volition

Volition is one word on a continuum. A wisp of a thought, and urge, an impulse are at one end. And resolve is at the other end. Maybe stubbornness. Insistence. Goals are clarifying what impulses you want to channel your energy towards. Radical Acceptance, popularize and greatly articulated by Tara Brach is a goal I am striving for.

I resolve to increase my daily minutes of meditation. I tried to just force myself but it turns out it has to happen more organically, building up slowly, that feels better than just willfully forcing myself. And isn't that strange that is better, or maybe it makes all the sense in the world. (I'd be really interested to read about other's efforts to increase their gross number of minutes in meditation, and the quality and effort.)

I want to create the least harm when I eat. But eating is sometimes social. And when you eat from a food pantry, from charity, you can't choose. "You get what you get and you don't get upset" is a motto of preschool, which I have adopted midlife. Put another way, "beggars can't be choosers." So I eat what creates the least harm. If I can choose to not eat meat, then great. If I can choose to be vegan, even better. A vegan will ask you, why not just do the least harm always? They buy all their food, and control their social situations. So I'm a least harm-atarian, which is omnivore with kindness strivings.

Buddhism, the Buddhism I love, the one that works for me, is one that is more about looking at yourself and not pointing a finger. People go onto r/Buddhism all the time and ask if "x,y and z are OK?" There is no pope. There are many sects in the Buddhism marketplace to choose from. I'm going to work hard on myself. The vibrancy of a spiritual tradition is to help you to take responsibility for yourself. That is not easy because you have to choose that. How do you help someone to choose that? By exemplifying virtue. People see the goodness, and want that. 

The whole aversion to "woke" culture is a kind of spiritual jealousy that isn't very aware. Why not be as woke as you can be? I guess their reason is that they're doing the best they can, and they can't be bothered with all these extra concerns. So don't be bothered by them. But to attack others who are trying to evolve, what is that? I go the other way. I want to support people who are trying to positively evolve, create greater empathy and kindness towards others. I vote for the party that will create the fewest deaths by their policies. I choose life! I like humans. 

Fine, so people posture. Aversion to virtue signaling is another example of jealousy towards those who are striving to evolve. Maybe they have tried to be good and quit, and have embraced the Sith path. Can't other people strive to improve? OK, sometimes people are giant flaming hypocrites. But I don't think it's horrible if a politician drives an expensive but environmentally conscious car. An American socialist can actually like nice things, they just want the system to evolve to preserve more life! That's the real pro-life party, not some manic reparation aimed at women's body control. Universal health care would preserve more life. That seems uncontroversial, but if you don't make health care dependent on employment, then there's a kind of death threat to work. Why do you have to have a death threat to make people work? Is it because it's stealing? Anyway, our country is a mixture of communism and capitalism. We all own the roads, we all love it when society takes away the trash. We need business, socialists aren't asking for 5 year plans and state controlled business. It's a matter of extremes, and America acts like the wild west is the best option. I don't think so, society evolves and takes care of everyone to the best of it's abilities. There are limits and we should not look to the government to to solve all our problems. But can government at least be good, please?! Why run for government just so you can wreck it up and prove that it doesn't work? That's hypocrisy and a self fulfilling prophecy. I want good government, you should too. 

The opposite of good government has woke me up. I'm paying attention and I vote. And I'm talking about it.

The goal of never being frustrated with my children or impatient is not a winnable goal, but I still shoot for it, to minimize. Always choosing to respond with compassion, maximizing the learning potential, with empathy, is somehow really hard. And yet this is the muscle I really enjoy learning how to flex.

I got plenty of nothing, and nothing is plenty for me

I'm watching Porgy and Bess today on the Met Opera site today. I'm also thinking about how many things I've thrown out trying to Konmari my home. From my perspective of poverty, I live in a society obsessed with buying objects that can't make you happy. 

I don't agree that there's no use complaining. I know that's what people say, and it's not the preferred mode of socializing. But it is pre-problem solving, problem identification. Sometimes there's no easy solution and we come back to the problem looking for solutions but there just aren't any. I guess that's the wisdom in phrase--we've gone over this, and there are no easy solutions. Accepting things as they are is important, spinning your wheels wastes energy. But it can be a door to the larger questions.

Chess

The pandemic made me look for online chess and I found it. I play 3-15 games a day now, with people from all over the world. You can have an international flag, but most people choose a national flag. I get excited when I play someone from Africa or Samoa. 

I watch my projections about various countries. I watch what my mind does when I win. I watch what my mind does when I lose. 

I beat someone from Ireland, Hungry and Canada today. I lost to someone from France, Brazil, Mexico. I beat someone from Mexico, France, Sudan, India, Indonesia. I lost to someone from India and Samoa. And on and on and on. I play someone in Russia, USA, Costa Rica, Chile, New Zealand, Poland, Pakistan, Argentina, Serbia, Estonia. I wasn't into geography when I was school age, but I'm fascinated about what is going on around the world now. There are many countries I have not played yet. 

(It's a bit like the world cup, it's all about nations. USA played Honduras last night. They get to play Mexico in the finals on Sunday now for CCL Nations League. USA has players in the top leagues in Europe, on the top teams. For a sport that isn't very popular in the USA, it is getting a lot more popular. The MLS started in 1996, and has expanded quite rapidly. I would argue that's why there's so much parity at the moment, with expansion it's hard to concentrate talent. But my team, NYCFC has just gotten a bunch of new players from South America.)

