End of times

I used the phrase, "End of times," casually, but been looking into it.

Supposedly Buddhism doesn't really use the phrase, but in the year the year 4300 Maitreya might be returning (Wikipedia), (Source) and (Digha Nikaya, 26).

The text then foretells the birth of Maitreya Buddha in the city of Ketumatī in present-day Benares. Ketumati is associated with the city of Banaras in Uttar Pradesh, India. Looking, there are 20 temples in Benares on the Ganges River, often with national names like Tibet, Chinese, Sri Lankan, Bengal. Many are not nationally named, the 2 inside the city aren't, and one has a famous stupa. Varanasi is one of the world's oldest continually inhabited cities. India's oldest Sanskrit college, the Benares Sanskrit College, was founded during East India Company rule in 1791.

Dhamek Stupa is supposedly where the Buddha gave his first sermon and teachings to the 5 disciples Kaundinya, Assaji, Bhaddiya, Vappa and Mahanama. 

While visiting Sarnath in 640 CE, Xuanzang recorded that the colony had over 1,500 priests and the main stupa was nearly 300 feet (91 m) high (Wikipedia).

Wikipedia lists the mean high temperature over 100 for April, May and June. Looks like the coldest month January is the time to visit Varanasi. 

"Note that no description of Maitreya occurs in any other sutta in the canon, casting doubt as to the authenticity of the scripture. In addition, sermons of the Buddha normally are in response to a question, or in a specific context, but this sutta has a beginning and an ending, and its content is quite different from the others. This has led some to conclude that the whole sutta is apocryphal, or tampered with." (Wikipedia)

The sutta that predicts 7 suns and holocaust: Aňguttara-Nikăya, VII 6.2 isn't easy to find, it's not included on online Pali Canon, probably rightly so. 

I looked in on the conditions of end of times in the Bible, and it seems like with war, earthquakes, duplicitous leaders, breakdown of order that we are indeed in the end of times. The article says end of times started around WW1. A Pew Research Center study found in 2022 that over 60 percent of evangelical Christians in the US believe we are living in the end times.

I haven't seen what the end of times means in Christianity, seems just like it's a motivation to get right with God. Difficult times call for increased spiritual effort perhaps. If you can really believe that belief and surrender to God makes you happy, then it's a self fulfilling prophecy, and if you can achieve that, more power to you. 

This subject is called Eschatology. The prediction of the end of the world. I feel like things are pretty chaotic with hurricanes, earthquakes, eclipses, social chaos and disorder, but I don't imagine my subjective feeling of the end of the world is the literal end of the world. It should more accurately be described as feeling uncertain and unsettled in chaos and change.

12 Nidanas

Rereading How Karma Works: The Twelve Links of Dependent Arising by Geshe Sonan Rinchen. The moon is symbol of the cessation of suffering the 3rd Noble Truth. I get excited when I see the moon when I sit down to meditate. 

Of course there is the great art that is the wheel of life:

Fundamental ignorance (Pali: avidya)
Formation (sankhara)
Consciousness (vinnana)
Name and form (namarupa)
Sense faculties (salayatana)
Contact (phassa)
Feeling or sensation (vedana)
Craving or thirst (tanha)
Clinging or grasping (upadana)
Becoming or worldly existence (bhava)
Birth or becoming (jati)
Old age and death (jaramarana)

Links:

24 Nidana meditation on Free Buddhist Audio. 

This contains the 12 positive nidanas. AN 11.2 is considered a source of the 12 positive nidanas. Jayarava Atwood has written about it.

Sangharakshita on the 24 Nidanas.

Sangharakshita: The Psychology of Spiritual Development

Nimitta

Buddhadasa talks about nimitta, a pleasing and calming image, in the context of calming the breath. 

In metta, one of my goto images is children sledding, because I loved sledding as a little kid. 

It's also an option to visualize a sadhana during the anapanasati if that is supportive. 

Green Tara is popping up my visualizations. My sadhana is Green Tara, and some of the items in the visualization is the crown of the colors of the 5 jinas. It starts out with a lotus moon mat, out of the void. Tara was born out of a lake of tears, seeing the world's cries. There are also parallels with the 5 elements. She holds a lotus that blooms next to her right ear (source). 

