like myself who never believed in superstitious stories or particularly liked going to temples full of ornate buildings and monks watching big-screen TVs with [Sony] Playstations".

Last night Mayura and some of her like-minded friends made the trip by train to Suan Mokkh or the "Garden of Liberation" founded by Buddhadasa 74 years ago, to join today's commemoration of the centenary of Thailand's most famous Buddhist scholar and reformer of Theravada Buddhism.

Mayura exemplifies a growing trend among young people, a trend which many Buddhist scholars hope will be able to save Thai Buddhism from a potentially shaky future.

"More than 80 per cent of people report that they are Buddhists, but I doubt that many of them really know about the essence of the Buddha's teaching," challenges Bancha Chalermchaikit, the owner of Sukapap Jai publishing house, which has printed Buddhadasa's books for more than two decades.

"Some 2,000 copies of Buddhadasa's books might stay on the shelves for four or five years while those about monks and nuns with supernatural powers can sell 100,000 copies in a few months."

Even worse, adds Phra Dussadee Methangul, a famous disciple of Buddhadasa, is that most of the nation's 300,000 Buddhist monks are not doing their job of helping people rid their minds of the ignorance that the Buddha taught is the root cause of delusion and suffering.

"The monks themselves may even be encouraging this delusion," explains Phra Dussadee. "They hand out lottery numbers and amulets and sprinkle holy water because they know that these are easy ways to draw people to their temples, and more visitors means more donations."

As Buddhadasa emphasised, such activities are far from what was at the essence of the Buddha's teachings, and as a result, critics charge, they are contributing to the religion's decline at a time when it may be needed more than ever.

An advocate of Buddhism, Dr Tienchai Wongchaisuwan observes that temples taking advantage of people's fears and hopes for a better life are acting little differently from corporations. "Multinational corporations exploit our ignorance surrounding how the craving for material possessions works and are systematically packaging it as 'modern culture'," he argues.

Other scholars agree. As consumerism becomes more sophisticated, it sells not only products but lifestyles and culture too. Ritualistic Buddhism benefits from that same approach: "It's about getting people to feel better about themselves", notes Dr Suwanna Satha-anand, a lecturer in philosophy at Chulalongkorn University.

"Commercial Buddhism is also selling something more abstract, such as meditation training that can make people feel momentary happiness," she notes.

"We have to admit that Buddhism [such as Buddhadasa taught] is a very difficult and demanding religion. It is a religion based on wisdom, not faith. To gain this wisdom, you have to not only intellectually understand the teaching but also practice it. It demands you rely on yourself, not gods."

But Phra Paisal Visalo, a well-known disciple of Buddhadasa, is not discouraged. He says the fact that an increasing numbers of people in the West are becoming interested in Buddhism and its logical explanation of life and suffering is an illustration of people failing to find the answer to life through material success.

He sees Thailand as no different and cites young people like Mayura as an example of the beginning of a similar trend. "This growth in material consumption does have a positive side. It allows religion an opportunity to present alternatives once people emerge from the myth that materialism leads to happiness," he says. "Moreover, advances like information technology can also help us monks to understand the outside world better and be more responsive to people's needs."

Phra Dussadee concurs, adding that maybe it is time for Buddhadasa's followers to become more aggressive in their networking to spread his teaching to wider groups in society. As Buddhadasa hoped, more laypersons are now beginning to teach dharma to fellow laypersons through books and lectures, as Mayura herself plans to do.

"Monks certainly face a tough challenge if they are still to be relevant in the future of Buddhism," advises Phra Dussadee. "We may lose relevance if they don't adjust to become more committed to learning and practising deeper dharma to fit our role as religious practitioners."

Ultimately, none of this may really matter if we follow the basic Buddhist teaching of impermanence, says Dr Suwanna. "Buddhadasa's teaching could eventually fade away, but as the monk himself stressed, Buddhism is a fundamental law of nature and will always be there for people to discover."

The first instalment in this three-part story appeared on Wednesday, and the second was printed yesterday.

Nantiya Tangwisutijit

The Nation

The Joyful Nun

2006-06-20T10:58:00.000+08:00

by Loke Poh Lin, New Straits Times, June 15, 2006

If anyone’s life has taken a complete 180-degree turn as a resultof a book, it is the Venerable Tenzin Palmo’s. From her first brush with Buddhism to her setting up of the Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery in 2000, hers is a fascinating tale of self-discovery, compassion and joy. LOKE POH LIN has the story.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia -- Meeting the Venerable Tenzin Palmo is like breathing clean, fresh mountain air. It’s calming and exhilarating at the same time. Robed in saffron and red, she spoke with a gentle voice, a smile ever ready on her radiant face.

Tenzin Palmo was in Kuala Lumpur to speak at the upcoming International Conference on Buddhist Women from Saturday to June 21, and we took the opportunity to have a chat with her.

Amazingly, her spiritual journey started in London when she was 18, after reading a book.

“Up to that time I was searching for a spiritual path. Then I joined a Buddhist society in London. Mind you, that was in the early 60s, before the hippie movement and general interest in Eastern religions.

“I got involved in the Sri Lankan Society as I was interested in Theravada Buddhism. Then I read a book dealing with an overview of Buddhism and while reading about Tibetan Buddhism and its four traditions: Nyingma, Sakyapa, Kargyupa, Gelugpa, a voice said ’You’re a Gelugpa’.

“The last thing I wanted to be involved in was Tibetan Buddhism! But this voice inside said ‘You are a Gelugpa’. I went to see a woman about this and she advised me to read The Life of Milarepa, about a great yogi of the 11th century. It was one of the few translated books at that time. When I read that book, I realised that this is my path.

“I started to learn Tibetan. And when I was 20 I went to India to look for a teacher.”

In 1964, she met her Tibetan guru, His Eminence the 8th Khamtrul Rinpoche, and became one of the first Westerners to be ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun.

She studied under him for six years, after which she was sent to Lahaul for more intensive practice.

For a further six years, she practised in the monastery there and remained in isolation during the long winter months.

Eventually, Tenzin Palmo sought more seclusion and found a nearby cave where she stayed 12 years in solitary retreat. This became the subject of a book by Vicki Mackenzie, Cave in the Snow.

The cheerful Tenzin Palmo’s main focus now is the Dongyu Gatsal Ling (DGL) Nunnery she founded in 2000.

“The lamas of my monastery (Khampagar, at Tashi Jong) requested that since there was nothing at that time, we should start a nunnery. For the last 13 years we have been raising funds for the nunnery. We have 38 nuns now but we are building for 100. Every year, we take in 20 more. They study Buddhist philosophy, meditation, language.”

Teachers are senior lamas and nuns who have had the opportunity of an education.

A browse through Tenzin Palmo’s website (www.tenzinpalmo.com) shows that the nuns receive accounting and budgeting lessons too — so that they will be able to run the nunnery well in the future.

The DGL Nunnery offers young women from Tibet and the Himalayan border regions of India, Bhutan and Nepal an opportunity to develop their intellectual and spiritual potential.

Tenzin Palmo adds, “In the past, nuns were regarded as girls who couldn’t get married. In the last 10 years this has changed. They have met nuns from Korea and Taiwan and seen how confident they are, how respected and empowered. And it inspires them.

“Tibetans should introduce higher ordination for nuns. Nuns should have the opportunity to become more educated, same as the monks, but this has been denied women. The lamas themselves are most keen to help teach the nuns. Certainly the ones who have taught our nuns love teaching our girls. And have been apologetic that they have not thought about this in the past.

“Historically, the trend among women to not appreciate their own gender has not served aspiring nuns well. Their needs were not expressed. It is changing now, with a gentle, quiet revolution. Hopefully they will progress to advanced degrees. Now our concern is for higher ordination for nuns.

“We have discussed the introduction of higher ordination for nuns in the Tibetan tradition. Things are moving along. Now young scholars are also researching the bikkshunis (ordained nuns) and how ordination has come about.”

At present nuns in the Tibetan tradition can only receive the vows of a novice. The lamas were supportive while raising some points which would need to be addressed before the full ordination can be bestowed within their tradition.

When asked why there has been a lack of interest in training nuns and integrating them into the mainstream of Buddhist clergy, she answered: “It has been pointed out that if they had introduced ordination of nuns 20 years ago, it would not have been successful. The nuns were not educated. It would not have worked. Now it’s different. Nuns are more confident and have more self esteem.

“The nuns always had more difficulty in surviving. The nunneries rely on the generosity of lay patrons. When resources are scarce, the monks would get the vote. Women are not supportive of their own gender. Somehow the monks seem more meritorious. So generally there’s much less devotion towards nuns.

“Even now, with nuns coming into their own, their nunneries are rundown and struggling. Each monastery has a head, but the nuns have no one to represent them. It’s always a struggle to keep going. So through the ages, there has been fewer and fewer nuns.There weren’t enough good teachers to teach. Now, it’s different. Our professors really love our nuns and are proud of the fact that they teach them. The Dalai Lama is very supportive of the nuns also. He himself says that the future of the Dharma is in the hands of the women.”

The world lives in fear, intolerance and distrust. I asked Tenzin for advice on how to help us cope.

She said, “Buddhism is a path which leads to peace and lovingkindness and compassion. The world is full of violence and greed because it’s inhabited by minds which are working by themselves. Many disasters are brought about by the humans. We are unbelievably destructive. We have to change our minds, and purify our minds and cleanse ourselves.

“Greed, anger, arrogance, jealousy – all the negative energies would be gone if we can control our minds. Greed goes closely with anger and frustration. Materialism is nothing to do with levels of happiness. Buddha said greed is like salty water. You can swallow the whole ocean and never satisfy your thirst.

-------------------
Tenzin Palmo and a host of international speakers will be sharing their insights at the 9th Sakyadhita International Conference on Buddhist Women in Kuala Lumpur from Saturday to June 21, 2006. For more details, log on to www.sakyadhita.org.

Former convicts make a new life for themselves through Buddhism

2006-06-16T15:25:00.000+08:00

Taiwan Headlines, June 15, 2006

Taipei, Taiwan -- No on paid much attention to Chen Yung-chuan after he suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed. Chen initially wanted to kill himself. In Chen's greatest hour of need, Master Chan Kung brought Chen to a Buddhist compassion organization where people there took care of him.

At the center, Wu Tung-hsing, who used to work in the underground sex trade and displayed quite an unpredictable temper, volunteered to take Chen under his wing and care for him. He not only cleaned up after Chen after he went to the bathroom, but also provided assistance in his physical rehabilitation. In what amounted to a miraculous recovery, Wu nurtured Chen back to health in just a few short months. Even doctors expressed surprise at Chen's recovery.

Master Chan Kung was originally a gangster involved in a crime syndicate. Ten years ago, he established a Buddhist compassion center, the Ta-chueh Tung-hsin-hui, to provide shelter to people and help them in starting a new life.

Countless criminals have spent time at the facility, which has helped them change their lifestyles and become more charitable, even becoming devout Buddhists. About a half a year ago, the Taiwan After-care Association and the Tainan Detention Center sent the center someone who was primed to start a new life. The work involved in getting Chen on the right path, however, was much more difficult than for many others who had come through the center's doors. The reason for this was that the person sent to the center was completely paralyzed and had no means of speaking.

Master Chan Kung said Chen had been imprisoned after being convicted of theft. When Chen had his stroke, he was sent to a hospital for treatment. Despite his serious condition, no one made any inquiries about Chen. Master Chan Kung said, "Many people are not even willing to throw away a rotten banana. Instead, what they do is cut off the rotten part and then eat the rest." He said that one should not abandon life and at the worst times. It was in this spirit that he decided to claim Chen and take him back to the center where he could be taken care of.

Initially, Chen had no control of his bodily functions and would urinate and defecate at will. He would soil his clothes and the bed to which he was confined. None of the people who were residing at the facility wanted to have anything to do with cleaning up after Chen. Wu Tung-hsing, however, decided to take on the task without even having to be asked. Given Chen's long battle with illness, he no longer wanted to continue on with life and wanted to die. Wu Tung-hsing has to constantly be on the look out in case Chen tried to commit suicide.

Even though taking care of Chen was quite a task, Wu Tung-hsing's studies in Buddhism served him well; he looked upon the job with a sense of compassion. While he was taking care of Chen, he would constantly pray to Buddha to give Chen life. After giving the utmost attention to Chen over a period of time, Chen gradually began to get better. Chen, who originally was not able to speak, one day all of a sudden uttered a six syllable Buddhist couplet Om Ma Ne Pad Me Hom. Both Master Chan Kung and Wu Tung-hsing were both surprised and delighted that Chen said the words. They both attributed Chen's remarkable progress to the power of Buddhism.

Chen presently is still in the stage of rehabilitation. Nonetheless, he has decided to commit himself to the study of Buddhism. In order to reduce the burden that he presents to others, he each day takes it upon himself to struggle up and down the stairs in order to rehabilitate his legs. He hopes one day to be totally rehabilitated, both mentally and physically, and to be able to accompany Master Chan Kung to prisons throughout Taiwan so that he can tell his story.

Wu Tung-hsing said that in his younger years, he got on the wrong track, and before long found himself addicted to drugs and alcohol. In addition, at the time he had even opened the largest house of ill repute in Tainan. In 1978, the establishment was raided, and the move attracted quite a bit of attention at the time. He was tried and ultimately sent to jail on drug offenses as well as offenses against morals. In the days after that, his wife and children left him, and he went through a very tough time. This forced him to consider his past, however, and it was at this time that he decided to repent.

