Healing Buddha

Buddhism No Responses »
May 162012

When faced with a life-threatening disease, many people turn to faith. I am no different, except I don’t consider it a turn to “faith,” rather I have turned to the “tools” of Buddhism.

Japanese image of the Healing Buddha (Yakushi Nyorai) from the 12th Century

One tool is practice centered on the Healing or Medicine Buddha. My interest in the Healing Buddha is not new. I began studying Healing Buddha teachings over a decade ago, and participated in several “Medicine Buddha Empowerments,” including one given by Taklung Tsetrul Rinpoche in 2002. In Tibetan Buddhism, an empowerment initiates or gives permission for a student to engage in a specific tantric practice, usually some form of deity worship.

I’m not sure that empowerments are all that helpful (or necessary) since most people don’t understand what’s going on during these rituals and therefore, they are not any better prepared to undertake a particular practice than they were before. This, I think, is especially true of the kind of large gathering empowerments like those given by the Dalai Lama. I feel more personalized instruction with a competent teacher is much better.

Moreover, I don’t worship deities. But neither do tantric practitioners, not if they are approaching this sort of practice, also known as “deity-yoga” in the right way. These “deities” are not supernatural beings to be “worshipped.” They are archetypes to use as objects of meditation. They symbolize inner forces or potentials:

However, even if we admit that all the powers and faculties of the universe are within us, unless we have activated them through practice or made them accessible through training they will never become realities that influence our life . . . Just because the depth-consciousness (which I think is a better term than the “unconscious”) contains an unlimited wealth of forces, qualities, and experiences, it requires a well-ordered, purposeful and trained mind to make use of this wealth in a meaningful way, i.e. to call up only those forces, contents of consciousness or their respective archetypal symbols which are beneficial to the particular situation and spiritual level of the individual and give meaning to his life.”

Lama Govinda, Creative Meditation and Multi-Dimensional Consciousness

Bhaisajyaguru, the Medicine or Healing Buddha, has been one of the most popular of these archetypal figures, revered in India, Tibet, China, Korea and Japan. Meditating on the Healing Buddha is a tool for harnessing our natural healing energies, and because compassion is a prime motivation for engaging in any Buddhist activity, it’s also a tool for helping others to heal.

This is not a substitute for conventional or alternative medical practices and procedures.  It’s not faith healing, based upon a belief in divine intervention where conventional/alternative medicine is dismissed. Nor does it fall under the category of spiritual healing, the belief in divine energy. As I see it, there is nothing divine or supernatural about this. It’s an aid to natural healing, tapping into the energies of thought and emotion, a tool for strengthening the power of the body to heal itself, which the body is designed to do. Healing the mind, as well.

Meditation on the Healing Buddha often involves visualization: you visualize yourself becoming the Healing Buddha. Chanting the Healing Buddha mantra is a meditation practice that may or may not involve visualization. The mantra is derived from the Bhaisajyaguru-vaiduryaprabharaja Sutra (“Healing Buddha Sutra”) and although you will see various spellings, it basically goes “TAD-YA-THA OM BHE-KAN-ZAY BHE-KAN-ZAY MAHA BHE-KAN-ZAY RAZA SA-MUN-GA-TAY SOHA.”

There are various interpretations of the meaning, too. I think a reasonable one is something like “Thus: Om Healer, Healer, Great Healer, gone to awakening, awaken in me.”

I’ll have more to say about the mantra and the Healing Buddha in upcoming posts. In the meantime, here is a short video I put together of the Healing Buddha Mantra set to music.

Posted by David at 12:24 am Tagged with: , , ,

The Mother of All Buddhas

Buddhism 2 Responses »
May 112012

Sunday is Mother’s Day, so it seems only fitting to talk about Prajna-Paramita, the mother of all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. In Prajna-paramita literature, Buddhas are not born from Nirvana but from the practice of Prajna-paramita, Transcendent Wisdom.

In some forms of Buddhism, particularly Tantric ones, Prajna-paramita was worshipped as a goddess, sometimes regarded as a manifestation of Tara. Here is a ritualistic description of her in the later form, from the Ekallavira-Canda-Maharosana-Tantra:

I shall reveal the nature of Prajnaparamita who sits in the sattva-paryanka-sana . . . She is blue in color, full  of good fortune, and stamped with the figure of Aksobhya. Her right and left hands hold respectively a red and blue lotus on each of which rests a book on Kamasastra (a treatise on love and erotics). She has youthful and elevated breasts, large eyes, and pleasant speech.

“Sattva-paryanka-sana,” by the way, is a mode of sitting in which the legs are not locked, but placed one above the other with only one of the soles being visible.

In Prajna-paramita literature, her importance as a symbol is more philosophical than ritualistic, more nurturing and less erotic. I’ve shared this before, but it’s worth sharing once again – a wonderfully poetic description of the Mother of All Buddhas from the Prajna-Paramita Sutra:

The Compassionate Mother of Buddhas

Transcendent wisdom gives light, O Thus Gone One, She is worthy of homage; I pay homage to transcendent wisdom! She is unstained. She removes the darkness from everyone in the triple world. She does her utmost to bring about the forsaking of the blinding darkness caused by the defilements and by false views. She makes us seek the safety of all the dharmas which act as wings to enlightenment. She brings light, so that all fear, terror, and distress may be forsaken. She shows the path to beings, so that they may acquire the five organs of vision. To beings who have strayed on to the wrong road she brings about the knowledge of all modes through the avoidance of the two extremes, on account of the forsaking of all the defilements together with their residues.