Sometimes I play a bunch of chess games where it's a tightwire. I've by my hands on their throat and they've got my throat in their hands. Who can be defensive enough to really attack. Being on the offensive really is the best defense, and I can't figure out how to play defensively. Sometimes I'm just on and stomp people, one after the other. Sometimes I can't buy a win. The worldly winds can't control my concentration and the quality of my opponent, or just the luck of me stumbling on an opening I'm not familiar with, or whether or not I see mistakes. I don't look at the analysis too often, they tease it to make you pay for the free service, but sometimes I see I have blunders and missed checkmates. I have started to see those, and I think just playing over and over there's a kind of learning and increased comprehension. 

I try and be like a goldfish when I make mistakes, just keep playing. Sometimes I play it out to the end, sometimes I just resign. Sometimes I win on time, and by resignation. I usually play 10 minute games (Rapid), but sometimes I play 5 minute games (Blitz). I should try a 30 minute game, but I'm too impatient and impulsive. I do like to study the game, but mostly I just like to play.

I come up with theories. I tend to lose more as the day goes on, I'm at my best early morning. But too early, before 330am, and I lose. Sometimes I want to play and I don't care if my ranking goes down. But I want to raise my ranking. Globally I'm ranked #2,129,235 in the 67.5% in rapid chess. My ranking was higher before I got Covid. I see playing as a way of measuring my cognition. 

Since it's online, I don't know my opponents, but sometimes they miss obvious strong moves, and then I start to formulate ideas about that player. One person talked smack in the chat, I didn't like that. You can rate your opponent as a good sport or a bad sport, but that's only on the desktop version. I also play on my phone sometimes. I tend not to play as well on my phone.

Sometimes I go for the win right away, but most of the time I just pluck low hanging fruit and try to exploit weakness. There is no perfect structure. Sometimes I am a bit wild in sacrifice, and I don't lose enough to win. Sometimes I'm left with few pieces, and feel hopeless. That feeling of not having any good moves is quite terrible and I don't quit and linger in that feeling. Sometimes I just quit with a bad move, better to move on.

I play on chess.com but some like lichess.org. I saw a hack so you could analyse your game on lichess.org by exporting it from chess.com. Chess.com wants you to pay for more than a few game analysis. Looking at lichess.org they have over 90k people playing.

Foreshadowing

I'm not sure when it became a common practice to announce spoilers to those who have not read a book, but this comment will contain spoilers to a Hemingway novel. I would assume that with the concept of foreshadowing a spoiler was lurking, but it never hurts to be explicit. Spoilers ahead.

I'm reading The Sun Also Rises for the 6th time. I love Hemingway in college, and I've reread TSAR because it's my favorite. I loved the partying, the respite in nature, and then the terrible tragedy, the horribleness of it all. 

Montoya the hotel owner loves the bull fighting like Jake does. They point out that there are women who sleep with the young bullfighters because they want to. Lady Brett Ashley enjoys life and sleeps around, though she's married, and about to remarry perhaps, engaged to marry. They call her Circe because she makes men into swine. Poor Robert Cohen is bewitched by her because she slept with him. He hangs around her like a puppy dog. 

Montoya asked Jake if he should pass on a message to the young promising bullfighter. Don't do it, don't let those American women who sleep with the bullfighters get into these guys are ruin them. 

That's foreshadowing. Of course Lady Ashley is going to sleep with him and ruin him. I know because I've read the book. Is it cherry picking to say that that scene with Montoya asking Jake advice is foreshadowing? I don't think so. Foreshadowing is when someone can grok the consequences of personality momentum and you can predict how things will turn out in a way. A Buddhist who meditates and reveres the dharma and sangha will see the future, not exactly, but enough in a way to see disasters coming. I would argue that the ten precepts are about avoiding those disasters. 

The ten precepts are very rough guides. You can find more explicit ones, more elaborate applications of them, but they're not from the Buddha and the Buddha said to get rid of the lessor rules. What that means is the difference between the Theravada tradition and Mahayana tradition in a way. 

And the very rough ethical guidelines are just a skeleton of the ethical considerations. The goal of the Buddhist is to move towards enlightenment, and there are very real and achievable markers along the way so that it's not quite the abstract negation of a concept it seems to be. When you don't follow the ten precepts, it hinders your path toward. Anticipating and foreshadowing helps us along the way, by following the really rough guidance by the elders in the ten precepts. 

KWL: Nonduality

"The fundamental dharma of the dharma is that there are no dharmas, yet that this dharma of no-dharma is in itself a dharma; and now that the no-dharma dharma has been transmitted, how can the dharma of the dharma be the dharma?"

That's got to be the logic smashing statement.

Picture of the book.

Hung Po or Huangbo Xiyun from the above quote. Amazing we even have a drawing of someone from 850.

KWL: Nonduality

Sounds like an ambitious project to synthesize east and west ideas about nonduality, reading David Loy's Nonduality (1984).

"In my opinion, the nihilism of present western culture means that we cannot afford to ignore what the greatest philosophical tradition of India and China may have to teach us." (p. xxix)

I ranted about the nihilism I was witnessing in America yesterday.

"Nagarjuna's argument is that attempting to live a pure life involves preoccupation with impurity."