Wu said that in those early years, he wanted to kick the drug habit, but every time he would start to go through withdrawal, he would lose all rationality. The only thing that occupied his mind was to get the quick thrill of inhaling drugs and how to obtain the drugs he needed. He said that every day of his life was a battle between his will and his drug addiction. In order to once and for all kick drugs, he moved to someplace where he knew no one and worked as a bundler. The work was hard and he would perspire profusely. He became so preoccupied with the work, however, that this enabled him to forget about drugs.

Over 10 years ago, he first came into contact with Buddhist doctrine and began reading a lot of Buddhist scripture. While Wu spent a lot of time trying to understand this new knowledge to him, he really was not yet able to internalize it. Then he met Master Chan Kung, he helped to unravel the mysteries for him. Wu finally understood that blindly reading and reciting the texts in the past really were of no meaning. He needed to realize the meaning through doing good and charitable deeds. Wu said that these days, no matter how hard or dirty the task, even cleaning up after someone who has lost continence, he looks upon this work as a means to provide more training for himself in practicing the meaning of Buddhism.

Wu stressed that after he had his epiphany, he decided to give up his business in injection machinery. He also resigned from his job as a manager at a security company. His main goal in life was to work with Master Chan Kung and live a life of Buddhist compassion. He often makes trips to correctional facilities throughout Taiwan where he tells his story how he finally kicked his drug addiction. Wu said he believes that his life as it is now carries more meaning than anything he's done in the past.

Source:Liberty Times (2006/06/13)

Buddhism With a New Mind-Set

2006-06-14T23:07:00.000+08:00

by James Estrin, The New York Times, June 13, 2006

New York, USA -- Western spiritual seekers who have focused on meditation have fueled a remarkable growth in Buddhist practice in the United States. So what to do if you are part of an ancient Buddhist tradition that is huge in Asia but has failed to catch on in the United States, in part because it has no real place for meditation?

Mediation is part of the service at the New York Buddhist Church.
The practice is now embraced by more Buddhist groups.
By MICHAEL LUO, New York Times, June 13, 2006

Change the tradition.

That is what the Rev. T. Kenjitsu Nakagaki of the New York Buddhist Church and other leaders of the Buddhist Churches of America, one of the oldest and most established Buddhist movements in the country, are doing.

The 65 temples across the country that make up the church network are part of a school of Buddhism known as Pure Land that is one of the most widespread in the world and was once a thriving part of the Japanese-American community. Over the last few decades, however, the movement has lost two-thirds of its United States members as a result of assimilation and the diminishing numbers of Japanese coming to this country.

Spurred by a new reform-minded bishop, Koshin Ogui, a growing number of the movement's temples have abandoned their traditional lack of interest in meditation and are offering the practice as a way to survive by reaching out to non-Japanese adherents.

<< The Rev. T. Kenjitsu Nakagaki says he wants to bring Buddhism to Americans - by James Estrin/The New York Times

In some ways, the story line is familiar. Religious traditions have long adapted to fit changing cultural circumstances. Consider how Hanukkah, a relatively minor holiday on the Jewish religious calendar, has leaped in importance among many Jews in the face of the crush of attention surrounding Christmas in this country. But while Zen and Tibetan Buddhism — the Buddhist forms that have largely driven the religion's surge among Western practitioners — focus on meditative practices as a way to achieve enlightenment, Shin Buddhism, the Pure Land school that the Buddhist Churches of America embraces, teaches that meditation is ultimately useless because of the inherent human limitations.

But the Rev. Marvin Harada, of the Orange County Buddhist Church in Anaheim, Calif., who started a Sunday meditation service several years ago, sees an interim use — to calm the mind so it can receive Buddhist teaching.

"It's really something that's needed in our modern lifestyle," he said, because that lifestyle "is so hectic, so fast-paced, we have a shorter attention span." Only by renouncing all self-effort in attaining enlightenment and trusting in what Shin Buddhists call "Other Power," embodied in the form of the Amida Buddha, revered by Shin adherents, can a believer attain birth in the transcendent realm of Pure Land. That is a place — similar to the Christian concept of heaven — where nirvana can be achieved.

"Shin Buddhism defines itself as a form of Buddhism that does not rely on meditation," said Matthew Weiner, a Buddhism analyst for the Interfaith Center of New York. "It's not just a stylistic difference. That's why this is so kind of radical, in a sense."

The growing incorporation of meditation into Shin Buddhism also offers an intriguing study of how white converts, who are actually outnumbered by their Asian immigrant counterparts in the United States but have driven the rising profile of Buddhism here, are reshaping Buddhist practice.

As a minister in Cleveland and Chicago, Bishop Ogui said he began offering meditation several years ago because 60 percent of the people who called his temple were asking about it. Any venture that turns away that many potential customers, he said, is bound to close.

Clergy members "are supposed to respond to the needs of the people," Bishop Ogui said. "Any program, including meditation, tai chi, yoga, anything which makes people feel comfortable, or willing to step into the temple, should be offered."

At the New York Buddhist Church, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Mr. Nakagaki has been leading meditation classes and incorporating the practice into his Sunday services for years. On a recent Wednesday evening, for example, Mr. Nakagaki, seated on a mat, led a small group of followers, most of them non-Asian practitioners, in an extended period of sitting quietly and concentrating on breathing.

It is a familiar scene to those accustomed to the Buddhism that has come into vogue among white spiritual seekers, many of whom have jettisoned Buddhism's other tenets to focus exclusively on meditation.

Colin Anderson, 47, a regular participant in New York Buddhist Church's class, drops in on meditation centers all over the city.

"I don't see it as a religion," he said. "I see it as more of a science of the mind."

The concept that is taught at many meditation centers — that controlling one's mind can lead to better controlling one's actions — which might lead to being reborn into a better life, makes sense to him.

"You're in control of your own life with your own karma," he said.

But that idea directly contradicts what Shinran, the founder of Shin Buddhism, taught some 800 years ago. Shinran came to Pure Land after growing frustrated with meditation and other practices taught by other Buddhist schools. He advocated that believers not pursue any specific practice but instead trust in the Amida Buddha's infinite wisdom and compassion for liberation from the endless cycle of life, death and rebirth.

"Shin is based on entrusting, entrusting in the idea that we as human beings are limited, and we're incapable of cultivating ourselves," said the Rev. Fumiaki Usuki of the West Los Angeles Buddhist Church, who described himself as wary of the growing use of meditation among his fellow Buddhist Churches of America ministers.

"Just because we have meditation doesn't mean these people are going to stay," he said. "They're driven by this Hollywood aura of meditation. They're supermarket shopping."

Nevertheless, on Sundays at the New York Buddhist Church, which is now about 70 percent non-Japanese, Mr. Nakagaki begins services with five to seven minutes of meditation.

The meditative practices are a bridge to usher the curious into a Buddhist tradition that can be difficult to grasp, Mr. Nakagaki said.

"My way of thinking, it is a form of kindness, a form of compassion to help them understand Pure Land Buddhism better," he said.

The growing use of meditation has sparked a debate within the Buddhist Churches of America about whether its priests are going too far in catering to the whims of an audience that many Asian Buddhists see as dabblers.

"I am maybe more conservative than some," said the Rev. Gregory Gibbs of the Oregon Buddhist Temple, who came to Shin Buddhism after years of Zen practice. "We don't want to obscure our fundamental teaching."

The debate has also highlighted fissures among Asian practitioners, who tend to be more traditional, and Western spiritual seekers.

"There's a split between converts and so-called ethnic Buddhists," said Jeff Wilson, a contributing editor to Tricycle, a Buddhist magazine, who is working on a doctorate on Buddhism in America at the University of North Carolina and has followed the debate over meditation in Shin Buddhist circles closely. "The people in the so-called ethnic component tend to think of the converts as very elitist, that they're taking over Buddhism and changing it."

Shin Buddhist leaders in Japan, worried about doctrinal purity, have also questioned the changes Bishop Ogui is encouraging.

"Whatever people worry about in Japan does not make sense most of the time here," Bishop Ogui said. "In America, we have to understand the American culture, and we have to go along with these unique differences."

In some ways, Pure Land Buddhism has always been at a disadvantage in this country because its teachings about the Amida Buddha make it appear similar to Christianity. During World War II, Shin Buddhist practitioners also started calling their temples "churches" and holding regular Sunday services as a way to appear more Christian in the face of anti-Japanese discrimination. Many Westerners looking for the exotic, or an alternative from their Judeo-Christian upbringing, have gone elsewhere. Now Shin Buddhist leaders are hoping to lure them back.

At the New York Buddhist Church, the meditation classes, along with other changes that Mr. Nakagaki has incorporated, including shaving his head and wearing a robe to look more like monks from other Buddhist branches, appear to have had some effect.

Mr. Nakagaki's congregation has grown to about 50 people on Sundays from fewer than 20 when he first started, a little over a decade ago. But attendance is not his primary concern, he said. He merely wants to bring Buddhism to the American people.

Gandhi proclaimed himself a Buddhist

2006-06-14T22:58:00.000+08:00

by PK Balachandran, The Hindustan, June 12, 2006

Colombo, Sri Lanka -- In the 1920s, Mahatma Gandhi proclaimed himself a Buddhist, saying that Buddhism was rooted in Hinduism and represented its essence. During his visit to Sri Lanka in 1927, Gandhi had no hesitation in declaring that he was a "Buddhist" because he saw Buddhism as cleansed Hinduism.

<< Mahatma Gandhi

In his book Gandhiji in Ceylon (S Ganesan, Publisher, Triplicane, Madras 1928) his Secretary and chronicler Mahadev Desai quotes Gandhi as saying that the Buddha was a "Hindu of Hindus".

In a speech at the Young Men's Buddhist Association, Gandhi said: "He (Gautama) was saturated with the spirit of Hinduism, with the Vedic spirit."

"And so far as I am aware, he never rejected Hinduism or the message of the Vedas."

What the Buddha did was to introduce a "living reformation in the petrified faith that surrounded him," Gandhi said. In a speech delivered at the renowned Buddhist college, Vidyodaya, in Colombo, Gandhi said that it was his "deliberate opinion" that the essential parts of the teachings of the Buddha formed an "integral part of Hinduism."

"By his immense sacrifice, by his great renunciation and the immaculate purity of his life, he left behind an indelible impress upon Hinduism," Gandhi said of the Buddha.

"And Hinduism owes an eternal gratitude to that great teacher," he added.

"It is my fixed opinion that Buddhism or rather the teachings of the Buddha found its full fruition in India, and it could not be otherwise, for Gautama was himself a Hindu of Hindus."

"He was saturated with the best that was in Hinduism, and he gave life to some of the teachings that were buried in the Vedas and which were overgrown with weeds."

"His great Hindu spirit cut its way through the forest of words, meaningless words, which had overlaid the golden truth that was in the Vedas."

"He made some of the words in the Vedas yield a meaning to which the men of his generation were strangers."

"And he found in India, the most congenial soil," Gandhi asserted.

"Buddha never rejected Hinduism but broadened its base. He gave it a new life and a new interpretation," the Father of the Indian Nation said.

He then went to the extent of saying that what Hinduism did not take from Buddhism, was not important.

"I would venture to tell you that what Hinduism did not assimilate of what passes for Buddhism today, was not an essential part of Buddha's life and teachings."

The Buddha's teaching was, like his heart, "all expanding and all embracing", which made it survive his own body and sweep across the face of the earth.

"I claim that this achievement is a triumph of Hinduism," Gandhi declared.

Lankans urged to study Hinduism

At the Young Men's Buddhist Association, Gandhi told Sri Lankan Buddhists to study Hinduism too. "I venture to suggest to you that your study of Buddhism will be incomplete unless you study the original sources from which the Master derived his inspiration, that is, unless you study Sanskrit and Sanskrit scriptures," he said.

Buddhism deep-rooted in India

Gandhi said that India might lack the external trappings of Buddhism today, but the Buddhist ideology had deep roots in India, and was pervasive in its influence.

"What passes under the name of Buddhism now may have been driven out of India, but the life of the Buddha and his teachings are by no means driven out of India," he said.

And it was "impossible" for Hindu India to retrace its steps and reject the Buddhistic elements in it, he asserted.

Given his belief that Buddhism was but a cleansed form of Hinduism and the very essence of Hinduism, Gandhi said he was a Buddhist.

He told the students of Vidyodaya that his eldest son accused him of being a Buddhist. Some other Indians accused him of spreading Buddhism under the guise of "Sanatana Hinduism".

But he pleaded guilty to the charge.

"I sympathise with my son's accusations and the accusations of my Hindu friends. And sometimes I feel even proud of being accused of being a follower of the Buddha, and I have no hesitation in declaring in the presence of this audience that I owe a great deal to the inspiration that I have derived from the life of the Enlightened One," he said.

That was what he said to modern Sri Lanka's foremost Buddhist revivalist, Anagarika Dharmapala, at a function to open a Buddhist temple in Calcutta.

Calls for reform of present-day Buddhism

However, Gandhi strongly felt that Buddhism, as practiced in his time, needed reform. At Vidyodaya, he said though Buddhists outside had taken in a large measure the teachings of the Buddha, an examination of their lives, whether in Sri Lanka, Burma, China or Tibet, showed that there were inconsistencies between Buddhism as he understood it, and Buddhism as practiced by people in these countries.