Transcendent wisdom is the mother of the Bodhisattvas, the great beings, on account of her generations of the Buddhadharmas. She is neither produced nor stopped, on account of the emptiness of own-marks. She liberates from birth-and-death because she is not unmoved nor destroyed, she protects the unprotected, on account of her being the donor all dharmas. She brings about the ten powers (of a Buddha), because she cannot be crushed, she sets in motion the wheel of Dharma with its three revolutions and its twelve aspects on account of it being neither turned forward nor backward. The perfection of wisdom shows forth the own-being of all dharmas, on account of the emptiness of the nonexistence of own-being.”

Posted by David at 9:50 am Tagged with: , ,

The Heart Sutra and Kuan Yin

Buddhism 2 Responses »
May 082012

As I mentioned the other day, compassion is just as important theme in the Heart Sutra as emptiness (sunyata), the focus of most of the attention. This might be difficult to see because there is no specific reference to compassion. However, there is hardly a word in the sutra that is not representative of some Buddhist concept. Therefore, simply the word “Bodhisattva” stands for the Bodhisattva path, the practice of compassion.

Now, there are two versions of the Heart Sutra: the original longer one, and a shorter one for chanting. The longer version contains a prologue and epilogue, each about a paragraph in length. The prologue sets the scene, on Vulture Peak where the Buddha is sitting in meditation surrounded by an assembly of monks and Bodhisattvas, and Shariputra asks Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva how to practice Prajna-paramita (Transcendent Wisdom). In the epilogue, the Buddha emerges from his meditation, praises Avalokitesvara for his good words, and everyone rejoices. In the short version of the sutra, the epilogue is reduced to a single sentence and the epilogue is redacted entirely.

The Heart Sutra is supposed to be a condensed version of the much, much longer Maha-Prajna-paramita Sutra. But Avalokitesvara does not appear anywhere in that work, rather he is borrowed from the Lotus Sutra. And, of course, Avalokitesvara is “the Bodhisattva of compassion.”

Why does Shariputra pose his question to Avalokitesvara and not to the Buddha? It’s unusual since the Buddha is teacher, the center of so many sutras, and the key figure in Buddhism. The traditional explanation for this is that the compliers of the Heart Sutra, by having Shariputra, a Hinayana disciple, ask for guidance from a Mahayana Bodhisattva, were making a point about the “small vehicle” versus the “large vehicle.” Using rhetorical allegory, they were making a case for the validity and superiority of Mahayana.

But who really cares about that? Today, there is no Hinayana, except for the Theravada school, which rejects the term, considering it an insult. Yet, there is a way to interpret the scene that is very relevant to us today.

In China, Avalokitesvara is known as Kuan Yin (or Guan Yin); in Japan, Kannon; in Korea, Kwan Um; and often, the bodhisattva is a female icon (Avalokitesvara, you know, is androgynous). The Chinese Kuan Yin, the “Goddess of Compassion,” was a figure that transcended religious sectarianism. Taoists, Confucianists, and Buddhists alike worshipped Kuan Yin. However, that was among the lay people, who worshipped Kuan Yin in their homes (it was very unusual for Chinese families to have a statue of Buddha on their home altar), but not in the temples, which were run by men, and where Kuan Yin was nearly always male.

Vestiges of Buddhism’s patriarch institutions remain today, especially in the on-going controversy over ordaining women as nuns, which could be resolved in the blink of an eye if the monks would come to their senses and decide to join the rest of us in the 21st Century. Moreover, in today’s world, women are still struggling for equal rights. The recent controversy over the “War on Women” is ample evidence that women’s rights remains a vital issue. Because of this, I think it’s important to try and find positive images of women in Buddhist literature considering that much of it seems sexist, if not downright misogynistic.

The Heart Sutra affords us an opportunity for this, if we transform Avalokitesvara from a male figure to that of the female Kuan Yin. Now, one could say this in unnecessary, that Avalokitesvara’s androgynous nature represents the unconditioned where there is no division between male and female. But somehow the symbolism of having one of the Buddha’s male disciples seeking wisdom from a woman makes a more powerful statement, one that should be inspiring to women, and as well, meaningful to men.

In the Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion, Volume 2 by David Adams, et al, there is a very interesting entry on Kuan Yin which poses the question, “Does Guan Yin offer a psychologically tame balance for the ancient traditional role of women as subservient . . . Or does Guan Yin function as more bold, compassionate, saving contrast to that repression, even a feminist opponent to that?” I say, the latter. Even for me, as a man, regarding Kuan Yin in the female persona causes the Heart Sutra to come alive with unexpected meaning, relevant to our times. Having Shariputra seek guidance from a woman is symbolic of women’s dignity, which must be respected.

This I think coincides with what Rita M. Gross (dharma teacher and former Professor Emerita of Comparative Studies in Religion, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire), in Buddhism After Patriarchy, calls “reconstruction of the symbol system.” She argues that Buddhism is reconstuctible “because the fundamental teachings and symbols of Buddhism are essentially egalitarian and liberating for all, equally relevant and applicable to all beings.”

Kuan Yin is not the only feminine ideal in Buddhism. It should not be forgotten that Prajna-paramita is also female, “the mother of all Buddhas,” nor that an important aspect of Tantric or Vajrayana Buddhism has always the presence of powerful, even sexually active, female archetypes. But there is something about Kuan Yin that makes her, as Sandy Boucher says, “a towering female figure.”

In Chinese philosophy, yin (a different character from the Yin in the bodhisattva’s name) is identified with the female principle – passive energy that resonates with love and wisdom. It was a kind of energy inherent in all people, regardless of gender, but may be more or less dominant according to the person. This is another way that Kuan Yin as the female principle reinforces the sutra’s theme of compassion.

There are many other aspects of Kuan Yin, the feminine ideal, to be discussed, but this will have to suffice for now. For those interested in this subject, I recommend Boucher’s book, Discovering Kuan Yin, Buddhist Goddess of Compassion, which explores Kuan Yin’s history, legends and is filled with many poignant personal stories, along with Kuan Yin meditations, songs, and practices.