I'd say this kind of thinking is used in psychoanalysis. When someone says, "I'm not a diddler," there somewhere lurking is a diddler. (My favorite episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the Danny Devito character is running a child beauty pageant, and him being small, walking around saying, "I'm not a diddler," leads to the, "me think he doth protest too much" thinking.

When I think about spiritual, I think spiritual is everything, in the mundane, and therefore everything is spiritual, nothing is not spiritual, and therefore there is no such thing as profanity. For me though profane is a way of being that isn't empathetic and doesn't understand nonduality, how we're all connected and possibly only one thing in separate parts. 

The us/them or us/other duality is particularly upsetting when I begin to think about immigrant children separated from their family. I can't imagine any justification for that aside from: Let's make things really shitty so people don't come to this country. Forget that they're fleeing violence and economic injustice. Who doesn't want to improve their lives. 

Immigrants are the lifeblood of America. Supposedly California hasn't replaced it's population, it's on a downward trend. People in poverty have lots of children. Affluent countries don't have children and their population is going down. I'm not saying we need to keep our population steady. I think the environment could stand a little population decrease. People get anxious about the trends, while others on non-natalists, think it's unethical to have children given the crisis the world is in. There's a say, "the wrong kind of people are having children." I think that captures a rancid kind of thinking in America, that fancies itself as European in ancestry, instead of drawing from all over the world. A bit snooty if you ask me. People were fleeing there for another world, lest you forget that.

I just saw a video that the biggest factor of counties that sent people to the violent coup attempt on January 1st 2021, was that they came from counties where the white population was decreasing. And that there are about 10 million people in similar counties that aren't prepared to do something violent, but feel similarly.

quote

“Of supreme serenity, with extensive wisdom, A man of great wisdom, devoid of all greed; He is the Tathagata, he is the Sublime One, The person unrivalled, the one without equal, He is intrepid, proficient in all: The Blessed One is he, and I am his disciple.” ~ (Upali Sutta – Majjhima Nikaya) (Colombo Telegraph)

Vesak Day, the holiest of the high holidays for Buddhists was yesterday. I celebrated by taking refuge in the Knicks, the local basketball team. I'm only slightly ironic in my taking refuge in watching sports, it's a vice I want to grow out of. I hope someday. But not last night. 

My local Sri Lankan temple is celebrating this weekend, online, so I can catch their chanting in Sinhala and Pali, which won't do much for me. There have been other celebrations online.

I always remember Sangharakshita saying it should be a happy day, a day of joy.

Hopefully with the vaccinations, we can get back to meeting together. 

In other news, the White House celebrates Vesak with the second gentleman.

KWL book club

Nonduality: "In spirituality, nondualism, also called non-duality, means "not two" or "one undivided without a second".[1][2] Nondualism primarily refers to a mature state of consciousness, in which the dichotomy of I-other is "transcended", and awareness is described as "centerless" and "without dichotomies". Although this state of consciousness may seem to appear spontaneous,[note 1] it usually follows prolonged preparation through ascetic or meditative/contemplative practice, which may include ethical injunctions."

That gets me thinking about Monism, the idea that there is one thing, and everything is an aspect of that one thing.

That also gets me thinking about Heisenberg Principle, and the limits of what we can know and measure. That gets me thinking about Godel's Theorem. 

Loy first quotes Plotinus (204 – 270), a Roman philosopher who lived in Egypt. "His metaphysical writings have inspired centuries of Pagan, Jewish, Christian, Gnostic, and Islamic metaphysicians and mystics, including developing precepts that influence mainstream theological concepts within religions, such as his work on duality of the One in two metaphysical states." 

I'd like to add Buddhism, but I think he's a western example, and I think the Buddhists pondered over this before him.

Loy writes: "The nonduality of the seer and the seen: there is no philosophical or religious assertion more striking or counterintuitive..." (p. xv) Apparently William Blake noticed this, and others of note.

"The farthest we can remove ourselves is to "forget" this metaphysical understanding..." (p. xvi)

Western aren't nondoul. The eastern systems of Buddhism, Vedanta and Taoism allow it. In Buddhism, enlightenment is seeing nonduality.

"...the dualistic nature of conceptual knowledge means the nondual experience, if genuine, must transcend philosophy itself and all it's ontological claims." (p. xix)

I have had this experience. I experienced the wind, the tree blowing in the wind, the soil holding the tree, as one thing with me and everything else in the universe. I thought it was derealization, a kind of hallucination, and didn't talk about it until much later. Perhaps it was a moment of truly seeing reality for how it really is. In Zen this is called Kensho, I just learned reading this book.

There's a culture of not talking about deep experiences except to close spiritual friends. I believe in a more open source Buddhism, where you can talk about things in public. I like the funny story where the meditator thinks they're enlightened, and then say oh no, I can't be because I'm still thinking about me, enlightenment experience isn't like that supposedly. 

Deep meditative experiences have been similar to what my friend go in taking hallucinogens. He says he somehow can't meditate. I don't recommend hallucinogens because I haven't taken one and had a good experience or a spiritual experience, it was just drug using. I ended up writing on the dining table and using the word, "so-called" quite a lot. Then I kind of slept through a friend's visit, a missed opportunity I regret. I think in a spiritual retreat setting, it could be beneficial if you have the disposable income for some. People do all kinds of things. I also felt the great wave of love from the Buddha once when on a day retreat, it was really weird. My friend who did hallucinogens saw a green cloud of love. He has also made connections that I have made in therapy. 