Elaborating this theme, Gandhi said that there was a mistaken notion that Buddhism rejected the concept of God and that the Buddha did not believe in God.

"In my humble opinion such a belief contradicts the very central fact of Buddha's teaching," he said.

"It seems to me the confusion has arisen over his rejection of all the base things that passed in his generation under the name of God ."

"His whole soul rose in mighty indignation against the belief that a being called God required for his satisfaction the living blood of animals in order that he might be pleased -- animals which were his own creation."

"He therefore reinstated God in the right place and dethroned the usurper who for the time being seemed to occupy that White Throne.'

"He emphasised and re-declared the eternal and unalterable existence of the moral government of this universe. He unhesitatingly said that the Law was God himself."

"God's laws are eternal and unalterable and not separable from God himself. It is an indispensable condition of his very protection," Gandhi said. The confusion over God had blurred the true meaning of the term Nirvana he said.

"Nirvana is not utter extinction after death."

"Nirvana is the utter extinction of all that is base in us, all that is vicious in us. Nirvana is not like the black, dead peace of the grave, but the living peace, the living happiness of a soul which is conscious of itself and conscious of having found its own abode in the heart of the Eternal," Gandhi said.

Need to respect sanctity of life

Gandhi was very much disturbed by the lack of respect for the sanctity of life in Buddhist countries as well as India where Buddha lived and preached.

Buddha's greatest attribute was the "exacting regard" he gave to all forms life, including the lowliest, he said. The Buddha considered the lives of even the smallest creature on earth to be as precious as his own.

"It is an arrogant assumption to say that human beings are lords and masters of the lower creations. On the contrary, being endowed with the greater things in life, they are trustees of the lower animal kingdom."

"And the greatest sage lived that truth in his own life," Gandhi said as he went on to relate how the Buddha clutched a lamb and would not give it to a set of "arrogant and ignorant Brahmins" who were planning to perform a sacrifice with it.

Plea to adopt vegetarianism

Gandhi said that he did not know what the position in Sri Lanka was, but he knew that in Burma, the Burmese Buddhists would not themselves kill animals, but did not mind others killing the animals for the table.

He used the strong word "carcasses" for meat at the table.

He decried the pervasive drinking habit in Sri Lanka, especially among the poor, and said that it was opposed to the spirit of all religions, "most decidedly" Buddhism. In a speech in Badulla on November 19, 1927, Gandhi said that he was "pained" to hear that even some Buddhists observed the "curse of untouchability" and that untouchable women were forbidden to wear upper garments.

"If you believe in untouchability you totally deny the teaching of the Buddha," he said.

Communalism is a "blight"

In a talk at the premier nationalistic organization, the Ceylon National Congress on June 22, 1927, Gandhi deplored the way communalism was being promoted in Sri Lanka, and described the phenomenon as a "blight".

"I read casually only today, something in praise of communalism. In India also we have this blight -- we call it a blight, we don't praise it."

"In India we have to deal with 300 million people. But you have to deal with such a small mass of men and women that it is a matter of pain and surprise for me to find a defence -- an energetic defence -- of this communalism."

Communalism, he cautioned, was "totally opposed to nationalism."

Gandhi said that Sri Lanka would never get genuine self government unless all the communities speak with one voice and not merely as Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sinhalese, Tamils and Malays.

Westernisation as a divider

Gandhi was disturbed by the deep rooted Westernisation that he saw in Sri Lanka, and said that it should be eschewed because it created divisions among the people.

Rebuking Sri Lankans who were going in for "all kinds of fashions and styles," Gandhi said: " Do not for the sake of your country ape the manners and customs of others which can only do harm to you, and for heaven's sake, do not wish to be what everyone of the people of Ceylon cannot be."

Sri Lanka was called Ceylon prior to 1972.

Gandhi hailed the movement to teach Sri Lankan children through their mother tongue. In a speech at Mahinda Collge at Galle in the deep south of the island, he said: " I am certain that the children of the nation who receive instruction in a tongue other than their own commit suicide. It robs them of their birth right."

"A foreign medium means an undue strain upon the youngsters and isolates them from their home. I regard therefore such a thing as a national tragedy of first importance."

But Gandhi urged the learning of Sanskrit in Sri Lanka, since the Buddha himself, who he described as the "Indian of Indians" had "derived his inspiration from Sanskrit writings."

Wanted Lanka to set an example to India

Gandhi described Sri Lanka as a "fragrant pearl dropped from the nose ring of India."

In a speech delivered at a meeting of Indians in Jaffna on November 27, he said that he wished Sri Lanka would be an improved version of India, which had fallen on bad times. Sri Lanka should be the model for India, its "glorious edition" as he put it.

"Why should not the people of Lanka who have inherited and adopted the teachings of the great Master do better than the children of the motherland?" Gandhi asked.

One hundred years of Buddhism in Hamburg

2006-06-09T22:15:00.000+08:00

by Michael den Hoet, The Buddhist Channel,

Hamburg, Germany -- Buddhism in the West – just a fashionable trend? Not at all! As early as the 19th century people in Germany began to develop an interest in Buddhism. The most prominent of all was the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860) who called himself a "Buddhaist" 150 year ago.

The first Buddhist Group was established in Hamburg one hundred years ago, in 1906. The members of this group were not Asian immigrants nostalgically striving to keep up their native traditions but Germans looking to expand their horizons.

As a city traditionally active in international trade, Hamburg developed an interest in foreign cultures very early. Intellectuals were especially interested in Buddha's teachings. In 1914 a professorship for Indian studies was established at the “Colonial Institute”, later at the university (founded in 1919), and Buddhism was on the curriculum.

Two Buddhist groups were very active in Hamburg during the 1920s, but the intellectual narrowness of the Nazi dictatorship brought them both to a halt. After World War II people interested in Buddhism got together again. 1954 saw the founding of the “Buddhistische Gesellschaft Hamburg” (BGH), which brought together various small groups of differing styles.

Hamburg Buddhists founded the “Haus der Stille” in Roseburg in 1962, which was the first meeting and retreat place in the countryside. By the end of the Sixties the first Zen groups had appeared, and by the middle of the Seventies the first Tibetan Buddhist centres were founded in H amburg.

Today, about 40 Buddhist centres and groups are active in Hamburg, representing the whole range of Buddhism from the more traditional Asian style to the modern western style – there are groups practising Theravada, Zen and the various schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Today several thousand citizens of Hamburg practice Buddhism in one of those groups and centres. At the university courses are offered in Buddhism as well as Tibetan philology.

Buddhism Lives!

Although Buddhism is generally regarded with sympathy in the West, it is not generally seen in public. Buddhism has however been present in Hamburg for more than a hundred years. Today there is a lively Buddhist scene in and around Hamburg. You can get in touch with these groups on Sunday, 11th June 2006. In a beautiful, family friendly, open-air setting these Buddhist groups will celebrate Vesakh, one of the most important Buddhist holidays of the Buddhist cultures of Asia. This year’s festivities also serve to celebrate 100 years of Hamburg Buddhism, the first Buddhist group having been established in 1906.

The Vesakh event will take place at the "Große Wallanlagen" in "Planten un Blomen" near Millerntor (not to be confused with the main entrance of the Congress Centre, located 1,5 km away). From 11.30 am until 8 pm Hamburg Buddhist groups invite you (free of charge) to enjoy events such as introductory talks, meditation, ceremonies and Zen archery as well as an enticing music program, in various tents around the meadow and in a small amphitheatre.

We are very proud to present a Special Guest from Nepal: The famous singing nun Ani Choying will perform Tibetan songs. Ani Choying is well-known through concert tours in Asia, Norterhn America and Europe.

The Vesakh celebration is organised by a team of 17 different Buddhist centres and groups in Hamburg.

What is Vesakh?

Vesakh is the world's most important Buddhist celebration.

It is the day of the birth, enlightenment and death of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni who lived nearly 2500 years ago. For most of the Buddhist countries in Asia Vesakh is a national holiday, celebrated at the full moon in May or in early June. Some years ago the United Nations (UNO) recognized Vesakh as an official worldwide holiday.

In Germany Buddhists of different traditions also celebrate Vesakh together. In major German cities such as Munich and Berlin, public celebrations of Vesakh are a regular part of the cultural calendar.

In recent years Buddhists began to celebrate Vesakh in Hamburg. The most successful celebration to date was in 2005, when more than 5000 visitors enjoyed Hamburg’s first open-air Vesakh celebration and beautiful weather.

Website in German: www.vesakh-hamburg.de

June 7, 2006

Prisoner denied access to book on Zen Buddhism

2006-06-08T21:42:00.000+08:00

Prisoner denied access to book on Zen Buddhism by Gowanda Correctional Facility, Gowanda, New York USA by Kooi Fong Lim, The Buddhist Channel, June 5, 2006

Zen teacher Venerable Kobutsu Malone engages in persistent and peaceful means to reverse ban order

Gowanda, New York (USA) -- A prisoner at the Gowanda Correctional Facility in New York State; William "Red" Graham has been denied access to a basic introductory text on Zen Buddhism entitled "Prison Chaplaincy Guidelines for Zen Buddhism" authored by Venerable Kobutsu Malone.

The facility's "Media Review Committee" will not allow William to receive a copy of the book due to a non-existent regulation which it lists as "Depicts/describes procedures to be implemented solely by Administration.

According to Ven. Kobutsu, the ban covers from pages 1-74, and since the book text is 74 pages in length - the prison authorities are objecting to the entire volume, except for the cover and the preliminary pages.

The primary objective of Ven. Kobutsu's recently published book is to provide valid information to prisoners, correctional and judicial professionals about the practices of Zen Buddhism in prisons and jails. The information presented is primarily about Zen and serves to illustrate, in a general sense, Buddhist practice in prison. The examples of liturgy and descriptions of monastic practices provided are representative of the Rinzai Zen Buddhist sect.

I'm astonished, said a perplexed Ven. Kobutsu, that the prison authorities have objected to basic Buddhist teachings such as the 'Heart Sutra', and other fundamental Buddhist principles such as 'The Three Marks of Existence', 'The Four Noble Truths' and 'The Ten Precepts' contained within the 74 pages saying that these are 'procedures to be implemented' by a functionary of the state.

What specific procedures implemented solely by Administration found in "Prison Chaplaincy Guidelines for Zen Buddhism" are being objected to?

According to the State of New York Department of Correctional Services (NYSDOCS) Directive # 4572 Media Review (Last updated 10/02/2000), it states in section II (Standards) a list of guidelines (A. through H) by which literature for prisoners is evaluated.

A comprehensive review of the directive's guidelines reveals nothing that substantiates a justification for the ban, as none of the content in the book contradicts in any way whatsoever what the State lists as standards for media evaluation.

To date, only Gowanda Correctional Facility in New York has objected to the book. No other correctional facilities within New York State, The Federal Bureau of Prisons, or prisons and jails in any other state have taken similar action.

"It appears to be an arbitrary and discriminatory decision," said Ven. Kobutsu. "The prison officials do not seem to be adhering to their own regulations. Their action is totally bogus and constitute an egregious violation of Red's (William's) rights.

The prisoner in question has retained legal representation by a Buddhist attorney who has actually read "Prison Chaplaincy Guidelines for Zen Buddhism" from cover to cover. Currently he is seeking an official definition of any specifically objectionable material that is present in the volume.

William is seeking an indication how a copy of Prison Chaplaincy Guidelines for Zen Buddhism could be interpreted as a bona fide threat to security or of compelling peneological interest so as to justify denial of his access to religious material.

Note from the Editor

Ven Kobutsu Malone trained in zazen (zen meditation) with William "Red" Graham in Sing Sing Prison for seven years on a weekly basis. They have maintained contact for almost 15 years and have had numerous correspondences over the years.

We perceive that William should have his basic rights respected and accorded unobstructed access to Dharma literature. By walking on the path of the awakened state of mind, he has taken upon himself to cultivate a sense of self worth and to embrace each moment as it comes. This is the actualization of the Zen path.

We strongly perceive that by cultivating his zazen practice and Dharma studies, William is doing far more than conventional correctional procedures can allow, a move which we feel should be most welcomed by correctional facility authorities if they are really concerned with "constructive individual development.

As such, we welcome anyone who is concerned with the treatment that Willaim "Red" Graham has been receiving at the Gowanda Correctional Facility, to please write to any one (or all) of the following New York State Department of Correctional Services State Supervisory personnel and insist that they follow their own regulations and that the book ban be reversed:

Mr. Glen S. Goord, Commissioner
New York State Department of Correctional Services
Harriman State Campus, Building #2
1220 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY 12226

Mr. Anthony J. Annucci, Deputy Commissioner & Counsel
New York State Department of Correctional Services
Harriman State Campus, Building #2
1220 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY 12226

Mr. Al Coombs, Director, Media Review
New York State Department of Correctional Services
Harriman State Campus, Building #2
1220 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY 12226

Mr. Mark Leonard, Director, Ministerial and Family Services
New York State Department of Correctional Services
Harriman State Campus, Building #2
1220 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY 12226

If you wish to express your support for William, please write to him directly:

Mr. William Graham # 84 A 6009
Gowanda Correctional Facility
Post Office Box 311
Gowanda, New York 14070-0311 USA

Thich Nhat Hanh

2006-06-06T22:27:00.000+08:00

Interview by BOB ABERNETHY

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: In the U.S. and Europe, the other best-known Buddhist leader, besides the Dalai Lama, is the renowned Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. He, too, has been on a U.S. tour, ended this past week -- speaking, leading retreats, and promoting his latest of more than 75 books, Creating True Peace.