On the more scholarly side, there is Chun-fang Yu’s Kuan-yin: the Chinese transformation of Avalokitesìvara, an in-depth and lengthy (688 pages) study of the “dramatic transformation of the (male) Indian bodhisattva Avalokitesvara into the (female) Chinese Kuan-yin.”

We see images of this great Bodhisattva throughout the Far East in the lovely figure of Kwan-yin looking down in mercy on the world. That principle of mercy engages us in the world, addressing ourselves to others with sympathy, with compassion for their sense of sorrow. We feel the world is sorrowful. We see people feeling that they are in sorrow and yet they are actually in delight. The truth is that since this is nirvana, we are all motivated by delight, and so we are. So life is.

Joseph Campbell, Myths of Light

Posted by David at 3:03 am Tagged with: , ,

Asian American Heritage Month

Buddhism No Responses »
May 052012

May is Asian American Heritage Month – actually, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month as proclaimed by President Barack Obama in 2009. During May all Americans, not just Asian-Americans, celebrate “The vast diversity of languages, religions, and cultural traditions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.” May was chosen so to mark the immigration of the first Japanese to the United States on May 7, 1843 as well as the anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869, the tracks of which were laid in large part by Chinese immigrants.

In reflecting on this celebration, I find it extremely sad that there seems to be a real division between Asian-Americans and non-Asian Americans in the Buddhist community, as evidenced by a recent online discussion. I have heard many times that Asian Americans are in search of a sense of identity. I don’t know if that is at play here or not, but I feel that through my study of the history of Asians in the United States, I have a fairly decent understanding of the challenges Asian Americans have had in that regard.

What I don’t understand, specifically in relation to Buddhism in America, are accusations of colonialism and white supremacy because frankly I haven’t seen any evidence of it. And I’ve been around Buddhism quite a while. What does seem to be a factor is a certain amount of revisionist history. An example is the case of Henry Steel Olcott, who, up to now, was widely respected for his efforts to foster a revival of Buddhism in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). I recently became aware of several books which attempt to paint Olcott as a sort of white supremacist. In one, Race and Religion in American Buddhism: White Supremacy and Immigrant Adaptation, Joseph Cheah, a Catholic priest, writes, “Olcotts representation of Buddhism illustrates the assumption that Euro-American values and frameworks were vastly superior to those of Asian Buddhists.” This statement contradicts everything previously known about Olcott, whom a Sri Lankan prime minister once proclaimed as “one of the heroes in the struggle for our independence and a pioneer of the present religious, national, and cultural revival.”

I’ve read Cheah’s book and it’s full of inaccuracies. Furthermore, it seems that the bulk of the book is simply rehashing the somewhat dubious theories of other scholars and researchers. For Olcott, Cheah’s primary source is The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott by Steven Prothero, who is not a Buddhist but calls himself a “confused Christian” and who has written at least one other “terribly flawed book.”

White supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to people of other racial backgrounds.I just don’t believe that very many white Americans who are attracted to Asian philosophy have that in their hearts, and I don’t believe they would even be interested in Asian spirituality if they did. My experience has been the opposite. I have been interested in Buddhism for over forty years and during that time I have often reached out to Asian Buddhists and on many occasions I have felt that they have been standoffish, almost unfriendly, and have long suspected that it is they who feel superior and that they really don’t consider non-Asians as real Buddhists, or that we can ever truly fathom Buddha-dharma.

Well, there you have it. As Dave Mason once wrote in a song, “There’s only you and me and we just disagree.” There is a divide and the question is how to bridge it. While I don’t buy the claims of colonialism and white supremacy, I cannot negate the feelings of those who sincerely, without twisting facts, hold that view. Yet, I feel it only makes matters worse to engage in a war of words by taking exception to certain terms and labels when their use is well-intentioned. I think it’s a case of everyone talking and nobody listening.

Perhaps we should take our cue from an Asian Buddhist who is not an American, Thich Nhat Hanh, who advocates “deep listening.” This is the practice of listening with compassionate intention, using compassion and understanding as an antidote to conflict. Thich Nhat Hanh says,

Deep listening is the foundation of Right Speech. If we cannot listen mindfully, we cannot practice Right Speech. No matter what we say, it will not be mindful, because we’ll be speaking only our own ideas and not in response to the other person.

Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another person. You can call it compassionate listening. You listen with only one purpose: to help him or her to empty his heart. Even if he says things that are full of wrong perceptions, full of bitterness, you are still capable of continuing to listen with compassion.”

Maybe that was what has been missing from my own experiences.

I hope that during the month of May, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we can stop talking at and begin talking with one another, practicing deep listening as we do, and hopefully by the time June rolls around, we will be a few steps closer to the bridging this gulf between Asian and non-Asian American Buddhists. I feel that Buddhists should try to set an example for the entire world, that we should be leaders in making substantive contributions to the collapse of racial barriers, and if we, the Buddha’s children, aren’t capable of doing that in our dialogues with each other, then maybe none of us understands Buddha-dharma.

For more on APAH visit the home page at the Library of Congress.

Posted by David at 3:15 am Tagged with: , ,

So Long to a Man with Ideations

General 5 Responses »
May 042012

My step-uncle Cuyler Wenberg passed away yesterday, May 3rd. He was 83. He had a stroke some time back and recently came down with pneumonia and throat trouble that made it hard for him to swallow . . . things went downhill from there.

Cy was a great guy, I will miss him a lot. I don’t have too much to say about his death, or life. The news is still sinking in. It’s still pretty raw.