There's no real telling what's going to happen to you when you meditate. Some get wild experience, and some get nothing. Please don't imagine nothing is happening if you put in the work. Even if you're just a little bit more centered, it's worth it, in my opinion, because those kinds of things are so hard to come by. I know people who refuse to meditate, and there are people who have bad experiences, and breaks with reality, negative mental events, and for that perhaps you need to work it through with a mental health professional. You are the owner of your spiritual life and you also know what is going on so you need to be the one who protects yourself. The people who have challenging mental events need a lot of support and they need to communicate with others. There are also people who just don't want to have to meditate at work, and don't join in the group meditation at work and I think that is OK.

Joanna Macy talks about systems theory, that even the smallest person can influence the systems. That you can influence the world, there is no excuse for political apathy perhaps, to say, "who am I, I am just a small person." 

I would also wonder how you would know that an intervention would be good, but we think of heroes like MLK or Harriet Tubman or Frederick Douglass just telling his story or maybe even violent John Brown, unwilling to allow the immorality of slavery to continue, in terms of working on racial justice, and their influences were quite big. 

Today we think about Greta Thunberg and her pointing out how inept our current thinking is, and that her autism has given her a kind of clarity about the dangers we are facing by our actions towards the environment. Meanwhile China tries to fat shame her (Independent)

It's hard not to see most politicians as a bunch of compromisers or if they're a little bit more clear like Obama, then the opposition sets up to just obstruct them, constantly negatively spin everything against them. The promise of Obama's campaign and the reality of his presidency are at stark contrast. He's the only president I thought to read his memoir because he wasn't a complete weasel. 

Clinton was more right wing than Nixon, and fell into the mythology of Kennedy, and didn't notice we don't allow presidents to get away with promiscuity any more. The right will do anything now, they are ruthless to the point of nihilism, cultism and out and out lying because nobody is paying attention. 

All politicians fib and slant the truth, but lying as a strategy to obstruct, distract and confuse the populace feels like the legacy of Trump that is being carried forward today by disgusting politicians: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Ted Cruz--I almost don't want them getting attention because they seem to thrive off the lurid exposure of their horrors.  Green says Jews shoot lasers from orbit. Gaetz has copied Trumps egregious sexual misconduct and participation in sexual slavery, and Ted Cruz flew off on vacation when his state was in crisis, among other things like regurgitating Russian political talking points as if he's part of Russia, not representing America. It's hard to imagine with the hysteria of anti-communism history in America, how he can be such a shill for Russia. Nobody has any memory, nobody is paying attention, that's how they get away with this. 

At least to me. 73 million Americans did not find the disgust I did when they voted for Trump in 2020, who argued with Epstein about who raped the 16 year old girl tied up in the bedroom, first (Mother Jones). 

They are more disgusted by the liberal imagination then all the people that died from Covid necessarily (New Zealand had 35 deaths), and will do anything it seems to stymie it, not it get a foothold, even if on the raw category of just saving lives, it would be more utilitarian. There are already enough people, they would cynically point out, too many liberals and voting democrats. In all these big systems it's hard to see what I could do beyond the rather impotent act of voting and paying attention, but actually voting and paying attention is quite a big political act in this day and age. (Here is a list of elections that turned on one vote.)

There's a subreddit called r/againstpolarization. I got into what I thought was a debate about being against polarization that was too polarizing. I've also been permanently banned from r/socialism because I used the ironic "commie", and been muted from complaining to the mods for a day and then a month. It's really hard to discuss things even online anonymously.

What does this all have with nonduality? I'd say a fundamental feeling of lack of connection to the world is the nihilism behind all these shenanigans. They imagine they can do this harm and not be affected by it. Like they all won't have deathbed confessions like Lee Atwater, or the recent ones of a police officer who admitted to being involved in killing MLK and Malcolm X (Gothamist).

KWL Book club on going for refuge blog

I just got David Loy's Nonduality from the library.

KWL is a way of attacking books. What do I already know? What do I want to learn? What did I learn?

What do I already know?

I've read David Loy's book Money, Sex, War, Karma: Notes for a Buddhist Revolution from 2008. He pointed out that the corporate system in the USA is geared towards greed. When a business has a question, the usual question is what will make more profits? So dump pollutants into the river? Yes, gives the shareholders more money than treating it. Loy favors the Zen sect, been authorized to teach since 1988. his teachers were Yamada Koun and Robert Aitken.

Wikipedia says about the book: "Nonduality focuses on the nonduality of subject and object in Buddhism, Vedanta, and Taoism, with reference to several Western thinkers including Wittgenstein and Heidegger. The main argument is that these three Asian systems may be different attempts to describe the same (or very similar) experience. The categories of Buddhism (no self, impermanence, causality, eightfold path) and Advaita Vedanta (all-Self, time and causality as maya, no path) are "mirror images" of each other. Ultimately it becomes difficult to distinguish a formless Being (Brahman) from a formless nonbeing (shunyata). Buddhism can be understood as a more phenomenological description of nonduality, while Vedanta is a more metaphysical account."

What want to learn: I wish to become more adept with the term "nonduality" and be able to use it.

Learned: This is his reworking of his dissertation at National University at Singapore 1984. More to follow.