Many people may find Nhat Hanh's teachings Utopian, but he is convinced they are practical and proven. He has opposed violence for more than 50 years. Martin Luther King, Junior nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Nhat Hanh insists he is a monk, not a politician. But as he toured the U.S. he spoke not only of Buddhist practices but also -- often and critically -- of American policies in the Middle East.

We caught up with Thich Nhat Hanh during late afternoon rush hour on Capitol Hill, in Washington. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he practiced his customary attentive, so-called mindful walking -- to the Library of Congress to talk to Members of Congress, and others, about peace in a world of terrorism. He said since 9-11 the level of hate and violence has gone up. He blamed America's use of force.

THICH NHAT HANH: Using violence to suppress violence is not the correct way. America has to wake up to that reality.

ABERNETHY: That's not a sentiment you hear everyday at the Capitol. Nor is Nhat Hanh's recommendation to this bitterly divided Congress that its members practice what he calls deep listening (to each other) and gentle speech.

Nhat Hanh became a Zen Buddhist monk when he was 16. His title "Thich" means, symbolically, in Vietnamese, that he is a member of the Buddha's extended family.

During the Vietnam War, Nhat Hanh actively opposed the fighting, offending all sides. He developed what he called Engaged Buddhism: going beyond meditation to campaign for peace, care for refugees and help rebuild bombed villages.

NHAT HANH: If you hear the bombs falling, you know, you know that you have to go out and help.

ABERNETHY: Because of his anti-war activities, Nhat Hanh had to leave Vietnam. In the 1980s, he founded a Buddhist community in France and has spent most of the years since teaching, leading retreats and writing. In all, he has written more than 75 books.

Nhat Hanh's message emphasizes simple practices. Concentration on every activity -- walking, breathing, eating, everything. He says this mindfulness leads to understanding the roots of suffering, which encourages compassion that can dissolve anger.

On this year's U.S. visit, he led private retreats for several members of Congress in Washington, and for police officers in Wisconsin.

I asked him what Buddhism has to say to people of other religions.

NHAT HANH: I think if Buddhism can help, it is the concrete methods of practice. We have the same kind of teaching, but in Buddhism there are more concrete tools.

There are ways to transform and to reduce the amount of suffering in our families, in our schools. We, as practitioners of transformation and healing, we know how to do it, how to reduce the level of violence.

ABERNETHY: Are there times when it is right to use violence in order to protect yourself, or your family, or nation?

NHAT HANH: If you see someone who is trying to shoot, to destroy, you have to do your best in order to prevent him or her to do so. You must. But you must do it out of your compassion, of your willingness to protect, and not out of anger. That is the key.

ABERNETHY: Can a person be both a Buddhist and a Christian?

NHAT HANH: Sure. There are many, many Christians who practice Buddhism and they become better and better Christians all the time.

ABERNETHY: Nhat Hanh thinks violence in America has increased in recent years. He says one reason is too much production and consumption of the wrong kinds of things -- movies and television, for instance, that stimulate craving and violence.

NHAT HANH: I think we have the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast. But in the name of freedom, people have done a lot of damage. I think we have to build a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast in order to counterbalance. Because liberty without responsibility is not true liberty. We are not free to destroy.

ABERNETHY: The continuing struggle in Iraq triggered questions for Nhat Hanh everywhere he went.

NHAT HANH: I think America is now caught in Iraq, like in Vietnam not very long ago. And you believed that search and destroy is the right path. But the more you continued that kind of operation, the more Communists you created, and finally you had to withdraw. I am afraid that you are doing exactly the same thing in Iraq.

The only way for Americans to get emancipated from this situation is to help build the United Nations into a real body of peace so that the United Nations would take over the problem of Iraq and the Middle East. America is powerful enough to do that.

ABERNETHY: At the Washington Hebrew Congregation, and elsewhere, Nhat Hanh made the same appeal for more UN authority. He also urged Americans to lobby their elected officials.

NHAT HANH: We have to offer them our insight, our compassion. We cannot just afford for them to be surrounded by advisers who do not have that insight, that compassion.

ABERNETHY: There was no way to tell how many people here agreed with Nhat Hanh, but there was no doubt about their interest in what he had to say.

Thich Nhat Hanh has scheduled a retreat for Israelis and Palestinians next month in France. He has done this before, and he says -- for those attending -- it always brings reconciliation.

Source : http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week703/feature.html

Riding through the ruins

2006-06-05T09:15:00.000+08:00

By Anu Nathan, The Star, May 20, 2006

All the troubles of Sri Lanka disappear the moment you step into Polonnaruwa. Despite being smaller than its more illustrious counterpart Anuradhapura, the ruins here are better preserved and exude peace, writes ANU NATHAN.

Colombo, Sri Lanka -- SRI LANKA, the teardrop-shaped isle just south of India is a land of conundrums. Much of what we hear of the land once called Serendip and Ceylon is negative – from the long-running civil war that seems no where near an end and the devastation wrought by the Dec 26 tsunami in 2004. But as I was to discover, it is a land of such exquisite beauty that you feel like never ending your holiday.

It was with some trepidation that I booked my tickets to Sri Lanka, the land of my forefathers, amid news reports that the island was on the brink of an all-out war again with an attack on the Sri Lanka navy, said to have been mounted by the Tamil Tigers.

<< Gal Vihara

Nonetheless I quelled my fears and made plans to explore an ancient city. I baulked at the one that carried my name – Anuradhapura – and opted for the smaller but no less deserving gem in Sri Lanka’s cultural map, Polonnaruwa.

The town itself is nothing to write home about – the only place worth mentioning here is the Rest House which is run by the tourism department and fills up quickly with geriatric tourists who want to relive the colonial times with a cuppa and cucumber sandwiches for tea.

Instead, you can choose to stay at any of the towns surrounding Polonnaruwa, so we chose Giritale – for its proximity to the Sigiriya rock fortress, the Dambulla caves, the forest reserve and, of course, the expansive ruins of King Parakramabahu I (1153-86).

A short bus ride from Giritale drops you off in front of some rent-a-bicycle shops. Before hopping on a bicycle though, make sure you have a Cultural Triangle ticket (everyone needs tickets, regardless of what the auto-rickshaw (a motorised three-wheeler) drivers say) to enter the ruin sites.

Vatadage >>

The best bet is a Cultural Triangle ticket which covers Polonnaruwa, Anuradhapura, Sigiriya and Dambulla. It’s a steal at US$30 per person, compared to the single-entry charge of US$15. Tickets can be bought at the Museum in Polonnaruwa or your hotel can sometimes arrange for the tickets and a guide.

The well-stocked museum also sells bronzes, statues, maps and relics. Being air-conditioned, it is a welcome respite from the afternoon heat.

Then take in a quick cuppa (yes, nothing like Ceylon tea) at the Rest House verandah while gazing at the lake and the plethora of migratory birds on a lay-over as they make their way to the reserve before you stroll back to town to rent a bike.

While most tourists hop on either an auto-rickshaw or get into air-conditioned vans, opting for a bike allows you to see the ruins at your own pace, ditch the pack tourists and follow paths that are too narrow for vehicles. It would be advisable to invest in a guidebook – either Lonely Planet or Rough Guide – as there is scant information at the site.

The ticket does not come with a guide either, but you can always hover on the periphery of a guided tour (although this is not the best option). So on bright fuchsia bikes, complete with plastic flowers on the basket, both my partner and I rode off for a tryst with some of the most amazing Buddha structures in the world.

To the right of the entrance is what’s left of King Parakramabahu’s palace. Opposite it are the royal baths – huge ponds where the king, his consorts and, I was told, the courtesans, bathed in shampoo made of sandalwood and scrubs made from turmeric paste.

<< Dagobas, such as this one called Rankot Vihara, are believed to contain the remains of royals.

It was also here that we met with the downside to Polonarruwa – the incessant pedlars who wanted to sell little elephant carvings, books on Buddha and postcards. I didn’t see a single sale being made that day, and wondered why they persisted.

Hopping back on our bikes, we pedalled fast, leaving the hawkers in the dust as we approached the Quadrangle – a large square of land blocked off by walls, to the left of the entrance gates.

In the centre is the Vatadage, with four seated Buddhas. Entering this sanctuary, where priests used to gather to chant, was altogether a sublime experience, as I, ever the non-believer, suddenly felt calm and relaxed. Maybe it was the Buddha foursome – all were seated in the meditation pose, and looked extremely welcoming.

Also in the Quadrangle is an image house, which once had multiple murals of Buddha, and many little shrines as well as the Hatadage which used to house the Buddha tooth relic, now in the safe confines of the Tooth Relic temple in Kandy. Next to the Hatadage is a 25-tonne stone slab, like our own Batu Bersurat found in Terengganu, documenting the going-ons at the court and extolling the virtues of one King Nissanka Malla.

The Lotus Pond is in the northern quadrant of the Polonnaruwa ruins. >>

South of the Quadrangle is the first of many Shiva Devales (temple plots), which houses a Hindu temple, the source of some of the best bronze artifacts in the museum.

The primary attraction of Polonnaruwa lies in the North group – the Gal Vihara. From one large slab of granite, artisans carved four Buddhas (see graphics) – two sitting, one standing and one majestic 14m-long reclining Buddha. The facial expressions on both the standing and reclining Buddhas are almost too real – in fact, the most serene I have ever seen.

Whilst visiting the dagobas (including an imposing 55m high structure), stupas and Buddha statues, it began to pour, drenching us cyclists. But I didn’t mind despite standing shivering under the sloping roof of a gardener’s hut. How unusual. Back in Kuala Lumpur I would have railed against the skies.

When it slowed to a drizzle, it was back on the bikes for the final leg past the huge lotus pond baths to see an almost effeminate Buddha with graceful hips at the Tivanka image house which was once adorned with fine, albeit sometimes titillating frescoes similar to those at Sigiriya. Of this, a few murals have survived. Despite having to adjust to the darkness, we were thrilled to see the shadows of what had once been amazing wall-to-ceiling decorations.

We didn’t have time to see all of Polonnaruwa – that’s the price you pay for going on your own power, but we were not disappointed. What I had seen was enough for a lifetime of memories.

Pay these places a visit

Dambulla Caves

Dambulla is essentially a one horse town and the most striking feature on its landscape is the Golden Temple and the Dambulla Caves. This Unesco World Heritage site has been a sacred pilgrimage site for 22 centuries, and houses the largest, best-preserved cave-temple complex in Sri Lanka. Look out for the ceiling art of Sri Lankan Michaelangelos, as frescoes cover the breadth of the caves. A modern day giant standing Buddha welcomes you to the temple, but even that pales in comparison to the sublime art inside the caves.

Sigiriya Rock Fortress

Mystery continues to surround this rock that rises out of the ground like Ayers Rock amid lush landscaped gardens which include fountains, tanks (lakes) and terraced water features.

Some say it was the palace of one King Kassapa, who, fearing invaders, built his palace at the top of the monolith. Others claim it was a Buddhist monastery. Nonetheless, there is much to see at Sigiriya from the titillating “cloud damsels” adorning the walls of a cave (accessible via a spiral metal staircase), the well manicured gardens and the rock itself, replete with a true-to-life carving of a lion’s head and paws on its rock face.

A breathless climb leads to the palace at the pinnacle. Let your gaze wander as far as the eye can see and take in the undulating surrounding landscape of coconut palms and padi fields.

Lawyers Contemplate a New Practice: Meditation

2006-06-03T18:37:00.000+08:00

James H. Johnston, Legal Times, June 2, 2006

Before attending his first meditation session, employment lawyer Robert Waldeck told himself, "If these people are into crystals and new age, I'm out of here." That was 11 years ago. Today, Waldeck, an associate at the Washington, D.C.-based law firm of John Berry, meditates twice a week.

How do lawyers, who measure time in billable hours, adjust to an activity like meditation, which demands that they sit still and turn inward for, oh, hundreds of dollars' worth of time off the clock? Can something as intangible and elusive as meditation really work for those whose professional life centers on rules? Is the idea of a meditating lawyer a contradiction in terms?

Be still, skeptics. A fair number of lawyers and others connected to the legal world embrace meditation. They say it has several benefits: It relaxes them and reduces stress, induces a longer-term calming effect, gives them greater energy and improves their professional performance.

FOCUS, CLARITY

Meditation as a discipline for focusing the mind began in some of the rituals of the Eastern religions, but in the United States today its techniques are mainly taught for their own merit, divorced from religious overtones. Although there are many types, two forms of meditation commonly taught are Vipassana, or "insight" meditation, which concentrates on breathing, and transcendental meditation, or TM, which uses mantras -- the repetition of special words or sounds. Both forms aim to focus attention and clear the mind.

For the most part, meditation techniques are taught through group sessions. A typical session of insight meditation lasts 30 minutes. The leader directs participants to close their eyes and focus on their breathing. As the session progresses, the participants' inward focus is shifted to other physical sensations, such as sounds, or to emotional experiences and feelings, such as gratitude, before they are slowly returned to the outside world.

Lawyers are often drawn into meditation to learn to relax, says Linda Lazarus, a lawyer specializing in mediation. Because meditation sessions begin with exercises that quiet your mind and help you concentrate, you are bound to feel more relaxed after meditating, she says. Lazarus, who also teaches meditation, started the DC Area Contemplative Law Group, which consists of 40 or 50 lawyers who meet monthly, seeking "to balance the externally driven practice of law with contemplative practices."