You can chant the Green Tara mantra: Om Tare Tuttare Ture Svaha.

Her right foot is extended to step off the mediation pad, to launch into action.

Sartre was a philosopher but he was also active during the resistance when Germany occupied France. I honestly don't know what he did besides join a writers resistance group. I'm reading Sarah Bakewell's fun book on existentialism.

Sartre also emphasized freedom, a theme in Buddhism.

 

inyeon and wall facers

More and more Buddhist concepts are coming into movies and shows. After 2500 years, Buddhism, which is transferred through highly personal relationships, has finally reached the entire world.  If you consider the Chinese sailors reaching North America roughly 250 years ago, Buddhism has touched North American after 1/10 of it's history. It's only recently that monks and others have began to build sanghas in North America. Now that the internet connects the world it seems like all the ideas are available to us, and that the world is quite small, but we are still divided by languages. English might turn out to be the lingua franca of earth, but it might be another language. Maybe there will be several languages that everyone speaks. Maybe it will be a patois. English is made out of several languages, that's why it's almost impossible to really spell.

Past Lives (2023) has a romantic Korean concept of inyeon (인연), where people are connected over a number of lifetimes. Conditionality might include rough ideas of reincarnation where something is transfered, or it might not, maybe it's more like the memories in brains still influencing real life. Like my photos of my grandparents who have been gone for a long time, but I still think about them, and they influence my in known and unknown ways. Whatever the notions, the romantic notion is quaint, and could be traced to Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism. 

I'm watching 3 Body Problem (2024) on Netflix, and they talk about wall facers. That I know of it was Dogen (1200-1253) that liked to meditate facing a wall. He was a Japanese Buddhist who went to China for more teachings and had some powerful writings he left us. He wanted to put all his eggs into the meditation basket instead of the traditions of reciting sutras and mantras, he chose a less devotional path. Most westerners really emphasize meditation in Buddhism, but there is Pure Land Buddhism which focuses more on devotion and other power.

Dogen might have not invented facing the wall, it's unlikely the actual person who chose that first is credited. The Buddha taught anapanasati and brahma viharas, and those were already present in the culture probably, he just tailored them to Buddhism to lead towards the insights he discovered.

There are other shows and movies that have Buddhist influence. There is an anime movie where Jesus and Buddha go on a holiday as teenagers. And then there are straight on, Buddhist movies like Little Buddha (1993), Kundun (1997), Seven Years In Tibet (1997), The Cup (1999), Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (2003).

Equanimity

So I devoted myself to anapanasati for 4 months, but I've brought back in the Brahmaviharas. I still sit with K sometimes on zoom and radiate qualities of the sublime abodes. 

How to proceed? Do I radiate the quality, or do I pick specific people in a 5 stage version from Buddhaghosa? You radiate the quality in the last stage, so I guess if you do that quite well, you could just radiate when you feel confident, but I'm not confident yet, so I fall back on the 5 stages. 

Metta, karuna, mudita are more straightforward. 

Upekṣā, Upekshā, or Upekkhā is equanimity. 

Building up metta, karuna, and mudita, equanimity also can build on anapanasati. In anapanasati you're relaxing the body, relaxing the emotions, gladdening the mind, steadying the mind, liberating the mind. How do you liberate the mind? Through insight into conditionality, disentangling, letting go of the conditions for suffering, relinquishing. Follow the breath. 

When it feels too complicated, I have a simple visualization. A circle touching a line. You are the circle, and you're not remote, and your not engulfed, you're aware of suffering through your compassion. You've coped with horrified anxiety, and you're not remote or pitying. You see others but it doesn't sink your ship, their problems. You wish them well, with a friendly smile. You appreciate virtue. 

For me, going to the breath is the door to piti, or joy. I wish joy on everyone, in general, and in meditative states. The good qualities of your friends who meditate deeply, and just the joy of seeing a stranger find a dollar on the street. Any kind of joy, and meditative joy.

I meditate on the two bodies, my physical body and the truth body (or the 3 bodies). Rooted in my body, in all it's glory and injuries and aging. All the mindfulness of the body work I have done, as part of the satipatthana sutta. I go for enlightenment with my body, feelings, mind and insight. 