Also I rely in reader response to express my learning experience. The following blog entries entitled KWL will explore my responses to the book, based on what I know, what I want to learn and what I have learned. I always loved the assignment of writing a journal and responding to a text. There was no need to grade just prove you're moving yourself through the material. Grades are a way of sorting out the quality of ideas, arguments and presentations, so we can keep lesser people out of say medical school or law school. We don't want people who don't deserve to be there, be there. How they come up with this judgments is perhaps based on knowledge, or maybe it's just sorting hat magic.

 

Asceticism, renunciation and strictness

When you come at things from not having them, it's easy to be more mindful for a little while.

I know how easy it is to be vegetarian because I've been vegan for long periods of time.

I know what hunger is because I have fasted for more than a day. I honestly never really faced hunger, even though I have food insecurity. 

I know how to free form meditation because I kept to the structured meditation I was taught for 20 years. I am grateful for the efforts of others to make the Dharma available.

I know what tiredness in meditation is because I stayed up all night meditating. Restful sleep is such a comfort.

I know what the pull of the internet is because I have not used the internet for 24 hours. Books are the original amazing technology.

I know what it is to apply your mind to learning because I have a home full of books I need to get rid of. Public libraries are glorious!

I don't need to take hallucinogens because I've gotten everything everyone brags about use through intense meditation retreats.

I know the convenience of a toilet because I've lived without for weeks. 

I have a feeling I could do without because of these experiences. Novel experiences are scary, not having a partner for the first time in almost 40 years is scary because it's new. Maybe I don't want a romantic partner, I could live more simply without one. It's just an urge to couple. 

I'm not saying cut everything out, willy nilly, that's just not possible. But these challenges make you see how your mind operates and you can be creative instead of reactive. There's a silver lining in most situations. My goal is to live with stillness, simplicity and contentment.

Kalamas Sutra

"Don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, “This contemplative is our teacher.” When you know for yourselves that, “These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the observant; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness." (Kalamas Sutra)

If the Buddha doesn't "exist" anymore, what am I taking refuge in?

If you compare Buddha to God, then he looks human and mortal. Though how you get to God existing more than the Buddha, I don't know. Nothing is eternal. In the Buddha's cosmology he can teach the gods to work towards waking up.

If you compare Buddha to humans, he's awesome. He did something first, he figured out something amazing. Even if that thing is just you becoming more mindful and moving to deepen that, his example, the teachings and the community of elders helps you on that path

Taking refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, you bow to the example of enlightenment, the ideas that get there, the ways of being, and the community that supports that orientation. That is the act of being a Buddhist. No god is going to strike you down if you don't, or do for that matter. It's just a matter of mental commitment.

It means I won't try to use myself as the center of everything. It means I will seek to do things on the path that the Buddha suggested will be beneficial. It means I can follow the teachings to the best of my understanding of them. I can follow the 10 precepts. I can avoid intoxicants, which given my history, isn't easy. It means I shall try to avoid harming others. It means I won't steal from anyone, and I will try to practice open handed generosity. It means I will try to live with stillness, simplicity and contentment. I will strive for kind thoughts and ways of being.

If you need to take refuge in the god of your imaganings, that's OK. Just know the mental choices you make will have consequences, and anything off the path, will be off the path laid down by the Buddha, and where that leads. If you don't think it's the best path, by all means seek another one. There is no extra source out there to punish you or bully you into their path, it's just you and your life.

The imaginings of Abrahamic religions can be beautiful and lead to great things too. Even though in the west there's a lot of peer pressure and hype to believe in Christianity, that doesn't mean you don't have a choice. You can choose the best path for you. If you need some made up enforcer to a moral order or else you are a nihilist, then maybe you need that extra umph, if you can believe in it. I can't so the Buddhist path works for me. I can also combine that with what makes sense for me.

Syncretism allows me to use all the modern ideas around me in service of the goals of Buddhism: vegetarianism, environmentalism, liberalism--these all help me to be kinder towards others. You can focus on conservatism or whatever makes sense for you in your environment. I can study the beautiful in art as a guide to striving for the ideals if I want. I know some communities push to avoid having fun with art, but I see ecstatic dancing joyful and connects me to what is great. Great literature calls me to the spiritual life. Great music shows me there is something transcendental. Being in nature helps me to understand the many webs of consequences, to see out the beautiful. For me the path is beautiful.

Someone pointed out that the Buddha taught gods the way. So maybe that is more awesome than being a god, if gods don't know the path.

And if you need something extra, read the post on the Dharmakaya.

There is a sutta that is very insistent that the Buddha doesn't not exist. It feels weirdly insistent, and feels like it drifts into perfection of wisdom style text. It makes me wonder if there's a sort of platonic element, maybe the forms that don't change partake in reality. Maybe the Buddha still exists in the Dharmakaya. In the end, I think it's above my pay grade.

Poem

How to drink water when there is wine by Barbara Kingsolver

How to stay at this desk when the sun  

is barefooting cartwheels over the grass —

How to step carefully on the path that begs  

for the fleet unfettered gait of a deer —

How to go home again when the wood thrush  

is promising the drunk liquid bliss of dusk —

How to resist the kiss, the body forbidden  

that plucks the long vibrating string of want —

How to drink water when there is wine —

Once I knew all these brick-shaped things, and how  

they protract the striving and virtuous life.

Now I have lived long and I know better.