Rebecca Romig, a clerk for Judge Lynn K. Stewart of Maryland's Circuit Court for Baltimore City, became interested in meditation as a route to relaxation. She began by listening to a CD, but eventually sought out personal instruction in Washington.

Lawyers and businesspeople complain of feeling stress and anxiety and want an alternative to medication, says Klia Bassing, Romig's instructor. Bassing, who previously worked at the World Bank, says, "Type A's often have the most dramatic results. I fall into that category. I could hardly sit still when I first tried meditation. It took as much energy for me to sit still as it did to sprint at top speed."

Besides the immediate benefit of relaxation, fans of meditation talk about a longer-term effect of calm in their everyday lives, or "toning down my internal critic," explains Waldeck, the employment lawyer.

"There is less distraction from anxiety, less chatter coming from yourself," he says. He notes that in the treatment of anxiety in cognitive therapy, a patient is sometimes given a mechanical counter to click whenever he thinks an anxiety-producing thought. This helps the patient recognize and suppress thoughts that bother him. Vipassana meditation, Waldeck says, does much the same thing.

For Susan Green, a lawyer and mediator who took up meditation eight years ago after an ankle injury interfered with her yoga, meditation lets her move through life more calmly and "act more purposefully towards" her objectives.

William Lazarus, an appellate lawyer at the Department of Justice (and no relation to Linda Lazarus), has practiced transcendental meditation since being introduced to it on a visit to London in 1969. He says meditation changed his life, although he feels the changes happened incrementally: "When you are talking about your own personality, it's hard to notice."

Meditators say the relaxation techniques actually give them more energy and improve their professional performance. "Everyone comments on my energy level," says Martha Zimmerman, a litigator with Chadwick, Washington, Moriarty, Elmore & Bunn in Falls Church, Va., who has practiced TM for more than 30 years. She says, "TM gives you more of an edge, making you more alert and more tuned in to what is going on."

Linda Lazarus explains: "You meditate because it makes you better. You change habitually negative behaviors. You stop negative habits and develop positive ones."

And Waldeck says meditation makes him more effective: "I am less likely to waste time with such things as surfing the Internet."

Green believes that the calming effect of meditation has special rewards in her work. She says a recent study showed that a "peaceful presence" on the part of the mediator contributes to a successful outcome in mediation. She thinks her own calmness is infectious and sets a relaxing tone in mediations.

THE CONTEMPLATIVE LAWYER

Besides such individual endorsements, meditation as a tool for the legal profession is finally getting a little attention from the academic world. Leonard Riskin, a former Justice Department appellate lawyer and today a professor of law at the University of Missouri Law School, wrote an article titled "The Contemplative Lawyer" about the ways that "mindfulness meditation" can help students, lawyers and even clients. The article, published in the Harvard Negotiation Law Review in the spring of 2002, was one of the first on the subject in a major legal journal.

Even a few years ago, getting a law journal to accept an article on meditation wasn't easy, Riskin admits. The idea that the subject deserved scholarly attention was met with skepticism. But once published, it garnered Riskin numerous speaking engagements and requests for follow-up articles. He is now working on a book on meditation and the law.

Riskin, who's been meditating since 1974, tries to meditate twice a day and leads noontime sittings in the law school once a week for a small group. He also teaches a mindfulness-based stress-reduction class in the law school that meets two hours a week for six weeks.

Charles Halpern, scholar in residence at the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, recently introduced judges to the possibilities of meditation. Earlier this month he led a meditation workshop at the annual judicial conference of the D.C. Superior Court and the D.C. Court of Appeals. The two-hour workshop included both a meditation session and a discussion of the role of meditation in the exercise of judicial functions for about 50 judges and senior court administrators.

Meditation, says Halpern, can help judges achieve empathy and "hold difficult and painful material [that often comes out in court cases] without getting taken over by their own feelings." He says the message for lawyers is that meditation is not just good for them but that it will "enrich and deepen the practice of law."

Halpern, who gained fame as a public interest lawyer in Washington, D.C., today is chairman of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. The center's law program has become an official sponsor of the Harvard Negotiation Insight Initiative, which is intended to "explore the interface of contemporary negotiation theory and practice with alternative frameworks, including some drawn from perennial wisdom traditions."

REIGN OF PILLAGE AND ABUSE

Of course, any contemplative discipline, especially one associated with the law, is going to have its naysayers. When the Association of American Law Schools sponsored a workshop, "Search for Balance in the Whirlwind of Law School," at its annual conference in January, Riskin and Halpern touted meditation as a way of helping law students cope. But the AALS also brought in James White of the University of Michigan Law School, who cautioned that stress is de rigueur in the legal profession: "Until better data come forward, I will continue the traditional law teacher's reign of pillage and abuse. I am happy in the belief that my hectoring will leave my students better, if momentarily sicker, lawyers."

Be that as it may, besides the relaxation, the calm and the improvement in performance that some lawyers profess, meditation can also have some serendipitous results. Donna Newton, a law firm administrator monitoring client payments for her firm, practices transcendental meditation seriously enough to have recently attended a retreat at a monastery in India.

She recalls one lawyer in the firm telling her, "You've got to push" to collect the bills. Her response: "It's bliss that attracts." Indeed it may be. Newton once called a client to thank him for a payment but pointed out that he paid more than was due. "Yes, I know," he told her. "It just seems to make you happy." Even skeptics might meditate on that.

James H. Johnston is a Washington, D.C., lawyer.

A Monk's Dream Comes to Life

2006-06-02T12:08:00.000+08:00

Phra Viriyang Sirintharo

For Phra Viriyang Sirintharo, Lord Abbot of Wat Dhammamongkol, the journey towards enlightenment began more than sixty years ago in the north-eastern village of Nakhorn Rachasima when, as a boy of 13, he witnessed a miraculous event that would change his life forever.

The day was much like any other, filled with hard work and household chores, beginning at dawn with the collecting of watermelons in the fields. After taking them to the market, the young boy would have to wait until they were all sold. As usual, he would not return home until after dark, but the day’s work was not yet over. All the water jars were empty. The nearest stream was about 500 metres from the house and it would take him many trips, returning each time with two fully laden buckets, before the jars were filled.

Although very tired and ready for his bed, Viriyang was allowed only a short break for dinner before being sent out again, this time to fill the rice buckets which were also empty. In those days, mechanical rice mills were unheard of in the rural areas and each family had to husk the paddy for themselves. This was done by pounding the paddy in a large wooden mortar and pestle, a rather primitive device operated by vigorously stamping on a wooden lever.

That evening, Viriyang took up his position to begin the rhythmic pounding. Harder and harder he worked, gradually becoming oblivious to his exhausted state and quite unaware of the late hour. Then, suddenly, everything went black and the boy collapsed.Phra Viriyang Sirintharo

He remained unconscious for about an hour, but when he eventually came to, he was shocked to find himself unable to move a single muscle. He was totally paralysed.

For about one month, Viriyang lay stricken while his parents tried in vain to find someone with the ability to restore his health. Secretly, the boy made a vow to devote the rest of his life to Buddhism should he be completely cured of his paralysis.

Seven days later, a stranger appeared in the village; a white-robed ascetic who went directly to Viriyang’s house and told his father that he had come to cure his son. The man whispered in the boy’s ear, saying that he knew of his secret promise of eternal devotion and, after making him repeat the vow aloud, he proceeded to bring him back to health.

The next morning, the ascetic returned and made Viriyang repeat the vow once more, then instructed the boy to meet him at the local temple later that afternoon. Arriving there at the appointed hour, Viriyang found the stranger waiting under a tamarind tree. After asking the boy to repeat his vow yet again, he led him to a wooded area beyond the temple where they found a buffalo. Quite unexpectedly, the ascetic took a knife from his bag and, with one swift stroke, severed the buffalo’s tail. Then, while reciting a prayer, he rejoined the tail as good as new, without seeming to hurt the beast in any way.

The strange man went on to teach Viriyang a prayer and made him promise to recite it daily for the next 10 years. Naturally, the boy agreed to do as he was instructed and, with this, the mysterious stranger turned and walked away, never to be seen again. It was this dramatic encounter that set Phra Viriyang on the road to enlightenment. At 15 he was enrolled as a novice in the same local temple and became a monk at the age of 20.

more...

Dharma Punx

2006-05-30T20:06:00.001+08:00

by Noah Levine.

This is the story of a young man and a generation of angry youths who rebelled against their parents and the unfulfilled promise of the sixties.

As with many self-destructive kids, Noah Levine's search for meaning led him first to punk rock, drugs, drinking, and dissatisfaction. But the search didn't end there. Having clearly seen the uselessness of drugs and violence, Noah looked for positive ways to channel his rebellion against what he saw as the lies of society.

Fueled by his anger and so much injustice and suffering, Levine now uses that energy and the practice of Buddhism to awaken his natural wisdom and compassion.

Noah Levine is a Buddhist teacher, author and counselor. He is trained to teach by Jack Kornfield of Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA. He teaches meditation classes, workshops and retreats nationally as well as leading groups in juvenile halls and prisons. Noah holds a masters degree in counseling psychology from CIIS. He has studied with many prominent teachers in both the Theravadan and Mahayanan Buddhist traditions.

Noah currently lives in Los Angeles, CA.

The Dharma Punx
Dharma Punx is not just a book it is a way of being, it is how we have come to integrate our political and spiritual beliefs. We sought a different path than our parents, the once idealistic hippie generation that had long since cut their hair, left the commune and bought in to the system. Peace and love had failed to make any real changes and in response to the despair and hopelessness we felt came the punk rock movement. Seeking to rebel against society's fascist system of oppression and capitalist driven propaganda the kids responded in our own way, different from those before us, a new revolution for a new generation. Aware of the corruption in the government and inconsistencies in the power dynamics in our homes we rebelled against society and family in one loud and fast roar of teen angst. Unwilling to accept the dictates of the system, we did whatever we could to rebel. We wanted freedom and were willing to fight for it.
The situation was compounded by the personal despair so many of our generation were facing; broken homes, addicted parents, abusive teachers and a lack of elders on top of all the normal strife of growing up. Our parents were too busy trying to succeed or survive in the aftermath of the sixties and the race for riches of the seventies and eighties, or in my case the dedication to spiritual practice and service that at times kept my father ever occupied.
So we hit the streets, fueled by the music of revolution, anger, angst, fear, despair, hatred and a total dissatisfaction with the status quo. We dyed our hair and donned new uniforms to set us apart from the mindless masses of adults and brain dead herds of kids that were going along with the lies, buying in to the great American fallacy, playing sports, going to school and listening to the awful popular music of the eighties that carried no meaningful message and was in our minds just another symptom of the disease that was plaguing our society.

We turned to drugs and booze to escape from the feelings of hopelessness and despair, many of us going directly to narcotics as teenagers. Eating acid like it was candy and chasing speed with cheap vodka, smoking our parents weed, consuming gallons of cheep beer all in a vain attempt to stay numb. Turning toward a nihilistic outlook on life. Having set our selves apart, we were a constant target of violence and ridicule. Fighting to survive, fighting for our views and right to be different, we often found ourselves involved in some battle or another, if it wasn't the cops it was the jocks or hicks or each other.
All the violence and drugs led to many early deaths; overdoses, murders, car accidents and countless suicides. Death and grief has been a central part of the lives of all the kids who were associated with the early punk rock scene. Following the great examples set by Sid Vicious and Darby Crash, live fast, do lots of drugs, fuck the system by dying young. Half of the kids that I hung out with in the eighties are dead and that is just from my crew in a small town punk rock scene.
This book is about those of us who didn't die young and are still around in the new millennium. Those of us who haven't totally sold out, who go around talking about punk as a phase they went through as a kid, this is about those of us who, fueled by our dissatisfaction with life and the material world, have turned toward Spiritual Practice. It is a book about finding the freedom we were seeking as young idealistic punk rockers. Having clearly seen the uselessness of drugs and violence and having found positive ways to channel our rebellion against the lies of society, still being fueled by anger at injustice we now use that energy to Awaken rather than for self-destruction.
This is a story about those of us who have taken ourselves and the struggle off of the streets. Who are now fighting the inner battle against delusions and ignorance, yet continuing to express our selves in our own unique Punk Rock ways outwardly. Having put down the booze and drugs, having let go of the violence and hatred, having lost countless friends to prison and death, we have found the Dharma. We have found the highest spiritual truth. The spiritual path has been described by the Buddha as being, " against the stream", against mans selfish desires, this fits in perfectly with the punk rock ethic, turning outer rebellion into an inner revolution.
This spiritual truth has come in many different forms and through many different spiritual traditions, while I find myself primarily engaged in Buddhist practice some of the other Dharma Punx have dedicated themselves to the Sufi path of Islamic mysticism, to a personal relationship with Christ or to the Hindu path of devotion and service. I use the term Dharma meaning the Truth with a capital T, and as my father often reminds me, "that which is true is found in all spiritual and religious traditions". No one has the corner on the truth.
This book will take you on a, sometimes ugly, sometimes beautiful, spiritual journey from Juvenile Hall to the Dharma Hall. It follows the life of a confused kid and his search for clarity, it will take you from the depths of grief and despair to the heights of spiritual awareness, from the streets of America to the paths of rural Asia. This is a story of transformation, a generation often touted as X, finding meaning and propose in spiritual practice and service. It is a full circle, from being institutionalized to teaching meditation in institutions, from robbing and stealing to giving and forgiving. It's about finding freedom and then spending the rest of your life giving it all away.