I have worked on the 6 element meditation. I have taken my body apart, also in the 32 parts meditation. I have meditated on corpses. Life is so short, fragile. We must make use of our given time. 

I think about the beauty of it all. The devotional pujas, mantras and mythology that excites me, energizes me. 

All the work culminates on working through the 4 stages to the 5th stage and radiating equanimity out into the world. It feels kind of abstract to say it, but the embodiment and culmination of meditation cycles means it's something. Radiating upeksha. 

Radiating upeksha is all the metta, karuna, mudita, plus all the gladdening and steadying and insight, including the 6 element tearing down, and the resulting build up of a sadhana if you get that too with a guru, or without a guru, or no build up, just letting it sit there and stand, beaming out upeksha into the world, beyond the world, out into the universe and everything. 

All the friendships, past and present. All your study of the Dharma. All the ethical striving, all the simplifying to create the conditions. All the devotion. All the support you have received. All the conditions that allowed for your will to evoke in yourself to radiate upeksha, beaming it in all the directions. 

It is the culmination of hard work, circumstances, seeming luck and the will to enlightenment. 

This thing I call myself feel the fruits of the practice.

The wisdom of equality is embodied in Ratnasambhava.

In the insight tetrad of anapanasati, you contemplate impermanence, disentangling, cessation and relinquishment. These contemplations are supported by equanimity. 

In some sense a base of equanimity is freedom from the hindrances.

In DN9, the discussion of the jhana. In the first jhana there is no lust. In the second jhana there is no thought. In the third jhana there is equanimity. Delight in concentration vanishes too. The fourth jhana is beyond pleasure and pain and equanimity refines the state, neither happiness nor non-happiness. Passing beyond the infinite (5), into infinite consciousness (6) and into no-thingness (7), and cessation (8). The end is beyond perception.

Last updated 4/4/24.

Cultish by Amanda Montell & Wild Wild Country

I'm reading Cultish by Amanda Montell, and Dionysus: Myth and Cult by Walter F. Otto, and thinking about Buddhism, and being a soccer fan. 

On the one hand, I think the hype language of Buddhism is about doing the hard work of meditating a lot. I can see why there are sects that de-emphasize meditation because it is so hard and time consuming. I tend to go in the direction of Dogen, who see it as the most important part. Other traditions use meditation, but meditation is at the heart of Buddhism in my opinion. I don't scoff at Buddhists who don't meditate as I did in my early zeal, to me it's essential. There are Buddhists who don't meditate, and that is an acceptable path.

Humans don't live up to their ideals and that can lead to cynicism and nihilism. I'm working to use ideals positively and avoid misuse and negative use. 

Somehow being a soccer fan is a weird cult of sorts. It's worship of others playing an athletic game, and there's all kinds of spin off into kit collecting, travel, and policing how others should talk about the team on social media. Montell writes about cancer fundraising, which uses benign cultish language. What a cult is actually hard to define, thus a focus on Cultish language. I suppose being a part of a benign cult helps one to do more. The power of a cult is too much for humans to weild. 

On the other hand, I get the feeling that Otto wants to look at Dionysus worship from the inside, to really give it the best representation, the benefit of the doubt, not to look at it as superficial and just some old craziness. 

Montell uses an interesting phrase. Bespoke spirituality, where you taylor everything for your needs like a well cut suit, regardless of the tradition. I've met a few people like that that don't mind taking from Hinduism or Christianity, Taoism, Islam, Judaism, Aztec, Paganism, science or psychology. 

The Rajneesh community seems to have embraced the Dionysian cult of rapture to some extent, with the Human Potential Movement, and many other complementary therapies.

"No man prays to a concept," is a quoted by Otto, and it makes sense. When I talk about how beautiful the mythology of Tibetan Buddhism, I get downvoted on Reddit, because they're not evoking concepts, they're evoking deities. I think the concepts are beautiful and I can pray to personifications of them. Tara is overcoming obstacles. Avalokita is compassion. Amitabha is love. I like that line of the jinas.