The first time I met Cy, we went to a bluegrass festival in Orange County together. We rode up there and slept in his camper, which was a little funky, but I liked that, and I liked him right away. This might sound strange to some folks but what really sold me on him was when he told me that one time he took his kids to a Bruce Springsteen concert. I could tell he wasn’t a big rock music fan, but anybody who’d do something like that is just all right with me.

Among other things, Cy was a writer. He self-published two books, one a work of fiction titled Atlantis, Beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and Gadflies, a collection of short essays. To my mind, he wasn’t much of a gadfly himself. He didn’t rock the boat and he wasn’t irritable. I’d describe him as an eclectic man, and a natural man, drawn to the earth and the sea. His essay writing reminded me a little of Woody Guthrie. In Gadflies, instead of a table of contents, he wrote:

WELCOME TO MY IDEATIONS,
ET CETERA

Ideations – that’s the kind of word Woody would have made up. But Cy’s ideations were all his own.

After he moved to Coos Bay, Oregon we had many a phone conversation about writing, life, and other things. He’d completed a novel about Moses that he sent to me. To be honest, I didn’t get very far with it. Moses is not really up my alley. But I admired him for completing 3 books, while I was, and still am, trying to write past the third chapter in just one.

Here is an essay from Gadflies. I chose this one because it tells a little about his background and family, and it’s a good reflection of his personality.

CUPS

I have two special cups, my favorites. One was given to me by my daughter, Lori, the other by my daughter Kristin.

I’m sure everyone has a favorite cup or two commemorating a special occasion. Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor were all special to the Wenberg clan when I was a youngster. These were the times all the aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and a few close friends, would meet at Elk Grove, located on the outskirts of Chicago. It was a picknicking day of baseball and other games, visiting, eating, and in the afternoon, a siesta time in the shade for some of the older folks.

I was reminded of those earlier times when a Wenberg reunion was proposed by my brother, Earl, and Reita, his wife – a weekend on the Oregon Coast. Now I was one of the older generation, along with my wife, Lu, plus Earl and Reita, and sister Hazel and her husband Ernie, together with our families. It was a great time. Unlike living within twenty or thirty minutes of each other as our clan did in the Chicago area, our reunion brought us kinfolk together from all up and down the Pacific Coast.

On our last evening together, the camp-fire’s flickering glow just a stone’s throw from the murmuring waves of the Pacific ocean, Lori presented Hazel, Earl, and I each with a cup. A cup with a traditional orange/red-colored Swedish wooden horse imprinted on the side – a neat reminder both of the reunion and our Swedish heritage. That cup also stirs to mind memories of those earlier reunions, also of Lori and the special times I’ve shared with her family. It is my ‘camping’ cup, and travels in its own special perch in my van.

I don’t remember the specific date when I received my cup from Kristin. I believe it was a birthday p[resent. It is my ‘office’ cup, and also occupies a special place in my heart – that’s because we used to work in the mortgage business together. Like so many well-used office cups, I had allowed residue dregs from countless fillings of coffee to build up in Kristin’s cup to the point they began to look permanent, like brown-glazed pottery.

One morning, before its usual fill-up, I attacked the cup with gritty soap and water. The brown overlayment stubbornly, but gradually, rinsed away. One particularly bothersome spot on the bottom of the cup refused to dissolve. It achieves this ‘special’ status when I rediscovered a special message hidden in its bowl.

Rubbing harder, it slowly transformed into a heat-shaped reddish color – then fine print appeared just above the now visible heart that spelled out, together with the heart, “I (heart) a lot.” I had completely forgotten it was imprinted in the bottom of the cup. The inside heart, coupled with a happy face and words on the outside of the cup repeated the message, “I love you a lot.”

Cups. I wonder if any of the disciples ever went back to the upper room after the crucifixion, the room where they had celebrated the last Passover with Jesus and shared a cup with Him. I wonder if any of the disciples ever went back for that cup, that silver chalice of history, books, and legend?

“And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten saying, ‘This cup which is poured out of you is the New Covenant in my blood.” Luke 22:20

Reprinted from GADFLIES © 2003 Cy Wenberg, published by Trafford

Cy, I have a cup just like yours, stained with “residue dregs from countless fillings of coffee” that I’ve had for six or seven years. About twice a year, I actually use some soap to clean it, instead of just washing it out with water. Tonight, I lift my cup and share it with you.

 

Posted by David at 2:27 am Tagged with: ,

Joseph Campbell, Ferryboats, and The Heart Sutra

Buddhism 2 Responses »
May 032012

In my recent reading of the new Joseph Campbell book, “Myths of Light,” (reviewed here), I was intrigued with his all too brief discussion of the Prajna-paramita (Heart) Sutra, which I excerpted almost in its entirety in the review. It left me hungry for more. The Heart Sutra [text and video here] is a cryptic work, an essential Buddhist text. Nearly every word is a symbol, a metaphor for a deeper concept, or some deeper experience. It would be wonderful if Campbell, that great interpreter of spiritual literature, had written or spoken at length on the Heart Sutra. But I don’t think he did, or at least, nothing substantial has yet been published.

The Heart Sutra: A Ship to Cross the Sea of Suffering

Campbell’s remarks about Prajna-paramita appear in the chapter “Vessels to the Farther Shore,” in a section titled “Ferryboats.” The analogy of the ferryboat or raft is symbolic of one of the sutra’s themes: the way of the Bodhisattva. Campbell discusses “ferryboats” in terms of Buddhist yanas (vessels or vehicles), the “different Buddhist paths to enlightenment,” such as Hinayana, the so-called “small vessel” (of which Theravada is the only remaining school), and Mahayana, “the great vessel.” He makes the point that “Little ferryboat Buddhism is the Buddhism of monks, the Buddhism of people who make a distinction between this shore [the world] and [the shore of Nirvana] and are striving to get there,” while the great ferryboat of Mahayana “is meant to be the boat on which we all can ride – it takes us to the yonder shore and then ferries us back to this world.”