 

 

Dhammapada quote

 

They quote

 

Book by Margret Grebowicz

 

Margret Grebowicz has a 96 page exploration of the many meanings of mountaineering. Just as you can be an internal adventurer with meditation, you can be an external adventurer and climb mountains. There can be evocation of purity in both. Fascinating little book.

I've been fascinated by mountain climbing, but I missed the wall climbing phase at gyms, and have a middle aged body now that would be lucky to summit Marcy in the Adirondacks again. I've been to the snow line of Cotopaxi in Ecuador. The air was really thin and it took me a long time to get there. I've read Into Thin Air and the Russian guy's book about the same climb, and a book about discovering a body on the mountain. There's something of an adventure to these projects that I like. 

Grebowicz is interesting. PhD in philosophy and a jazz singer! Listen to her CD. She was born in Poland and sings in Portuguese. 

Impermanence

I've been going to the park with my daughter and I see people aging before my very eyes. I guess I didn't notice it until I started feeling old. 

I don't really look in the mirror much any more, but I do occasionally and I see photos of myself. Turns out I've aged too.

My daughter asked where the ice cream truck went. I told her impermanence. At 5 she's not really into my cryptic explanations. 

It's a question to me whether I'm adopting a paradigm because I'm suggestable, or whether the paradigm really is true. It really feels true, so I guess it's a development of Śraddhā. 

Dante’s old man of Crete

Dante writes about the old man of Crete. He starts out in gold at the top of his head. It changes to silver, brass going down. Lower trunk of brass, legs of iron and a right foot of clay.

Maybe it’s a description of mappo. In Christianity is about the degeneration as Christianity gets older and older.

My therapist loved the metaphor of learning of people’s clay feet. When I read about Jung’s affair with his patient, my therapist pointed out that the theme of finding clay feet seems important to me. His clay feet was that he said he was going in for surgery, not to worry and he died. That was years ago. Feels fresh right at this moment. I can’t tell him about my finding. 

Links

INFERNO XIV – THE OLD MAN OF CRETE

When the sangha has your back

Dante Alighieri

 

The above is from my translation by Nichols. 

I've been reading The Divine Comedy through Buddhist eyes and ethics. They way he tells the story, the language, the translation, the word images he creates. I kind off feel like he's punishing people that have done him wrong. I really hope to not do that. Even my ex-wives who have pained me greatly, I can't be angry at them. Friends have greatly disappointed me, but I tend to take the blame except when they claim not to have choices. But there is one person he liked who he finds in hell, a mentor, who was there for sodomy. I can't imagine God cares where you put or get your excitement (between consenting adults). Seems kind of petty. I get it that they want to grow the religion by having lots of children. 

I think Dante was like me, idealistic and he didn't worry about wrong perceptions of himself--he perhaps could have been more political or Machiavellian regarding not getting exiled from Florence. Or maybe it was bound to happen. One of the things I've become interested in while reading The Divine Comedy is why and how he was exiled. Machiavelli was also exiled 200 years later for all his realpolitik. His birthday is May 3rd. 

Lust: I'm in this circle of hell. I have not lived with simplicity, stillness and contentment enough. I think of all the sexual misconduct in the Buddhist community coming out of the 60's and the ripples that go on after that. Easily the clay feet exposer extraordinaire. I see Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump arguing about who raped the 16 year old tied up in the other room first. I'm not sure why people don't talk about that happening more. Read that in an article by a guy who called everyone in Epstein's book of phone numbers.

"Dante sees Semiramis, Dido, Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Paris, Achilles, Tristan" (Wikipedia). I guess you could add Leander of Hero and Leander. Leander tries to swim Hellespont to be with Hero and drowns. My mistakes took up a lot of time in my life, but I wish I could think less about that stuff. I suppose like all intrusive thoughts, the trick is to just not pick them up and turn them over in your mind.  

Gluttony: I can't help but see this connected to greed. The gluttony and greed of humans is destroying the earth, allows us to not focus on equal distribution of resources leading to starvation, sickness and harm to our fellow human beings. There's a kind of fundamental opposite of asceticism that misses the middle way. "Dorothy L. Sayers writes that "the surrender to sin which began with mutual indulgence leads by an imperceptible degradation to solitary self-indulgence"."

Greed: The USA military creates a lot of environmental harm, wastes money, and profits the rich. The image of the man on a golf course sending youth off to die in wars comes to my mind. I see corporations dumping toxic waste into rivers so they can give more money to shareholders. I see the rich fleeing India during a pandemic they could stay and fight it with their resources. 

You can read some more about the rich in this subreddit post. I read that the Pope is trying to decrease "envelope culture." 

I think about Peter Singer donating a fifth of his wealth to poverty issues in Africa. That is the opposite. David Loy is a really good writer who articulates this topic. 

Wrath: Included in this one is depression, anger at the self. The image of mud blocking the mouth muting the cries. Not sure if I can get rid of that image. 

Walking to the library I was crossing the street and a car almost his me doing an illegal u-turn. The person yelled out, "I told you so, asshole." I didn't really hear him before, so it's hard to understand that comment, but it seems like he anticipated my move, but his being illegal, I didn't anticipate his--but he did and told me so. The incoherence of wrath can be funny. 

Dante talks about Medusa, the angry woman. Uma Thurman plays it well both in Percy Jackson and Nymphomaniac. The idea that you can't look at women's rage in Medusa is perhaps a male defense. We need to look at women's anger in our society, listen to it. I like Greta Thunberg's rage, "How dare you!"

