Bodhidharma on fasts

“The same holds true for observing a fast. It’s useless unless you understand what this really means. To fast means to regulate, to regulate your body and mind so that they’re not distracted or disturbed. And to observe means to uphold, to uphold the rules of discipline according to the Dharma. Fasting means guarding against the six attractions on the outside and the three poisons on the inside and striving through contemplation to purify your body and mind.”

“Worship means reverence and humility. It means revering your real self and humbling delusions. If you can wipe out evil desires and harbor good thoughts, even if nothing shows, it’s worship. Such form is its real form.”

“The people I meet nowadays are superficial. They think of merit as something that has form. They squander their wealth and butcher creatures of land and sea. They foolishly concern themselves with erecting statues and stupas, telling people to pile up lumber and bricks, to paint this blue and that green.”

-from The Zen of Bodhidharma translated by Red Pine.

Images

 Dallas

Singapore 

Amitabha

Sweden

Bodisattva Maitreya in Abhaya Mudra, Kushan period, India, 2nd century C.E. (2500x3833)

Amitabha Pureland

Dalai Lama

I've sat on writing this because I was waiting for the article that explains it all in the proper context, and that article came out yesterday, about recent information and a video about the 83 year old Dalai Lama.

When the video came out, I couldn't watch it. "Suck my tongue" doesn't have good optics for people outside Tibet, but it turns out there is a cultural background that makes it part of playful dialogue for the elderly with children:

(source)

There's an excellent article in Tricycle by Joshua Brallier Shelton, a PhD student at Northwestern in Buddhist studies and masculinity. His studies include "uncovering the ways that male power becomes entangled in practitioners’ sincere religious aspirations, cultivating environments in which men eroticize and abuse that power in perverse and nauseating ways." He speaks Tibetan and is a practitioner himself.

He talks about his own discomfort, but also the importance of hearing Tibetan voices. The family were joyous at meeting the Dalai Lama and the video comes out 2 months later. Whether or not it was brought out by forces sympathetic to China, who are deeply against the Dalai Lama, that would be interesting to find out. 

There is a problem with sexual misconduct, and power structures, but Shelton concludes this incident isn't one of them, after elegantly laying out the various aspects of this incident. I'm going to take his word for it, and the words of Tibetans.

You can feel the need of people that this is innocent, and you can feel the tension of people who want to take the Dalai Lama down a peg, expose him, depower him. I've always seen him as a global spokesman but also on the leader of one of five main sects of Buddhism from Tibet. For people who regard him as the manifestation of Avalokita, he's a projection of their own power onto him, and he reflects their power back to them. He has devoted his entire life for working for Buddhism, Tibet, with lots of support to be sure, but also many years of intense practice. I know people who resent his popularity and influence, insist he's not all that. China, a collection of individuals, whose government invaded Tibet in 1959, and wouldn't be unhappy if the Dalai Lama took a hit on this one. Autocratic countries like China use information to undermine many things in open societies, like democracy and spiritual traditions, knowing that there will be some blowback such that the Dalai Lama issues an apology, when most Tibetans don't think he even needs to apologize. There's a freaky frame to this whole situation, and unpacking that is interesting. Hearing Tibetan voices is interesting. My heart goes out to them. There are several Tibetans who live in my neighborhood, and I'm going to have to ask them about this, it's an excuse to strike up another conversation.

Links in Shelton article:

Tibetan women say ‘no’ to violence as part of 16-day activism against gender disparity (Phayul).

Buddhist scholars receive grant to document sexual abuse in American Buddhism (Lion's Roar).

Tiben voice of Tenzin Pema (Facebook).

After 60 years in India, why are Tibetans leaving? (Al Jazeera)

Dr. Lobsang Sangay (Facebook) Video of someone who worked with the Dalai Lama for 10 years.

Ambedkar!

It's easy to remember because my son was born on the same day! Jai Bhim!

Link: to He Dared To Fight, about Babasaheb Ambedkar, 36 players.

How Dr BR Ambedkar's Words Helped Me Overcome My Fears (book excerpt from Yogesh Maitreya's memoir Water in a Broken Pot)

Bodhidharma

"I only talk about seeing your nature. I don’t talk about creating karma. Regardless of what we do, our karma has no hold on us. Through endless kalpas without beginning, it’s only because people don’t see their nature that they end up in hell. As long as a person creates karma, he keeps passing through birth and death. But once a person realizes his original nature, he stops creating karma." (Bodhidharma in The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma)

Another monk, this one from Vietnam:

Bodhidharma

“When Bodhidharma arrived in China, in the latter part of the fifth century, there were approximately 2,000 Buddhist temples and 36,000 clergy in the South. In the North, a census in 477 counted 6,500 temples and nearly 80,000 clergy. Less than fifty years later, another census conducted in the North raised these figures to 30,000 temples and 2,000,000 clergy, or about 5 percent of the population.” (Introduced and translated by Red Pine: The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma.)

You can listen to a computer read the book.

“If this is all we know about Bodhidharma, why, then, is he the most famous of all the millions of monks who have studied and taught the Dharma in China? The reason is that he alone is credited with bringing zen to China. Of course, zen, as meditation, had been taught and practiced for several hundred years before Bodhidharma arrived. And much of what he had to say concerning doctrine had been said before—by Tao-sheng, for example, a hundred years earlier. But Bodhidharma’s approach to zen was unique. As he says in these sermons, “Seeing your nature is zen … . Not thinking about anything is zen … . Everything you do is zen.” While others viewed zen as purification of the mind or as a stage on the way to buddhahood, Bodhidharma equated zen with buddhahood—and buddhahood with the mind, the everyday mind. Instead of telling his disciples to purify their minds, he pointed them to rock walls, to the movements of tigers and cranes, to a hollow reed floating across the Yangtze, to a single sandal. Bodhidharma’s zen was Mahayana Zen, not Hinayana Zen—the sword of wisdom, not the meditation cushion. As did other masters, he undoubtedly instructed his disciples in Buddhist discipline, meditation, and doctrine, but he used the sword that Prajnatara had given him to cut their minds free from rules, trances, and scriptures. Such a sword, though, is hard to grasp and hard to use. Small wonder that his sole successor, Hui-k’o, was a one-armed man.“ (op cit)

Bodhidharma: “…when you first embark on the Path, your awareness won’t be focused. You’re likely to see all sorts of strange, dreamlike scenes. But you shouldn’t doubt that all such scenes come from your own mind and nowhere else.”

Recent listening:

It's 30 years since Meeting The Buddhas came out. I listened to the interview of Vessantara on Windhorse. I appreciated that book when I read it long ago, pretty near when it came out, and I'm glad to see it's all back in one book now. It was split up into 3 books for a while.

Fascinating interview of Nagabodhi about his book about Sangharakshita. 

Bhikkhu Bodhi from Chuang Yen Monastery.

Ajahn Chah on Right Samadi. Developing Samadi. 

Hillside Hermitage seems pretty intense.