You can see why capitalism uses cultish behavior, language and psychology, and wants you to really believe in work, to squeeze the maximum out of the workers who just want to eat, housing and clothes. Whipping up motivation is important in life, but you own your own motivations, you don't have to become a tool of someone else, except to survive! That's why housing, food, gas need to go up, the struggle for existence has to be hard, make you really bust ass. That's why no benefits, no insurance, no safety net. Make schools subsistence level. Make public hospitals undesirable. Make public transport yucky. No rail, everyone needs a car.

Montell's repudiation of the term cult is to avoid judgment that assumes people don't have independence to participate in these groups. It makes me think how some on r/Buddhism use it quite quickly for sects they don't like. I have a different line and allow Triratna and NKT to exist without judgement in my mind, but I still wish to reserve the right to judge Shambhala after some of things I've read. I'm on the fence about SGI. I note how Pierce on Community was in a fictional Buddhist cult. "Cult" and "Brainwash" close down conversation. 

Jonestown happened in 1978 when 918 people died, and people used that to judge the Rajneesh community. The community was confused because Jonestown was a Christian community and they were a new religion, based off of Hinduism, but it was also eclectic and inclusive. They used some Buddhist language.

Charles Manson had 35 people killed, and was convicted in 1971 (source). 39 people died part of Heaven's Gate in 1997. Order of the Solar Temple claimed 77 lives in Switzerland, France, and Canada in 1994, 1995 and 1997. Statistically, you have to understand that there are a lot of human social organizations and that these murderous events are very very rare.

I'm watching Wild Wild Country, a 6 part documentary on Bhagwan Rajneesh's time in America. I actually don't even know anything about him, besides he was later rebranded as Osho. I had a psychiatrist recommend a book on meditation by him. I've met a fellow who does the dynamic meditation. I've never read anything by him or tried anything like dynamic meditation.

I love learning about American history and historical characters. Bill Bowerman supposedly negotiated the surrender of some German forces, won 4 championships in college track and field, and founded Nike. And he was a big person against the Oregon compound of the Rajneeshpuram. 

I'm learning this all from the documentary and reading Wikipedia. I find this interesting from the Rajneesh wikipedia: "Price is alleged to have exited the Pune ashram with a broken arm following a period of eight hours locked in a room with participants armed with wooden weapons. Bernard Gunther, his Esalen colleague, fared better in Pune and wrote a book, Dying for Enlightenment, featuring photographs and lyrical descriptions of the meditations and therapy groups. Violence in the therapy groups eventually ended in January 1979, when the ashram issued a press release stating that violence "had fulfilled its function within the overall context of the ashram as an evolving spiritual commune"."

Every force has a counter force. When the Sanyassins bought up all the houses in Antelope, people got a little more nervous, imagine they're going to take over the world, they were taking over their world. They tried to dissolve the city. I'm not sure what that would have gotten them, does the county take over and then those laws are more favorable to the people who lived there before the Sanyassins. There's a real culture war that includes the hotel they own in Portland being bombed. America where peaceful people are forced to militarized.

It's kind of chilling to see them using the concentration of meditation to help them aim a gun. They also alienate the residents who were there before by having loud sex all night. They took over the police force. This is like a square community nightmare, but it's also quite obnoxious in a way, seems like an over reaction and deliberately provocative. 

Ma Anand Sheela emerges as an interesting person. She defends the community vigorously in the media. I want to watch Searching for Sheela. Her work raised sales of the Rajneesh's books. They had 500,000 followers. They seem to be hugging each other all the time, and joyful. Looks like they had an awesome party in 1983. There's also a German film called Ashram in Poona (1979).

Every good party is followed by lawyers. The district attorney goes after them with the separation of church and state thing. The school doesn't seem particularly secular. The lawyer who was a Sanyassin is pretty persuasive that if you look at the history of America, Catholics rule Boston, Mormons rule Salt Lake, and on and on about how America was founded on religious freedom. 

Then at some point they began busing in homeless people, giving them food and shelter, and just asking them to vote, so they could take over the county they lived in. Part of the motivation was compassion. I'm finding this as a fascinating study on American politics, because you've got a kind of nominal Christian rural retirement community and a hippy commune in Rajneeshpuram, and Sheela is an intelligent assertive leader who vigorously advocates for her community. It becomes a documentary about Democracy. 