Campbell is expressing the Mahayana view here about “small vessel” and “great vessel,” to which some in the Theravada tradition might disagree. Nonetheless, he is exactly right that the prime point of Mahayana Buddhism is, metaphorically speaking, about a ferryboat large enough to carry all people across the sea of suffering to the yonder shore that, in actually, is not a yonder shore at all, but right here. 

Prajna-paramita or “wisdom that goes beyond” is said to be the ship that ferries us to the realization of “the world of suffering is Nirvana.” But then, but when you reach the shore of Nirvana you do not stop, you have to keep going. You may no longer need the vessel that ferried you, but a vessel is only a tool for travel, it’s not the journey. The journey is “the endless further,” going beyond, going far beyond.

Many people tend to focus only on the theme of emptiness in the Heart Sutra. However emptiness in one sense is just a tool. The purpose of understanding emptiness is to develop non-dual wisdom, so that we can practice compassion to the fullest extent. Prajna-paramita is a Bodhisattva vessel and Bodhisattva’s cannot rest until all living beings have been liberated.

That’s a big job, and an impossible one. Yet this is allegory, and the deeper meaning is about trying to capture the spirit behind the idea of liberating all livings beings.

In “There Is No Suffering,” Ch’an master Sheng-yen writes,

Paramita literally means ‘from here to there,’ but it also has the connotations of ‘leaving behind’ or ‘transcending.’ In particular, it means leaving behind and transcending suffering and its causes: the root afflictions (kelsas), propensities (vasanas), and deluded thoughts, words, and actions (karma). Another nuance of paramita is ‘liberation’  . . . the journey across the ocean of suffering, and its causes, to the other shore, liberation.”

That’s why in many of the English translations of the Heart Sutra you see the phrase “Avalokitesvara while practicing deep prajna-paramita crossed over all suffering” or words to that effect. ‘Crossed over all suffering’ does not appear in the original Indian and Chinese versions of the sutra. It’s there to reinforce the idea of transcendence, of going beyond, making the journey. It’s not a solitary trip. One’s motivation to go on the journey should be for the sake of all beings.

And since Prajna-paramita is the way of the Bodhisattva, it’s also why a Bodhisattva is front and center in the Heart Sutra and not the Buddha. I truly believe that the Mahayana Buddhists who put this sutra together were trying to send a subtle message that it’s more important to be a Bodhisattva than it is to become a Buddha. Why? Because in Mahayana, Buddhahood or enlightenment is not a destination, it’s just a stage in the journey. While the practice of compassion, is something for right now, in the present moment, for every step along the way.

In Thich Nhat Hanh’s book on the Heart Sutra, “The Heart of Understanding,”  he writes,

In Buddhist meditation we do not struggle for the kind of enlightenment that will happen five or ten years from now. We practice so that each moment of our life becomes real life.”

Whether you call it enlightenment, liberation, Nirvana, or just plain happiness, looking for it outside of your life, somewhere beyond this world, or at some future time, is a not a real journey, but rather, a dead end. That kind of ferryboat just gets tossed upon the sea and eventually sinks.

In “Myths of Light,” Joseph Campbell says,

Illumination comes from having something happening inside . . . The main sin is inadvertence, not being attentive to life, to the moment you are in, to its mystery, to what is happening right here now. When this is there, and you realize that the whole mystery and void is shining through at you, you are there.”

So here you are, standing on the shore, and the ferryboat is loading, and it’s not leaving a few minutes, or in an hour, or tomorrow, it’s leaving right now, in present moment. Climb on board.

In my next an upcoming post, more on the Heart Sutra, a bit more of Joseph Campbell, and about how Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, when viewed in the female persona of Kuan Yin, represents the feminine element within all beings.

Posted by David at 12:04 am Tagged with: , , ,

Even Plants and Trees Have Buddha-nature

General No Responses »
Apr 302012

My apartment is located in the rear of our building. There used to be four beautiful trees out my windows. They provided lots of cooling shade and ambiance. In springtime, birds would come to sit on the branches, chirping their love songs to one another, making lovely music. In the summertime, I loved to look out at the trees in the afternoon and I would be enthralled with how the sunlight fell upon the leaves just perfectly . . .

Two of these trees were destroyed by over-trimming and eventually cut down. Incompetent tree-trimming is a real problem here in Los Angeles. None of the people who do this sort of work seem to have any idea of how to prune a tree properly. They engage in topping and tipping, two practices that are extremely harmful to trees.

Topping is the indiscriminate cutting of large upright branches, often in order to reduce the height of a tree. Tipping is basically just hacking off lateral branches. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and any responsible arborist will tell you that topping and tipping are practices that should not be performed.

After the two trees were removed, obviously only two remained. One was a wonderful red berry tree that subsequently had the “heart” cut out of it by these so called “tree trimmers”:

Today they cut away at it some more, and now, it’s just ugly.

Then there was this small tree, which at one time was not so small, and was nearly destroyed by topping and tipping. For years, it struggled to survive:

Today this tree was completely cut down. It is no more. I call it murder. A pretty strong word, but trees are living things. So what else would you call the senseless act of killing a living thing? There was absolutely no need to destroy that tree.

In Mahayana Buddhism, “even non-sentient beings possess the Buddha-nature” (Ch. wu ch’ing yu hsing). Even plants and trees have a Buddha-nature.