Heresy: Buddhism isn't as obsessed with theology, unless you're reading r/Buddhism on Reddit. For me it's more about what you do, and focusing on your spiritual life and what you do. 

Violence: Dante categorizes sin into three categories: incontinence, violence and fraud. Obviously violence is terrible and life stealing. Not harming anyone, including animals is pretty good, but not easy. There is emotional violence, sexual violence, and our favorite form of violence, movie violence. 

I can still see the image of Frederick Douglass standing on the bank of a river, after seeing another head shot off by a frustrated slave owner, sinking into the river. 

Once again I thought Dante was good on violence towards the self--suicide, these section have a real power as well.

Fraud: Fraud steals your power through stealing the truth, by presenting oneself as something that one is not. 

Treachery: I know we're not supposed to be too political as a Buddhist. But I can't stop thinking about Russia helping Trump get elected and his thinking not doing anything to prevent deaths from Covid as a political strategy to win an election is quite treacherous. In the end political ideas are projections of psychology and personality, and you can't legislate the mind easily yet, but I think the raping of America by Trump was pure treachery (betrayal of trust; deceptive action or nature.). His complicity with the coup attempt also. Around him were gross flatterers. 

Going into government to prove it doesn't work and to wreck it up is the ultimate in unpatriotic activity for an American. Like MTV doesn't play music any more and Christians aren't really into helping others, Republicans lost their way. Any republican with integrity quite the party like George Will. Those who went along for the ride are guilty of treachery.

There's a certain amount of treachery in sexual misconduct, greed, wars and fraud.

In the end, I don't like boxing people up and judging them. The most evil person in my lifetime, Donald Trump is more human than inhuman, more like me than I care to admit. 

They say, hate the sin, but love the sinner. I wish I could do that with myself. Turns out what you do is who you are. Our lives are so short, every single thing we do matters. Our lives are so long, it's hard not to lose the intensity and preciousness of it all. The unbearable lightness of being. Perhaps it's just fluctuations in my energy.

Looking forward to Purgatorio next. 

Recent thoughts

I play chess online. The pandemic got me playing again. Sometimes I lose 3 in a row, and that really upsets me. I can win three in a row, and I interpret that as me being a superior player. But neither really mean anything. It's the worldly winds blowing. However they choose opponents who want to play at that moment, they could easily pick three players who have lost a few, their rankings lowered, and are really stronger than their rankings suggest.

But I think the worldly winds teaching is more than just a coping statement to improve your mood. It also gets it's hook into you, to suggest that maybe deepening your spiritual life through the various means, might also help you to raise above the worldly winds. Not to be more efficient at work or empathetic in relationships. But to seek the spiritual solution to constant disappointments. 

I was watching Mom, a fun TV show that keeps recovery alive for me at times, and pokes fun at the tragedies surrounding substance abuse, and some psychological compensation. One of the characters talked about glücksschmerz, which is the opposite of Schadenfreude. Schadenfreude is happiness when a foe suffers. Glücksschmerz is sadness when someone is doing well. When Christy isn't happy for her mother getting married, Tammy says she has some glücksschmerz on her face. I laughed at that. I've cried more than I laugh at the show, but I've become a little wet. 

The true opposite of schadenfreude isn't glücksschmerz, it's mudita. Sympathetic joy. Somehow that concept has helped me to be happy for others. And that has helped me to avoid negative mental states. And avoiding negative mental states helps me to push myself harder in my spiritual practices. 

Ironically, the depressive cast that allows me to imagine I can see dukkha, is also a hindrance in the spiritual life.

I'm reading Dante's inferno, so I'm opening myself up to Christian imagery and ideas, but I think of them in terms of pure lands and hell realms.

Poverty

I think about Amos Bronson Alcott, an early American vegan, and the father of a great female novelist, who was part of the Transcendental Movement, with his fantastic educational failures, and his rejected prophecies, when I eat a cup of applesauce. He traveled to England by boat eating potatoes and applesauce.

"After many delays , Alcott sailed off aboard the Rosalind on May 8 , carrying a supply of applesauce and potatoes as his vegetarian diet ." From Baker's Emerson' Among the Eccentrics.

Too much milk and packaging, garbage, non-vegan food, non-vegetarian food, from the food pantry set up at the school to help people and families during Covid-19 pandemic. I have broken my veganism. 

Today I thought to take it like a Buddhist monk, as an offering for my efforts. I shall bow in gratitude to the City of New York for their generosity and support of my Buddhist path.

I'm gaining weight because I fear someday I won't have food, so better pack on the pounds. I can totally see why poor people are sometimes paradoxically weighty, and hate my past judgements that I can do nothing about, only live forward.

I eat a lot of potatoes. Saw someone stab a potato and put it in the microwave for 8 minutes. Now I do that all the time. A friend told someone sailed around the world and only ate olive oil. He says it's the perfect food. So I put olive oil on my potatoes. And something green, peas are the easiest, and they have protein too. I put some hot sauce for flavor, though olive oil, potatoes and peas are quite tasty.

My great grandfather was Irish. The potato famine was really terrible. Ireland has just increased its population to the amount it had before the famine. Then I wonder if the Jewish people have replenished after the Holocaust. I know a woman who had 12 children. I don't identify with any of the groups I'm in to make that kind of effort, though my child-free friend lets me know I have children, like I could forget those buggers.