Then the mental health issues come to the fore, a raging man is sedated and driven away. They decide to sedate all the homeless population that moved there. They put Haldol into the beer.

Then there was a salmonella outbreak. They accused the Sanyassins of doing it, and the Sanyassins deny it, and in a kind of way they threaten to infect the world with love and their values.

Then Hollywood gets involved, the wife of the producer of Godfather is head of the Hollywood people embracing Rajneesh. The Hollywood people tempt Rajneesh with material goods, fancy watches, catalogues of things to want. A million dollar diamond watch is what he starts wearing. The spiritual movement has a bunch of corporations and the Hollywood crowd gets a corporation under the wing of the community. Is there are power struggle between Sheela and others. Sheela sees this as a kind of turning point in him losing spiritual momentum. He began taking laughing gas and valium. 

The accumulated government response goes federal, and begins to focus on immigration. The Sanyassin get involved, and fight them back a little. There were a bunch of marriages to allow some people to stay in America. The government went after that as fraud. They traveled all around America to try and disguise the pattern. They used that conspiracy to get Rajneesh deported. The Sanyassin developed assassination plans, to target the people targeting them. They don't say why they didn't follow through with it, or if anything thwarted them.

Sheela starts evicting people from the community. The locals who hated them have a certain glee at the problems managing the homeless crowd. This creates more negativity towards the community. They send out a box of poisoned chocolates. Government officials who visited became ill. 

Lots of rumors without proof circulated. The community experiences a kind of stress they're not really used to. Sheela seems to demonstrate stress. Sheela wiretaps the Rajneesh's room. Rajneesh acquired poisons which he stored. Rajneesh asked Sheela to build a crematorium. He said he would die on the 6th of July, "Masters Day". He was going to commit suicide maybe. Jane Stork stepped forward to assassinate the doctor who would euthanize Rajneesh. She stuck the doctor with a syringe, pretended it didn't happen, someone was set to pick up the syringe she threw. She tried to murder the doctor with a syringe and felt she cross a barrier, she became disillusioned. She did not succeed in killing him. 

Sheela decided to leave in 1985. Many left with her. Rajneesh was angry to find out she left. He breaks his 3.5 year silence. He said Sheela and her group tried to kill 3 people, he found the bug, called them inhuman, fascist, didn't face him and say goodbye, stole money.

Rajneesh and Sheela feud. He says he made a point of never having sex with a secretary, and he accused her of being on drugs. Jane Stork goes to Sheela, as a substitute guru. The Hollywood producer Ma Prem Hasya becomes Rajneesh's secretary. Swami Prem Niren becomes the new mayor. He would go on to write a legal history of the movement. He says it's a Gurdjieff test for everyone. Philip Toelkes (Ma Prem Hasya) writing a book about his experiences. 

Rajneesh extends the accusations. Said she stole 43 million dollars, was planning to bomb the community. That got the FBI onto the ranch investigating crimes. Law enforcement talks about public sex they witness frequently. The find tunnels and tapping equipment and dredge the pond. 

The nurse who was head of the medical section seems like she might have done some shady stuff, including doing the salmonella outbreak. They tried to subvert the election by making people sick. They thought about poisoning the water.

Then Rajneesh blows everything up, says it's not a religion, he's not the guru, stop wearing the color clothes and carrying malas. He ends the religion. The movement literally commits suicide, burns his books and clothes. But he still calls them his Sanyassin and doesn't pack it up, they continue to fight for their existence.

So bizzare, Sheela poses nude for a German magazine. She has 25 of her own disciples in an island off Germany. Search warrants are issued. Nobody was willing to talk, except David Berry Knapp, or Krishna Deva as he was known in the movement. The national guard surrounds the compound, and two jets load up and take off. Rajneesh left. But he landed in Charlotte, and was arrested. Around the same time Sheela was arrested in Germany. 

They fly Rajneesh in short hops all over America, in a weird time wasting drama of perp walks for 3 weeks. Sheela gets 4 years, fines and export. Jane Stork gets 10 years for attempted murder, but they don't explain why she's in Germany and comes back to ask to go visit her sick son in Australia. Rajneesh makes a deal to leave the country. 