The Dharma Punx is not just my story it is the story of my Generation.

My hope is that this book will be to my generation what Kerouak's Dharma Bums and On the Road were to his generation and countless kids afterwards. This is a story that has yet to be told and people are hungry for this kind of literature, something they can relate to, that has meaning, that is inspirational, a book that is real, that we all lived through.
My intention in writing this book is inspire people to find the freedom they are seeking. To encourage investigation of the human heart and mind, and offer an alternative to drugs and violence. I am sharing the importance of meditation, prayer and spiritual exploration, in a medium that is easy to digest, emotionally moving and even entertaining. It will give hope to the older generations, and inspire the younger ones. People will recognize themselves and their children in this book and see the awesome potential for healing and happiness even out of the depths of suffering, grief and despair.
I offer a story of Gen. X that isn't all annihilation or some cheesy romance about brain dead computer programmers. I offer the path of transformation and the possibility of freedom.
This book looks at what it was like growing up in the eighties as a punk, committing to spiritual practice in the nineties and using the rest of your life to share this precious gift with others. It is not just one story but the lives of several different people that have come together to form our crew the Dharma Punx. A group a men and women who are deeply committed to spiritual practice and engaged service in the world. These are the new face of the punk rock scene, a crew of committed dharma practitioner's that you can still find down at the local club singing along to our favorite bands and doing the occasional stage dive.
Some of the Dharma Punx are in world famous bands or are internationally known Tattoo artist's others work 9-5's, some are married and own their homes, the rest of us rent, trying to get by, all of us are friends and all of us are real people. This is not a fictional tale of romantic suffering and Hollywood love stories, its about real people, real loss, and genuine spiritual experiences.

I offer this book to all of my friends that didn't make it… Or maybe they did. And we are the flunkies still hangin around trying figure out that we are not these bodies.

Dharma Punx Homepage

Negativity

2006-05-29T02:38:00.000+08:00

by William Graham, The Buddhist Channel, May 28, 2006

New York, USA -- Scott is a civilian volunteer who regularly comes into the Sing Sing prison Dharma Song Zendo once a week and sometimes twice a week. I am a prisoner engaged in programs and activities that are geared towards personal enrichment. He's white and I'm black. It was our mutual karma that brought us together in conflict, neither of us seemed to have had much of a choice.

We both practice Zazen in the close quarters of the Sing Sing prison chapel basement. To date, Scott is the only white person I've ever gotten to know in more than just a superficial way.

The question which begs an answer is: Do we choose to remain preoccupied, stymied and stagnated by thoughts and feelings of hatred toward other races, for perceived past and present wrongs and injustices - or can we do something directly, on a personal level, about the situation?

When I first met Scott, I did not view him as an individual, nor even a human being. I saw him as a monster and a member of a race and class of people who has wronged my race and hurt me personally. I really didn't give him a chance to prove himself otherwise.

White people have done a lot of wrong to me personally, so I pre-judged him and blamed him for what I perceived other members of his race have done for me. I saw Scott as aloof, arrogant and condescending. He seemed to exude an air of superiority that I attributed to his white skin.

Previously I have met many white people with parental attitudes, and Scott seemed to be one of these. The parental attitude I'm referring to always seems to me to be the attitude of many white people who feel they are bringing something to the natives to civilize them.

It seemed as if he felt he knew better than I the right way for me to live my life. This was reinforced with each new encounter between us.

It seemed to me that we looked at each other in challenging, derogatory or disdainful ways and engaged in passive-aggressive attacks on each other. One of my favorite ways of showing dominance and superiority over him involved sitting directly across from him in the zendo in a full-lotus position; I knew that he couldn't sit full-lotus. I used to gloat at the discomfort he would experience getting up from every sitting period. I sense that over time he picked up on my negative thoughts and feelings. This continued for some time back and forth between us.

One evening, all hell broke loose. It was on a night when Rev. Kobutsu wasn't able to come to the prison, and Scott, as I later found out, was left in charge. That night I twice unknowingly sat on the wrong cushion.

The first time was before the official sitting began. I got up, and when I returned Scott was sitting in the place I had vacated. I said nothing and sat directly across from him. He said that I was sitting in an officer's seat who helped conduct the service. I said, "No problem," and got up. I was mildly pissed, and commented to Scott that he really should try to speak up and not talk so low, and that he acted as though he was afraid. I told him if he had anything to say not to mumble, but to be a man.

Zazen began. I sat full-lotus. Usually we sit for only 35 minutes at a time, but on this particular evening we sat an additional 10 minutes. Anyone that has been practicing zazen for a while knows by the pain he begins to experience in his legs when the time is up. My legs and knees were screaming from sitting in a full-lotus for 45 minutes. During this extra ten-minute period, I began breathing deeper and harder in response to the pain. My breathing was audible to Scott. He said, "Control your breathing."

I broke the rule of no talking in the Zendo and challenged him "Try sitting full lotus as long as we were and see how you breathe." During kinhin he walked into the hallway and summoned me outside to speak with me. I told him, "Not now," but to wait until later. He requested the same thing twice more, and I responded in the same manner. He remained in the hallway until kinhin was over and everyone had sat back down on the cushions to begin another 35-minute sit.

Scott came into the zendo and turned the overhead lights on, and proceeded to lecture about how he would not tolerate disrespect in the zendo, and that I had a problem. I informed him that there were no children here, and that we were all men. The exchange went back and forth, and didn't really go anywhere. Finally, not really having any other place to go, I said, "if you want me to, I'll go." He acquiesced. As I was about to leave, Yogen, the inmate zendo leader, said that he was in charge, so I sat back down. Other prisoners within the zendo voiced their opinions. I told Scott he was behaving childishly.

He retorted that one of us was going to have to leave, and since I wasn't going anywhere, he left.

After he left, I was acutely aware each time I heard footsteps descending the stairs to the chapel-basement zendo. I though he might have informed the guards about what happened, and that the guards were coming to evict us. That didn't happen. Scott was gone and didn't return for a month afterwards. I really felt bad during that time; I missed his presence and hoped our interaction wouldn't be the cause of him discontinuing at the prison. I later learned hi hiatus was not a direct result of our confrontation.

The week after our confrontation, I spoke with Rev. Kobutsu about the situation. He was aware of the incident, having communicated with Scott during the interim. He pointed out that we were both at fault in the interaction, and that he himself was at fault for not informing the sangha of his intention of leaving Scott officially in charge during his absence. He commented that perhaps the confrontation could be an opportunity for us both to get to know each other and that we could write about what happened.

When Scott returned to Dharma Song Zendo, he and I began to work on developing an understanding of what had transpired between us. During the process, Scott became the only white person I've ever gotten to know. I'm glad that we had our verbal confrontation, because dealing with it gradually changed our attitudes toward the other. It brought about a sensitivity, respect, compassion and consideration that neither of us previously felt toward each other. It enabled us to reshape our viewpoints and share the same space without antagonism and competitiveness.

I'm beginning to understand the meaning of the phrase "Incomparably profound and minutely subtle." What occurred between Scott and me was profound. From that altercation, I learned that when we communicate with each other about our feelings and emotions, we can transcend our irritations. Through abandonment of pretensions and recognition of hang-ups, the door of transcendent wisdom opens.

-----------------------------------------
Note: William "Red" Graham has been imprisoned for over two decades for a crime he has consistently denied ever committing. He was recently denied access to a book on "Prison Chaplaincy Guidelines for Zen Buddhism" written by Ven. Kobutsu Malone by the New York State Department of Correctional Services.

Article source: http://www.engaged-zen.org/articles/William_Graham-Negativity.html

This article originally appeared in Gateway Journal Vol. 1 Number 2 — Winter 1995. People can write to Willam Graham at:

Willam Graham # 84-A-6009
Gowanda Correctional Facility
Post Office Box 311
Gowanda, New York 14070-0311 USA

A 'meeting of two religious streams'

2006-05-28T12:55:00.000+08:00

By LOUIS SAHAGUN, Los Angeles Times, May 26, 2006

Blend of Judaism, Buddhism creating harmony for some, confusion for others

Los Angeles, CA (USA) -- The altar in Becca Topol's living room carries a statue of Buddha and a garden stone painted with the Hebrew word for peace, "shalom."

<< Becca Topol, meditating at the Santa Monica Zen Center in California, says commingling her Jewish faith and Buddhism has deepened her spirituality.
ANNE CUSACK: LOS ANGELES TIMES

In April she celebrated Passover with a "Zen Seder" feast that opened with a modified Haggada narrative comparing Israel's exodus from Egypt to Buddha's liberation from suffering.

"I'm a Jewish Buddhist — a JuBu," said Topol, 37. "My Buddhist practice has actually made me a stronger Jew."

While Buddhism has enriched Topol's Judaism — giving her a deeper sense of spirituality, she says — it has produced confusion in fellow Jubu David Grotell. Grotell, 41, is so worried about breaking Judaism's ban against idol worship that "although I have a meditation spot in my home, as a Jew I just can't allow myself to put a statue of Buddha there."

Grotell's conundrum and Topol's confidence show how diverse the JuBu experience can be, even inside one Zen Buddhist center in Santa Monica, Calif. It also underlines how a new, American hybrid of Buddhism is blossoming, fed by a large representation of Jewish practitioners.

No one knows for certain how many JuBus there are; the last surveys were conducted in the 1970s. A large majority of the 3 million Buddhists in the United States are Asian, but by some estimates at least 30 percent of all newcomers to Buddhism are Jewish. (By comparison, U.S. Jews number 6 million.)

Alan Lew, who studied Buddhism for a decade before changing course to become a rabbi, calls the paradoxical blend of Judaism, which bows to one God, and Buddhism, which has no supreme being, "a fruitful and beautifully creative meeting of two religious streams that came together in the United States."

"Most people don't go very far into Buddhism; they just want to feel a little better," said Michael Shiffman, founder of L.A. Dharma, a nonsectarian Buddhist organization in Los Angeles. "But can you be Jewish and not believe in God? Good question."

Others, however, would say it all depends on an individual's definition of God.

Essentially, Buddhism creates a solitary and quiet path away from suffering and toward a moral life based on an all-inclusive vision of interconnectedness, wisdom and compassion. A method for achieving that awareness is daily meditation.

Being nondogmatic, Buddhism does not require that adherents join anything or reject anything — even the notion of God.

So in this regard it differs vastly from Judaism, a community-based tradition that relies on observances, laws and prayers such as the mourner's kaddish — the prayer for the dead — to connect adherents with a personal god.

So what is it that Jews find so attractive about Buddhism?

"Suffering is at the heart of the matter," suggested David Gottlieb, whose autobiographical book Letters to a Buddhist Jew examines the life of a "Zen Jew" struggling to resolve his two identities. "Judaism, at its best, embraces suffering and, at its worst, enshrines it. Buddhism explicitly seeks to end suffering and doesn't look to the past."

Lee Rosenthal, 59, of San Diego found that powerfully appealing. He'd just returned from the Vietnam War and was facing the deaths of his two children shortly after they were born, and then his wife's cancer.

"I couldn't buy into the spiritual answers I was getting from people for why my little babies passed away," he recalled. "But I picked up a book on Buddhism and it spoke to me, streetwise and honest."

"Instead of sugarcoating things, it gave me a plain explanation for why I was suffering: Life is painful and difficult," he said. "It said also you can't run away from it. Deal with it."

As the world's leading Buddhist, the Dalai Lama, likes to say: If there is a problem and there is nothing you can do about it, there's no use worrying. If there is something that can be done, there's no use worrying. And with that understanding can come contentment, even joy.

Rosenthal went on to become a Buddhist priest, which his mother, Rosalie, came to terms with a few years ago in a poignant meeting.

"My mother has Alzheimer's disease and thinks I'm a kid who lived down the street from us in the 1950s," he said. "So one day I asked her, 'Rosalie, how's your son Lee doing?' She sat up straight in her wheelchair and with a proud look in her eye said, 'He's a Buddhist priest.' "

"I got teary-eyed," he said.

A majority of JuBus, as they call themselves, are baby boomers who were raised in loosely religious families and began to feel unfulfilled in the tumultuous and experimental 1960s and '70s. They joined the legions of other young men and women searching for spiritual nourishment and ended up turning to Buddhism, a welcoming meditative practice devoid of the cultural stigmas contained in, say, Christianity or Islam.

And many, like Alan Senauke, now a Buddhist priest in the San Francisco Bay Area, discovered the two traditions combined easily, almost on their own.

Although he no longer celebrates Jewish holy days, with the exception of Passover, Senauke said, "My Judaism and Buddhism are like vines so entangled they are not separate."

"Because of my Jewishness, I'm faulty as a Buddhist, and because of my Buddhism, I can never really be a practicing Jew," he said. With a smile, he added: "I'm comfortable with that."

"Look at it this way," said Senauke, who is also a noted bluegrass guitarist. "I've been playing Southern music for 45 years, but I'll never be a Southerner. I'm a New York Jewish boy. But this is my music, it resonates in my heart, and I play it as authentically as I can."

The boom in Buddhism has left some Jewish leaders wondering how they could better serve their people.

"I'm encouraged that people want to find something more spiritual," said Rabbi Bentzion Kravitz of a group called Jews for Judaism. "But I'm also disillusioned that they have not found it in Judaism. Maybe we haven't done a good enough job of making Jewish mysticism accessible to the masses."