William R. La Fleur has noted that,

Chi-t’sang [549–623 CE], a native of Turkestan and a master of Madhyamika dialectic in China, was the first to use the key phrase “Attainment of Buddhahood by Plants and Trees.” He made the first, although highly qualified, step in the direction of seeing Buddhahood in the nonsentient. In his Ta-ch’eng-hsuan-lun he stated that in theory plants and trees, since they are essentially like sentient beings, can achieve Buddhahood, but he allowed this as a possibility only within the realm of theory.”*

Around the same time, T’ien-t’ai master Chih-i (538–597 CE) put forth a theory on the Buddhahood of plants (Jp. somoku-jobutsu) based on his concept of i-nien san-ch’ien or “Three Thousand Worlds in One Thought” (Jp. ichinen sanzen). In his Chin-kang Pi (“Diamond Blade”), the ninth patriarch of the T’ien-t’ai school, Chan-jan, wrote,

“A plant, a tree, a pebble, a speck of dust—each has the Buddha nature, and each is endowed with cause and effect and with the function to manifest and the wisdom to realize its Buddha nature.”

Elsewhere in the same work, he stated,

[Because of i-nien san-ch’ien] we may know that the single mind of a single particle of dust comprises the mind-nature of all sentient beings and Buddhas…. The man who is of all-round perfection, knows from beginning to end that Truth is not dual and that no objects exist apart from mind. Who, then, is “animate,” and who “inanimate”? . . . In the case of grass, trees, and the soil (from which they grow), what difference is there between their four kinds of atoms? . . . How can it still be said unto today that inanimate things are devoid (of the Buddha-nature)?”*

This notion of the Buddhahood of Plants and Trees was extremely popular in Japan. In Tendai (the Japanese offshoot of T’ien-t’ai), scholars advanced the theory further. Chujin (1065-1138), in a work called Kanko Ruiju (“Classified Collection of the Light of the Han”) put forth seven “arguments” in this regard [see below], including that “trees and plants do not posses Buddhahood in and of themselves, but do so when they are viewed by Buddhas”, and that according to the principle of original enlightenment trees and plants posses Buddha Nature. At first, these two arguments may seem contradictory, but if we look back at Chan-jan’s statement, we see that it is through the faculty of enlightened wisdom that we can recognize the precious entity of life in all existing things and see that they all posses Buddha-nature.

If we can see Buddha-nature within ourselves, we can see it everywhere. In the Diamond Sutra, the Buddha says, “Everything is Buddha.”

Other Japanese Buddhists such as Kukai and Dogen, and the great poet Saigyo, also championed the Buddhahood of Plants and Trees. In fact, Dogen once wrote,

Students . . . consider the mind to be thoughts and perceptions and do not believe it when they are told the mind is plants and trees.”

To understand this, you need to be able to think in non-dualistic terms, and this is what we mean by enlightened wisdom.

And that’s why I call the senseless destruction of a living tree an act of murder. I tried to protect the trees. When I received the notice about the scheduled tree trimming, I sent an email to the property management company pleading with them to make sure the people who were to do work would be careful and judicious in their cutting, so that these trees might continue to live. After the damage was done to the berry tree and the death of the small tree, I protested. Not surprisingly, both my plea and protest fell on deaf ears.

So, I am sad. I feel as thought I have lost a dear friend. It is fitting, though, on this last day of National Poetry Month, to offer one of Saigyo’s poems. Only, read it in reverse, not as a human speaking to a tree, but instead, as if the little tree that struggled so hard to survive but was cut down anyway, was speaking to me, or to you . . .

Pine, of you I ask
Some services … of mourning
For aeons … of concealment;
There’s here no human being
Who might think of me when I die.

One of Tendai's "marathon monks" walking in a forest of trees

Chujin’s Seven Arguments for the Buddhahood of Plants and Trees*

1. Shobutsu no kangen. Trees and plants do not possess Buddhahood in and of themselves, but do so when they are viewed by Buddhas.

2. Gubosho no ri. Trees and plants are in possession of Buddha-nature (bussho or Buddhata). “Buddha” means “enlightenment.” The inner (or mysterious) principle of the Buddha-nature is a purity of original enlightenment (hongaku) and has nothing of impurity in it. This is something which plants and trees are in possession of.

3. Esho funi. There is an inner harmony of the achievement of the right reward (shobo) – in this case the Buddha’s enlightenment  -  and all the attendant (eho) circumstances – for example the earth, etc., upon which he depends. The enlightenment of him is accompanied by that of all these others. Therefore, plants and trees are already in possession of Buddha-nature.

4. Totai jissho. Of their own nature the myriad things are Buddha, and “Buddha” means enlightenment. In their inner nature the things of the 3,000 worlds are unchangeable, undefiled, unmoved, and pure; this is what is meant by their being called “Buddha.” As for trees and .plants, there is no need for them to have or show the thirty-two marks (of Buddhahood); in their present form-that is, by having roots, stems, branches, and leaves, each in its own way has Buddhahood.

5. Hongu-sammi. Like all sentient beings, trees and plants have three bodies: the Dharma-body, the Sambhoga-body, and the Nirmana-body. Therefore, trees and plants can attain Buddhahood as sentient beings can.

6. Hossho fushigi. The self-nature of trees and plants is not capable of being described and, therefore, the Buddha-nature possessed by trees and plants is also ineffable.

7. Guchuudo (Tendai mediation principle) and ichinen-sanzen. The principle that the 3,000 realms (i.e., all phenomena) are contained in one thought means that the mind (kokoro) is all things and all things are the mind. Trees-and-plants as well as sentient beings both possess all things. This is why sentient beings can conceive of trees and plants. If this were not so, there could be no cognition. The real and original nature of all things (hossho or dharmata) has two aspects. Its quiescent aspect is the one mind and its illuminating aspect is the 3,000 realms of being. The internal unity of these two aspects makes both for knowledge and for the fact that essentially plants and trees have the Buddha-nature.