The people leaving were crushed. It was 1981-1985. I was in high school, and I don't remember seeing it on the news at the time. Antelope is back to its old name, and they replace the street names. The party for the anti-Rajneesh people's party was a bunch of smug old ladies. Nothing wrong with older women, but it's not the party I want to go to. I have sympathy for their desire to not have things change so drastically and the drama of those 4 years. I'm not on any side, I just wondered what was preventing them all from understanding each others, not escalating things.

Rajneesh goes back to India where he still has lots of followers. He rebrands of Osho, a Japanese honorarium of a teacher. When he dies it's the final party, maybe they still party. The ecstatic dancing, the permission to be free. They discuss the freedom and feelings about the ending of things.

Jane Stork could have stayed in Germany, but wanted to go visit her son who had brain cancer in Australia, but she had to go to America to resolve the case for the freedom to go to Australia. She was allowed to go to Australia, she got time served, she was free. She expresses gratitude for being allowed the mercy of going to see her son. 

Sheela is still a fiery person who works with the sick elderly.

The ranch is now a Christian resort. 

The Sanyassin are surprised America didn't embrace him the way they did.

The 6 part movie is pretty amazing, I was really resistant to watching it, but I felt quite a lot like, why didn't I know this happened.

The dancing and lack of asceticism is an interesting antidote to the usual spiritual community. 

Now back to reading Montell and Otto.

Links and references:

Rajneesh building for sale in Antelope, Oregon includes relics of Rajneeshpuram made famous in ‘Wild Wild Country’ (Oregonian Nov. 29, 2021)

Ma Prem Nirvano (Sanyas.wiki)

Rajneesh (Wikipedia)

Breaking the Spell by Jane Stork

Afterthoughts: I had trouble focusing on the breath this morning, thinking about the documentary. 

I really like Morell's not wanting to judge these spiritual movements harshly. Seems like labeling a community a cult leads to suspending people their rights. Maybe there can be more gentle checks to some wayward behavior. People get so irritated they have to do things, they over correct. That's one thing I try to do with parenting, is to not to get too bent out of shape and over react. The paternalism of government should be similar. 

Montell writes about the escalation of the Branch Davidians that led to 8 deaths.

“In an attempt to find a less judgy way to discuss non-mainstream spiritual communities, many scholars have used neutral-sounding labels like "new religious movements," "emergent religions," and "marginalized religions." But while these phrases work in an academic context, I find they don't quite capture the CrossFits, multi level marketing companies, college theater programs, and other hard-to-categorize points along the influence continuum. We need a more versatile way to talk about communities that are cult-like in one way or another but not necessarily connected to the supernatural. Which is why I like the word "cultish." (p. 39).

I'm not sure if that solves the problem. I think also you can use cult in a positive sense to make it a less negative word, actually use the word without accepting the negative judgement. 

Montell's father grew up in the Synanon community. I'm learning about that.

Finished the book. What a wild ride. I think I'll recommend the book to my sons. I've found a meditation cult 4 miles away that is the new scientology of meditation, where they give increasingly more and more expensive courses to attain spiritual development. They work the internet to not have too many negative instances. Slick. 

I'm not an influencer, if I want to influence anyone it's to write a blog and express their truths. I'm more inclined to suggest people go on a spiritual journey, than prescribe or wish for followers. 

"The internet scammeth and the internet fact checketh away."

Anālayo quotes

“Liberation by wisdom”, paññāvimutti, stands for the irreversible type of freedom reached by progressing through the four stages of awakening recognized in early Buddhist thought. This type of freedom is irreversible because certain fetters are abandoned for good and have no scope to manifest again. With such liberation by wisdom, the freed condition of the mind has in turn become unshakeable. Liberating the mind from defilements and fetters is the supreme and overarching goal in early Buddhist thought.

-Mindfulness of Breathing 

“ Having formulated an aspiration or reverential invitation for the absorption factors to manifest with full strength, we then wait in a receptive manner for the invited factor to do so. Once all five factors are fully manifest in the mind, we could then formulate an aspiration for the first absorption to manifest, for example: paṭhamaṃ jhānaṃ upasampajja vihareyyaṃ, “may I dwell having attained the first absorption.””

Worshipping Bodhisattva, cave 285, Wei dynasty.

Mogao Caves