But Marc Lieberman, a San Francisco ophthalmologist who helped arrange a historic dialogue between Jewish leaders and the Dalai Lama in 1989, calls the JuBu phenomenon a fine example of "good old American innovation."

"I'm a healthy mosaic of Judaism and Buddhism," Lieberman said. "Is that fair to either religion? Fair schmair! It's what I am.

"My Jewish side is a tribal sensibility, a reflexive identity with the pain and agony of my people and the pride and glories of their traditions," he said. "But my Buddhist side asks, 'Does that exclude others in the world?' "

How all those clashing religious notions affect JuBus is illustrated in the paths taken by Lew and his lifelong chum Norman Fischer. In the 1970s, they lived in Buddhist monasteries and studied under Berkeley Zen master Sojun Mel Weitsman, an ethnic Jew.

Their friends figured that Lew, a freewheeling intellectual, would become a Buddhist priest, and Fischer, who was always a studious rabbi's pet, would become a rabbinical scholar.

Instead, the opposite happened. But their theologically competing spiritual realms have acquired a lot of the curlicues and ambiguities that are characteristic of JuBus.

Lew, for example, said, "I don't believe one can be both Jewish and Buddhist; your central commitment should be clear.

"Personally, my roots are more Buddhist than Jewish, but my spiritual practice is Jewish."

He also firmly believes in God.

But Fischer, a high-ranking Buddhist priest whose first name is now Zoketsu, suggested that a "person can be a faithful Jew and practice Buddhism."

Topol would tend to agree with Fischer.

Six years of Buddhist training at the Santa Monica Zen Center, where reconciling with one's religion of origin is emphasized, has only deepened her appreciation and respect for her Jewish roots.

"I've found that Buddhism has broken apart my fixed beliefs and notions," she said, "so that I can approach Judaism with a fresh eye."

For Topol, that means viewing biblical descriptions of God's active presence in human affairs not as literal history but as meditation tools and spiritual instructions for coping with daily life.

Rising from a meditation pillow after a Sunday-morning Buddhist service, Topol said, "I even look at the writings of the Old Testament, such as Moses' conversations with God, as Zen koans; that is, as questions and statements to be used as meditation disciplines along the lines of 'What is the sound of one hand clapping?' "

What happens next is anyone's guess. But some JuBus are predicting the emergence of a unique American-style Buddhism.

"Jews value education, hard work, innovation and strong commitment to family, all of which they are bringing to American Buddhism," said Charles S. Prebish, a professor of religious studies at Penn State University. "What you get is some kind of a hybrid."

Dalai Lama hails Desmond Tutu and Tintin

2006-05-25T10:07:00.000+08:00

IOL, May 22, 2006

New Delhi, India -- Tibet's exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, will honour South African Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and comic book character Tintin for promoting understanding of his homeland at a ceremony in Brussels next month, an official at the Buddhist leader's office in the northern Indian town of Dharamshala said on Sunday.

<< Dalai Lama honors Tintin for "his significant contributions to the public understanding of Tibet."

The annual Light Of Truth award, instituted by the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), is given to individuals and institutions that have made significant contributions to the public understanding of Tibet.

The Dalai Lama is scheduled to present the award at a ceremony on June 1 to Tutu and the Herge Foundation, a non-profit association created in memory of the Belgian creator of Tintin whose real name was Georges Remi.

Eating Buddhist for a Healthier Way of Being

2006-05-22T11:38:00.000+08:00

Chosun Ilbo. May 21, 2006

Seoul, South Korea -- Many people who have had food at Buddhist temples are surprised by how delicious it can be given the limitations on what ingredients can be used - no spring onions or garlic, which are thought of as inflaming the senses, nothing that has been killed.

Instead, Buddhist cooking brings out the full flavor of the ingredients it does use, awakening both mind and body. Thus Buddhist cooking also serves as an excellent alternative in an age of proliferating food allergies and wariness of additives like MSG, excessive meat intake and irregular dietary habits. Here, the Chosun Ilbo explains the winning formula.

1. Natural Spices

The secret of the simple flavors unique to Buddhist dishes lies in natural spices. More than 30 kinds of natural spices, from mushroom powder to sea tangle, black bean powder, cinnamon powder and green perilla powder are used.

2. Fiber

If Buddhist monks rarely have trouble with constipation, it is because they eat hundreds of seasoned vegetables. Buddhist dishes are thrifty, often using even the roots and rind of plants. “Vegetables and seasoned vegetables are rich not only in fiber but also phytochemicals, which prevent cancer and chronic degenerative diseases”, says Prof. Shin Mi-kyung, a Wonkwang University nutritionist.

3. Low Salt

“We add the least amount of salt for seasoning because salty food makes it difficult to focus on self-discipline by stimulating our stomach and does not bring out the true flavors of the ingredients,” says Hongseung, a monk with a society for research on Buddhist cooking.

4. Low Calories

Buddhist food is low in calories, with a bowl of hot cereal for breakfast, a full meal for lunch and a bowl of rice and three side dishes for supper. They provide some 1,600 kcal on average a day, only 82 percent of adult’s normal calorie intake. This is why it is an excellent diet for those who want to lose weight.

5. Nuts and Beans

As meat is not an option, Buddhist cooking replaces it with pine nuts and peanuts and other nuts, beans, tofu and green perilla as sources of protein. Studies show that those who eat nuts on a regular basis have a 35-50 percent lower risks of getting heart disease, while beans are known for their anti-cancer effects.

6. Light Eating

Buddhist food makes it difficult to overeat. People often eat too much of any delicious food because they hurry while eating, run out of time or skip meals. “Nutrients left over when our body’s energy needs are already met are the cause of obesity and various diseases,” Hongseung says. “If you make a habit of light eating, you will be able to live a long and healthy life.”

7. Food as Medicine

Buddhism teaches that eating the right food is the best way to cure disease without taking medicine or getting other treatment. “When I have problem with my digestion, I eat cabbage, and when I have problem with the lungs, I eat gingko nuts seasoned with sesame oil,” says monk Seonjae. According to Prof. Lee Eui-ju of Kyunghee University’s Oriental Medicine Hospital, food plays an important role in the three stages of disease prevention, treatment and post-treatment. “For people with diseases related to dietary habits such as diabetes, hypertension and hypotension, Buddhist dishes are a great help.”

Australia: More choosing Buddhist path

2006-05-20T14:01:00.001+08:00

By Sarah Price, Sydney Morning Herald, May 7, 2006

Sydney, Australia -- BUDDHISM is growing as a religion of choice for Australians seeking an antidote to a greedy, violent and stressed out world.

Dr Cristina Rocha, a postdoctoral fellow with the University of Western Sydney Centre for Cultural Research, said increasing numbers of Australians were shying away from their religion of their birth and instead adopting spiritualities of choice.

"Buddhism is happiness, peace, tranquillity, well-being ... in sharp contrast with what is happening in the world," Dr Rocha said.

She said it was the fastest growing religion in Australia between the 1996 and 2001 census, and anecdotal evidence suggested its popularity was still as strong.

The growth was not only due to migration but also to large numbers of Australians becoming Buddhists.

Thousand-Hand Bodhisattva

2006-05-19T18:28:00.000+08:00

The performers of the Thousand-Hand Bodhisattva are all hearing or speech-impaired who can hear nothing at all. They vividly present to us the images of the Thousand-Hand Bodhisattva in Dunhuang painted sculptures. As all the performers have disabilities, they must work much harder and more laboriously than the regular performers. Since they are unable to hear but are required to move in synchronization, there are four sign language conductors located at each corner of the stage to direct them during their performance. Throughout the performance, the performers must constantly move their hands. With all the 21 performers close to each other, there is a mere one-inch space between the hands of one performer and another. Furthermore, they must finish each motion within a single beat of music (about one second), while presenting the image of a thousand hands consistently and beautifully. Needless to say, this is extremely challenging for these hearing and speech-impaired performers. During their practice, the hearing-impaired performers must position their ears very close to the sound box to feel the rhythms of the music through vibrations. Compared to regular performers, they must work harder to create beautiful formations and move to the rhythm of the music.

The impact of this performance results not only from the wonderful artistic expertise and skill of the performers, but also from their unrelenting spirit of persevering through hardship and striving for excellence, which is reflective of the spirit of Huawei. Looking back at the 18 years of Huawei's development, it's the same unrelenting spirit of persevering through hardship and striving for success that has helped Huawei overcome unimaginable difficulties and challenges and This spirit has been the driving force behind the achievements of Huawei people today.

Whistle Blower exposes monk's corruption

2006-05-19T12:57:00.000+08:00

The Buddhist Channel, May 18, 2006

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia -- A whistle blower has succeeded in exposing the illegal deeds and acts of corruption by Dr. Dodamgoda Rewatha Thero a Sri Lankan national and Buddhist monk who embezzled funds belonging to the Maha Bodhi Society of India (MBSI), considered to be the head quarters of the Buddhist movement.

<< The Bodh gaya Temple

The actions of this monk who headed the MBSI has hurt the sentiments of lakhs of Buddhist disciples associated with the MBSI that was founded by Srimath Anagarika Dharmapala a great Buddhist revivalist from Sri Lanka who established the MBSI in 1916 at Kolkatta, in India.

He liberated the Bodh Gaya temple from the clutches of the Mahants(Hindu head priest who controlled the Bodh Gaya temple )and restored the ancient Buddhist sites. He also built the Mulagandhakuti Vihara(is a Buddhist temple built near the Dharmmeka stupa where Buddha delivered his first sermon after attaining the enlightenment) at Sarnath.

The first Prime Minister of India after it achieved its freedom in 1947, the late Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, had taken a keen interest in the development work that were undertaken at Sarnath and other places for providing facilities for travelling pilgrims.

The irregularities committied by Dr. Rewatha came to light when a whistle blower made it as an issue at the annual general body meeting of the MBSI held on 20-9-1998 at Kolkatta. The AGM was informed that between 1989 and 1997 Dr Rewatha had siphoned off donations of money received by the MBSI by not reflecting these transactions in the accounts books of the society. Dr Rewatha was unable to satisfactorily explain the alleged irregularities.

A complaint was then filed by the whistle blower before the Enforcement Directorate (E.D) on 30-09-1998 . A show-cause notice No. T-4/3-c/2000 (For Document Proof Click Here ) was served on Dr.Rewatha by the E.D for contravening section 8(1) and 71(1) of FERA 1973 by selling the Foreign Exchange to the tune of 000 and 5,53,00,000 Japanese Yen to Unauthorised persons without any permission from the Reserve Bank of India (R.B.I) and thereby rendered himself liable to be proceeded under section 50 of the said Act.

The central Bureau of Investigation filed a charge -sheet against Dr.Rewatha thero in 2000 . The chief Metropolitan court Delhi passed an order and imposed a penalty of Rs 50000 ( For Document Proof Click here)

In the Adjudicating proceeding No.ADJ/SDE/5/2004/AO/HB(53) File No. T-4/3-c/2000 dated 30-11-2004 a penalty amount of Rs.350,00000/- (For Document Proof Click here ) is imposed on Dr.Rewatha and he has filed an appeal before the tribunal court New Delhi.The E.D has filed a criminal complaint on 4-5-2002 against Dr Rewatha before the Chief Judicial Magistrate Varanasi and he has obtained a stay order on his arrest warrant( For Document Proof Click here )

Dr.Rewatha did not disclose the fact to the tribunal court, New Delhi that he had been charge-sheeted nor did he tell the court about the penalty imposed on him by the CBI. He deliberately concealed the Adjudicating penalty imposed by the E.D.

Dr.Rewatha did not disclose the fact to the tribunal court, New Delhi that he had been charge-sheeted nor did he tell the court about the penalty imposed on him by the CBI. He deliberately concealed the Adjudicating penalty imposed by the E.D.

In the AGM held on 26-09-2004 he oppointed Dr. B.K. Modi the secretary of the Vishva Hindu Parishad as the president of the MBSI and both of them announced the celebration plans on the occasion of the 2550th year of Buddha Jayanti in 2006. Plans to produce a mega budget film of lord Buddha at the cost of Rs. 200 crores and a massive donation collection drive to finance the film are currently being undertaken by Dr.Rewatha & Dr. Modi.

Sir Lanka is a Buddhist country that follows the highest traditions of Theravada. Srimath Anagarika Dharmapala had propagated Buddhism not only in Sri Lanka but also in India and other parts of the world through the establishment of the MBSI Branches/Centers.

It is unfortunate that the Sri Lankan Government is turning a blind eye and maintaining silence on the sordid affairs of the MBSI under Dr. Rewatha's leadership. Dr Rewatha has brought disgrace to the great Buddhist revivalist of Sri Lanka which has been widely publisided through the media. Surprisingly, not a single Buddhist organisation in Sri Lanka, who without exception hold a very high regard for the sentiments of the MBSI founder Srimath Anagarika Dharmapala have openly condemned Dr Rewatha.

Plea to adopt Buddhist economics

2006-05-18T18:20:00.000+08:00

by PK Balachandran, Hindustan Times, May 20, 2006

Colombo, Sri Lanka -- Sri Lanka's Buddhist economists say that the cure for world-wide ills like poverty, inequality, insecurity and violence lies in abandoning Western economic theories and models and adopting Buddhist economics - economic principles enunciated by Gautama Buddha, 2550 years ago.