*La Fleur, William R., Saigyo and the Buddhist Value of Nature. Part I. In: History of Religions, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Nov., 1973), pp. 93-128. The University of Chicago Press

Posted by David at 4:01 pm Tagged with: , , , , ,

Book Review: Joseph Campbell “Myths of Light – Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal”

Religion No Responses »
Apr 252012

I just read a new book by Joseph Campbell, Myths of Light – Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal, which I received as a review copy from New World Library.  Campbell, of course, passed away in 1987, and this new tome is compiled from previously unpublished lectures and articles.

The year Campbell died was the same year PBS presented his six-part conversation with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth. After the program aired, a television executive (I think he was with CBS) said that if it had been shown on any of the Big 3 networks (CBS, NBC, ABC), which would have vastly increased the viewership (remember this was pretty much a pre-cable time), the program would have changed the face of religion in America.

It certainly changed how I viewed religion, and since then, I have maintained that anyone who wishes to write, talk, or even just participate in any kind of religion or spiritual practice, would benefit greatly if they viewed this program first.

Throughout his career as a mythologist, writer and lecturer, Joseph Campbell showed us, as he wrote in Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor, how “[Religion] may, in a sense, be understood as popular misunderstanding of mythology.” In The Power of Myth he famously commented that when religion “gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.”

I’ve always felt that if everyone could just get this one point, it would prevent so much confusion.

But not so fast. Confusion still abounds.

In the first chapter of Myths of Light, Campbell relates a story about attending a series of talks given by Martin Buber at Columbia:

It was during the third lecture that I got up my nerve to raise my hand. Very gently and nicely he asked, “What is it, Mr. Campbell?”

“Well,” I said, “there is a word being used here this evening that I just can’t follow; I don’t know what the word refers to.”

“What is the word?”

I said, “God.”

Well, his eyes opened. He looked in utter amazement at me and he said, “You don’t know what God means?”

I said, “I don’t know what you mean by God. You’re telling me that God has hidden his face. Now, I am just back from India, where people are experience and beholding God all the time.”

I don’t know what either of them mean by God. The use of words like “his” and “beholding” suggest to me a personal god or a “supreme being.” Yet, in the same chapter, Campbell makes it clear that “the basic idea of the Oriental philosophies to this day” is that “the cosmos is not ruled by a personal god; rather, an impersonal power.” I guess I just don’t know what Campbell means by God. I suppose if you can experience an impersonal power, you can also behold it . . . In the second chapter, “The Jiva’s Journey”, he discusses the meaning of AUM (OM): “AUM is God. AUM is the sound of God.” That is certainly not the way I understand AUM. Just what does Campbell mean by God?

Perhaps, the confusion is on my part, or maybe it belongs to David Kudler, who edited the book, or it might be Campbell’s. I don’t know, but I do find the G-word to be extremely cumbersome with all the baggage it carries and could do without it.

Unfortunately, this “confusion” made the book somewhat less enjoyable. But that is not to say that Myths of Light isn’t a good read. Campbell’s conversational style is immensely readable. A great storyteller, he uses stories to explain complicated concepts plainly and simply, and that’s what makes this and his other works so compelling.

One point I think he makes very clear in a direct manner something about the role and nature of religion. Many people today, especially a lot of younger Buddhists, are turned off by talk about the transcendent, the ineffable, the mysterious, and so on. However, Campbell explains that that is the whole point of all religion and spirituality, at least in the East:

[You] are that mystery, but not the “you” that you think you are. The you that you think you are is not it and the you that you can’t even think about is it. The paradox, this absurdity, is the essential mystery of the East.”

Perhaps folks who are bothered by mystery should not try to practice spirituality where the prime intent is to try to penetrate that mystery.

Another interesting clarification Campbell offers:

In Occidental theology, the word transcendent is used to mean outside of the world. In the East, it means outside of thought.

How the East views the transcendent or the eternal is the theme of Myths of Light and overall Joseph Campbell does a good job of exploring the subject. In some respects, the book could serve as an excellent introduction to Eastern philosophy, except for a few problems such as the use of the G-word and the R-word – reincarnation.

The longest chapter in the book is “The Jiva’s Journey.” Jiva is the Sanskrit word for the “reincarnating” entity, the “deathless soul” that “puts on bodies and takes them off, over and over again, as a person puts on and removes clothing.” What he is talking about is rebirth, not reincarnation, which would be the same person putting on and removing clothing – that is not rebirth. I wished Campbell had made a finer point about the distinction between the two, and how Buddhism, in general, rejects the notion of reincarnation.

But you can’t have everything. Elsewhere, Campbell offers a very fine explanation of nirvana:

Nirvana literally means “blown out”; the image is that once one has realized one’s unity with what is called the Buddha mind – this is the Buddhist conception of Brahman – then one’s individual ego is extinguished like a candle flame, and one becomes one with the great solar light . . . But when you get over there, you realize, I was here all the time.”

As I have said many times on this blog, realizing nirvana is not about going to some other place, even though we may use the metaphor of the “yonder shore.” Nirvana is viewing this saha or mundane world differently from how we have viewed it before.

There is this great Buddhist text, the Prajnaparamita Sutra [The Heart Sutra], and its only a very short concise thing of about a page and a half, and it culminates in one line, which is said to be the summary of the whole sense of Mahayana Buddhism. That line goes like this: Aum gottam, Buddha-tam, parigatam, parasangatam. Bodhi!* “Gone, gone, gone to the yonder shore, landed on the yonder shore, illumination!” Hallelujah.

That is the summary of the whole thing. Prajnaparamita: The wisdom of the yonder shore, beyond pairs of opposites. The one who is trying to get away from life to nirvana is still caught in pairs of opposites. But when you get there, you realize that this is it right now.”