The Buddha proposed that the pursuit, accumulation and use of wealth be guided not only by self-interest but also by social responsibility and compassion for the less fortunate and the less endowed.

If this dictum is followed, the world will not be torn by the horrible conflicts and tensions that it is today. Fantastic strides in technology, mass production of an array of goods and faster communications have not made the world a better place to live.

These advances have only increased economic, social and political disparities; poverty, national and international instability; armed conflicts; terrorism and counter terrorism; and a sense of fear and insecurity.

To fight pervasive fear and insecurity, elaborate and expensive security systems and deterrents are put in place. Defence budgets have soared even in the poorest countries.

It is in the light of these developments that Prof JW Wickramasinghe, of the University of Sri Jayawardenepura in Sri Lanka, has a made a strong plea for the adoption of Buddhist economic principles, which stress compassion, altruistic sharing, and a social, as opposed to a purely individual-driven approach.

Buddhist economics replaces "self-interest" by "peoples' interest" as the driving force or rationale of economic activity.

Grim picture

In his work Buddhist Theory of Development Economics published by the Buddhist Cultural Centre, Dehiwela, Sri Lanka in 2002, Wickramasinghe paints a grim picture of the present state of the world.

He then contrasts the prescriptions of the traditional Western economists with those of the Buddha as contained in his numerous "Suttas". Quoting the Human Development Report of 1998, he says that 75 per cent of the world's population lives in the developing countries, but they enjoy only 20 per cent of the world's total output.

Fifteen per cent of the world's population, living in the industrialised countries, enjoys 70 per cent of the global income. The infant mortality rate in the developing countries is seven times that in the developed countries.

In 1996, the value of exports of all developing countries amounted to US$ 26 billion, which was only 10 per cent of UK's exports. The developing countries had been losing up to $700 billion in annual export earnings as a result of the trade barriers maintained by the industrialised countries.

"Had the poorest countries been able to maintain their share of the world market at the mid-1980s level, their average per capita incomes would be $32 a year higher, a significant increase over today's figure of $228 a year," Wickramasinghe notes.

"The export earnings of developing countries could rise by $127 billion a year if developed countries opened their markets to textile and clothing imports."

"In 1998 alone, the total agricultural support in the industrialised countries amounted to $353 billion, more than triple the value of official development assistance," he points out.

Poverty and inequality have only been increasing with economic growth. In other words, economic growth has not led to economic development.

Again quoting the Human Development Report of 1998, Wickramasinghe says that the ratio of the income of the top 20 per cent to the poorest 20 per cent was 30 to 1 in 1960.But by 1994, it had gone up to a startling 78 to 1.

In 1982, the developing countries owed $647.2 billion to the developed countries. But by 1993, it had jumped to $1162 billion.

The Net External Debt, as a percentage of the GDP, had risen from 37.1 per cent in 1982 to 43.6 per cent in 1993.

The total number of people below the poverty line (earning less that $1 per day) increased from 1195 million in 1987 to 1300 million in 1993.

In 1993, more than 160 million children in the world were moderately or severely under nourished. Half a million women in the developing countries died each year during child birth.

And to contain the intense competition and tension in the world, created by Western economic theories and policies, countries have been spending enormous amounts on defence.

In 1995, global defence spending stood at $ 800 billion, of which the poverty stricken South Asian countries accounted for $15 billion, says Wickramasinghe.

Disparities in Sri Lanka

Disparities have been increasing in Sri Lanka, an avowedly Buddhist and democratic country.

Using the Consumer Finance and Socio-Economic Survey data, Wickramasinghe points out that while in 1973, the lowest income recipient decile got 1.8 per cent of the total, it steadily fell to 0.40 per cent in 1985-86.

On the other hand, the highest income receiving decile, which got 29.98 per cent in 1973, secured 49.30 per cent in 1985-86.

Individual orientation at fault

The root cause of all this is the basic precept of Western economic science, which is that the ultimate objective of all economic activity is maximisation of the satisfaction of the individual.

Economists like Adam Smith believed that self-centered pursuit of economic activity would lead to perfect competition, and this would eventually level society.

But this has not happened, says Wickramasinghe.

Change of heart needed

What one sees is the very opposite. The development of capitalism and globalisation has only resulted in the widening of disparities. This has been due to the almost complete disregard for social welfare, equality and the common good.

Modern states have used instruments like taxation, welfare measures and affirmative action to narrow the disparities. But these have not been very effective, except in a few Scandinavian countries.

What is needed, according to Wickramasinghe, is not only the replacement of the "self-centered" approach by a "people-friendly" approach but a change of heart, that is, change at the individual level.

Individuals have to internalise the "people-friendly" approach. Only then will the new system work smoothly and last long. This calls for a deep study of Buddhism and the adoption of its basic principles.

Buddha's prescriptions

In contrast to Adam Smith's contentions, the Buddha says in the "Kosambiya Sutta" that when a person consumes wealth only by himself without sharing with others, he generates social unrest through jealousy and ill will. Unrest manifests itself in stealing and civil commotion.

While Western economics is based on greed, an insatiable appetite for wealth and generation of wealth, the Buddha's economics rested on production and acquisition of wealth without a trace of greed.

Greed to him was the root cause of inequality and subjection, and the consequent unrest, destruction and radical change.

The Buddha was acutely aware of the power of greed and Wickramasinghe quotes him as saying in the "Rajja Sutta" that "even if the Himalayan mountain is transformed into a mass of gold, it would not be sufficient to satisfy the craving of a human being!"

The Buddha foresaw the consequences of greed-driven economics in the " Chakkavatti Sihananda Sutta". He decried craving in the "Ratthapala Sutta".

The Buddha wanted people to produce wealth and consume it in the right way in the "Rasiya Sutta".

He said that people should ask themselves the following questions: "Was the wealth accumulated in the right, ethnical way? Was unfair means used? Whether consumption of it will deprive others of consumption? Whether one is developing a needless attachment to the article of consumption?

Meaningful charity

Distribution of wealth in the form of donation and other kinds of sharing is the cornerstone of Buddhist economics.

Wickramasinghe quotes the "Sanyuktta Nikaya, Sedaka Suttas" to say that protection of others is the protection of oneself, since it obviates the need for measures to protect one's wealth and person.

"Apart from the mental satisfaction one derives from a donation, it reduces the cost of enjoying wealth," he observes.

The Buddha laid out four principles for the use of wealth:

1. To make one's mother and father, children and wife, servants and workmen, and friends and comrades, happy and cheerful.

2. To make oneself secure from misfortunes.

3. To make offerings to relatives, guests, the ancestors and deities.

4. To give gifts to ascetics and Brahmins.

Middle Path

The Buddha was against both over indulgence and self-mortification or self- denial.

In the "Nivapa Sutta" and the "Dhammachakkappavattna Sutta" he criticised over indulgence because he detested craving. But he decried self-mortification and self-denial also. These were useless he said.

He advocated the Middle Path in personal, social, political and economic life.

The Buddha said wealth must be pursued and enjoyed without lustful attachment (Bhogha Sukha). And it should subject itself to universal compassion (Karuna).

However, the Buddha was against charity for its own sake. He wanted donations to enable the less privileged to get the wherewithal to make a better living.

The less privileged should be enabled to stand on their own feet and not be abjectly dependent and indolent. He condemned laziness in the "Mala Sutta".

Misinterpretation of the Buddha

Buddhism is often misinterpreted as a fatalistic religion, in which the pursuit of pleasure (or life itself) is decried as the cause of unhappiness or "Dukka".

Buddhists are expected to cultivate "detachment" and work towards total liberation or "nirvana".

These dictates are considered to be anti-economic activity or anti-development. But Wickramasinghe considers this view a "sad misunderstanding".

He says that the Buddha never decried worldly or mundane activities. All he wanted was a combination of economic and spiritual values for the sake of obtaining the maximum, all round benefit, for the individual and the society.

This was stated in the "Dwichakku Sutta". The Buddha was acutely aware of mundane problems. He gave foremost importance to the fighting of hunger.

As per the Dhammapada, there is no pain greater than hunger. It is treated as the most serious illness.

The utter practicality of Buddhism is reflected in the fact that its early followers were traders and that it was through trading communities rather than professional missionaries per se, that it spread to all parts of India, and South and South East Asia.

The spiritual cum rational character of Buddhism was noticed and appreciated by no less a person than the renowned scientist Albert Einstein.

Writing about his concept of religion of the future, Einstein said: "The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology.

Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description."

--------------------------
PK Balachandran is Special Correspondent of Hindustan Times in Sri Lanka

dharmic journey

Introduction to Gautama the Buddha

English version by Sanderson Beck

Copyright 1996 by Sanderson BeckWISDOM OF CHINA AND INDIA ContentsDHAMMAPADA (PATH OF TRUTH)Buddha and Buddhism ETHICS OF CIVILIZATION

Buddhism in America

Resolute Determination is the Eighth Mental Perfection

India enshrines Buddha's remains after 2000 years

By Laura MacInnis, The Star (Reuters), Oct 29, 2006

<< A boy stands next to a crystal to be put up atop the dome above, as he attends a Buddhist ceremony in a newly constructed pagoda in Mumbai yesterday. Thousands of Buddhists gathered for the ceremony held to lay to rest part of the ashes and bones of Lord Buddha

China takes heat after tragic flight of Tibetan teenager

By Daniel Pepper, The CSMonitor, Oct 25,2006

On Rationalizing Negligence

by Lafcadio Hearne

Compassion and the Individual

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

The Elimination of Anger

Dhammapada 3+4+5

The Elimination of AngerTags: buddhism | buddha | anger | dharma

10 mental perfections

Source: Commentary on the Basket of behaviour. Translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi inDiscourse on the All-Embracing Net of Views

Emptiness and Existence

by Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama

Tenzin Gyatso is the Fourteen Dalai Lama of Tibet. This selection is from How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph.D. http://www.shambhalasun.com

Dealing with Anger and Making Progress

by B.F.

Compassion and the Individual

by His Holiness Dalai Lama

The Need To Win

from The Way of Chuang Tzu [xix,4], Thomas Merton Translation

Emptiness

by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Source: http://world.std.com/~metta/lib/modern/emptiness.html

Suffering of Love

By Tam Lac Tran Quy Anh

By ©Jessica TranLay Buddhist Student Tam Lac23 January 2005 www.buddhamind.tk

Discourse on Happiness

Mahamangala Sutta (Suttanipata 1)

The Body, Speech and Mind of a Buddha

Ancient Rahimin drawing found in Bamiyan

Researching Buddhism And Facts Surrounding The Popular Philosophy

By: Marcus Grant iSnare Expert Author

Marcus Grant http://www.buddhism-history.com http://www.buddhismhistory.org

Two Elements of Effective Prayer

By Thich Nhat Hanh

Excerpt from The Energy of Prayer: How to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice by Thich Nhat Hanh (2006, Parallax Press, parallax.org). Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

Tibet to study rare Buddhist leaf scriptures

Xinhua, Lhasa, July 28, 2006

Buddhism reflects many perspectives

by Alfred Bloom

Buddhism revives in Mongolia's grasslands

By Lindsay Beck

Offering a Buddhism for everyone

A Lutz practitioner brings the ancient faith's tenets and beliefs to those seeking greater peace.By SHERYL KAYPublished July 7, 2006

Buddhist says study and meditation lead to clarity

First published: Saturday, July 15, 2006

Rainbow warrior

by GEERT DE WEYER

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama was recognised at the age of three as the reincarnation of his predecessor.Picture: Phil Wilkinson

Awaken the Sleeping Buddha Within

by M N Kundu

http://spirituality.indiatimes.com

I am a simple Buddhist monk: Dalai Lama

by Percy Fernandez, TIMES NEWS NETWORK, July 6, 2006

Annie's sweet dreams of new temple

The Lesson of the Sand Mandala

By DAVID WATERS, Scripps Howard News Service, June 28, 2006

How To Do A Meditation Retreat

Walking Meditation

On-line Instruction with Charles MacInerney

The Essence of Buddhism

Not Far From Buddhahood

Can thai buddhism be saved from superstition?

The Joyful Nun

by Loke Poh Lin, New Straits Times, June 15, 2006

Former convicts make a new life for themselves through Buddhism

Taiwan Headlines, June 15, 2006

Buddhism With a New Mind-Set

by James Estrin, The New York Times, June 13, 2006

Gandhi proclaimed himself a Buddhist

by PK Balachandran, The Hindustan, June 12, 2006

Copyright 1996 by Sanderson Beck
WISDOM OF CHINA AND INDIA Contents
DHAMMAPADA (PATH OF TRUTH)
Buddha and Buddhism ETHICS OF CIVILIZATION

The Elimination of Anger

Tags: buddhism | buddha | anger | dharma

Source: Commentary on the Basket of behaviour. Translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi in
Discourse on the All-Embracing Net of Views

By ©Jessica Tran
Lay Buddhist Student Tam Lac
23 January 2005 www.buddhamind.tk

A Lutz practitioner brings the ancient faith's tenets and beliefs to those seeking greater peace.

By SHERYL KAY
Published July 7, 2006

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama was recognised at the age of three as the reincarnation of his predecessor.
Picture: Phil Wilkinson

<< Becca Topol, meditating at the Santa Monica Zen Center in California, says commingling her Jewish faith and Buddhism has deepened her spirituality.
ANNE CUSACK: LOS ANGELES TIMES