Such an important point should be repeated, many times until it penetrates our hard skulls. And there are quite a few important points that Joseph Campbell makes in Myths of Light. A few other things, I could nitpick about, as well. But the good in this book far outweighs anything negative, and whether someone is just beginning to look into Eastern philosophy, which Campbell covers from Jainism to Zen,  or whether they are a long time seeker of Asian wisdom, this is a valuable book to have on hand.

* Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha

Posted by David at 5:08 pm Tagged with: , , ,

“I give it a 90, it has a good beat, and you can dance to it.”

Music No Responses »
Apr 182012

One day when I was about five years old, I rushed home from school as I did every afternoon to watch my favorite TV show, “The Adventures of Superman.” Only that day, Superman wasn’t on and my mother informed me it wasn’t going to be on anymore. It had been replaced by a program with big kids dancing to music. I was devastated. It was horrible! I remember falling on my parent’s bed and crying my heart out. The program that replaced my beloved show was “American Bandstand” hosted by Dick Clark who passed away today at the age of 82.

Well, six or seven years later, after Bandstand went from a daily program to a weekly one, I looked forward to it as eagerly as I once did Superman. In those days, the early to mid ‘60’s, “Bandstand” was one of the few opportunities you had to see rock performers on TV. There was the Saturday airings of Clark’s show, along with the Ed Sullivan’s Sunday night show, which featured a rock group each week, and Rick Nelson’s weekly song at the end of Ozzie and Harriet. Believe it or not, that was about it. Sure, at one point we also had “Hullabaloo” and “Shindig”, but those shows didn’t last long.

Fast forward to the end of the ‘60’s and Dick Clark was just a tad bit uncool. After all, he insisted that everyone who performed on his show lip-sync instead of play live and he tended to favor teenybopper or bubblegum music, which was strictly kid’s stuff.

Today, in retrospect, Dick Clark’s contribution to rock and roll is impressive, and nothing less than massive. It’s on a par with contributions by Elvis, the Beatles and Stones, and Bob Dylan. Different, but just as significant. Clark, too, was one of the real unsung heroes of the civil rights movement for his championing of black music, not to mention that “American Bandstand” was without a doubt the first show on television to feature blacks and white dancing together. He deserves much credit for breaking down racial barriers.

So, a tip of the hat to “America’s oldest teenager,” and as Dick used to end each Bandstand show, “so long.”

Sad, as well, to hear disturbing news about two other rock legends. Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees, battling cancer for the last year, has slipped into a coma, and the end is feared near. And the family of Levon Helm, co-founder, drummer and vocalist for the Band, who made music history with Bob Dylan and on their own, has announced that he is “in the final stages of his battle with cancer.”

On top of this, one of my dear family members in Oregon is struggling to survive pneumonia and complications from a stroke, and it’s not looking good.

As the old blues song goes, death don’t have no mercy in this land . . .

The title of this post comes from the oft repeated line from Bandstand’s famous “Rate A Record” segment.

Posted by David at 4:25 pm Tagged with: , , , , ,

Northern Poet

Poetry No Responses »
Apr 132012

Seamus Heaney was born on this day in 1939. He is an Irish poet, playwright, translator, lecturer, and Nobel Prize winner (for Literature in 1995). Heaney was both the Harvard and the Oxford Professor of Poetry and in 1996 was made a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres.

He’s regarded as one of the finest poets of the twentieth century. Fellow poet Robert Lowell called him “the most important Irish poet since Yeats” and others, such as the British academic John Sutherland, have hailed Heaney as “the greatest poet of our age”.

In the essay published in Les Prix Nobel (The Nobel Prizes) 1995, states:

Heaney’s poems first came to public attention in the mid-1960s when he was active as one of a group of poets who were subsequently recognized as constituting something of a “Northern School” within Irish writing. Although Heaney is stylistically and temperamentally different from such writers as Michael Longley and Derek Mahon (his contemporaries), and Paul Muldoon, Medbh McGuckian and Ciaran Carson (members of a younger Northern Irish generation), he does share with all of them the fate of having be en born into a society deeply divided along religious and political lines, one which was doomed moreover to suffer a quarter-century of violence, polarization and inner distrust. This had the effect not only of darkening the mood of Heaney’s work in the 1970s, but also of giving him a deep preoccupation with the question of poetry’s responsibilities and prerogatives in the world, since poetry is poised between a need for creative freedom within itself and a pressure to express the sense of social obligation felt by the poet as citizen.

You can read more about Seamus Heaney here at Wikipedia, and in honor of National Poetry Month, you can read “Requiem for the Croppies,” about the 1798 Rebellion, right here.

“Croppies” was a term for United Irishmen who wore their hair close-cropped to mark their allegiance. Written in the voice of a dead croppy boy, the poem focues on the Battle of Vinegar Hill, where the rebels were defeated by the British and the bodies of 640 slaughtered insurgents were thrown into a mass grave and covered in quicklime. “Croppies Grave” is the  monument over the mass grave that commemorates their deaths.

Heaney wrote “Requiem for the Croppies”  in 1966 on the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising of 1916. However, as Neil Corcoran says in Seamus Heaney (Faber and Faber), “Heaney celebrates not the Rising itself but what he considers its original seed in the rebellion of 1798.”

Requiem for the Croppies

The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley…
No kitchens on the run, no striking camp…
We moved quick and sudden in our own country.
The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.
A people hardly marching… on the hike…
We found new tactics happening each day:
We’d cut through reins and rider with the pike
And stampede cattle into infantry,
Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.
Until… on Vinegar Hill… the final conclave.
Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.
The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.
They buried us without shroud or coffin
And in August… the barley grew up out of our grave.

 

Posted by David at 8:48 am Tagged with: , ,
Older Entries