Manjushri

 

Therigatha Festival!

 

Check out the resources!

I was blown away by this text. Sure I was on retreat when I read it. But I had something of a mystical experience reading it. It touched me in ways beyond words. 

Not sure who these presenters are, but I'll try and catch some of their discussions. I think this is wonderful. 

The path

 

A movable feast

 

Divan Thomas Jones reviewing Analayo's book commenting on Stephen Batchelor

"In the ‘preamble’ to his more recent book, The Art of Solitude (2020), Batchelor writes, “I do not consider The Art of Solitude to be a Buddhist book”.[3] He describes (on p.146) how, in the midst of an ayahuasca ritual, he feels that he vomits up Buddhism, and is reborn no longer wanting to be a combatant in the “dharma wars”. Nevertheless, those earlier books have been the inspiration – and were surely designed to be the inspiration – for a movement, called ‘secular Buddhism’, not unconnected with Bodhi College, the Buddhist study programme run by Batchelor and friends." (Some Gentle Buddhist Polemics)

Naomi Shihab Nye poem

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

Christina Feldman

Been thinking a lot about stillness, simplicity and contentment, and somehow came across Christine Feldman's article "Stillness and Insight". It was the right article for me at the right time. 

Recently read her book Boundless Heart. I was really going to quote it up, but returned the book. She speaks on my vibration level. She has talks on Dharma Seed. She has a book on compassion and I'm reading the Analayo book on Compassion, so that might be my next book if I can get ahold of it. 

"The Buddha said it is not the right time to undertake samatha practice if you have a lot of things in the world demanding your attention. If you’re heavily in debt, or have family or relationship obligations that require attention, or if your body is ill and you are hav­ing to care for it. If there are multiple unresolved issues in your life that are going to be continu­ally demanding your attention, then the condi­tions for samatha practice are not ripe. It is said that in order to begin the deep dimension of samatha practice, it is important that the mind must be fairly happy, it should be easy to collect itself, that it’s not kind of stirred with things that are causing a lot of anxiety or concern."

My thought in reading that quote is to wonder if the Buddhist has a equanimity that isn't quite fragile. If so many conditions are required to reach these higher meditate states, and that's supposed to provide you inner resources to cope with whatever happens, but really it's jigging the circumstances to not be challenged. This line of thinking makes me want to cleave towards Mahayana.

Theravada has you seek enlightenment, no small goal. Withdraw from society and go for it. It's not an easy thing. Mahayana has you ethical, meditate and giving for the benefit of others. You might not get there, but at least you're trying to be helpful and kind to others. The other oriented outlook, helps to counteract the perhaps individualism of going for enlightenment. Of course if you have insight, you realize we're all connected, and as it says in the bible, what you do to the least of people, you do to me.

The justification for seeking out enlightenment is as follows (From Compassion and Emptiness by Analayo):

"If one is not tamed oneself and wishes to tame someone else who is untamed, that is impossible. [If] one is drowning oneself and wishes to rescue someone else who is drowning, that is impossible. [If] one has not extinguished one’s own [defilements] and wishes to make someone else with unextinguished [defilements] extinguish them, that is impossible..."

I don't actually think that is true. A little nervous not agreeing with the Buddhavacana. There are so many instances where you can work with someone in collaboration and cooperatively towards a goal. I'm no Buddha, but the Buddha figured it out without anyone else.

Somehow I feel this is related, though it's a bit of a stretch. I don't see Stoicism as a "philosophy". It's just, "suck it up," and, "walk it off," combined with, "it's your judgements that cause the pain so quit it." Maybe it's a little more than that. Maybe you recognize how you're creating pain for yourself and then you try not to do that. I think that's a basic psychological technique, but you can call it stoicism. Maybe I'm shading more towards the "nothing special" side of Zen with this line of thinking.

Refuge musings

Looking at my life, what do I really take refuge in? What are the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha up against?

By cutting at the root, our relationship with desire and pleasure, he cuts at the very heart of our enjoyment. Is not sticking the second arrow in enough to compete with these other options? 

#1. I like literature, and narratives in TV and movies. There's something about being swept away by a narrative. 

I wonder what the Buddha would think about these times. Would he understand the pull of complicated artistic narratives? Would the Buddha see the themes of samsara and be more confirmed in his path? He would probably see the love of languages, and developing an aesthetic appreciation as a distraction. 

Good storytelling and presentation of the Dharma is used to be persuasive and convert people to the way.

#2. Music is also a refuge. I can spread a wide net in these times. A new opera is streamed every day, and that's just the Met. There are more. Jazz is streamed lived often. There are so many videos of artists on Vimeo and YouTube. 

I wonder what the Buddha would think of all kinds of music these days.

Would the Buddha being irritated at these distractions make him seem like a fuddy duddy? Would he think the heavy metal monk had gone astray? Would he find it pleasant, but would politely suggest to go for enlightenment and then appreciate music.

Dharma music isn't fully developed but does exist.

#3. The chase for love and intimacy is pretty bewitching. Feeling loved, cared for, supported, understood and accepted is quite intoxicating. There can be a lot of fantasizing in love off a little spot, or love can be gritty, real and close up. It's so intoxicating you can see videos of people giving up in frustration, like a child, hoping someone will come along and say it's OK. Love is just a specific narrative, and perhaps could be included in #1 above, but relationships are more interactive than a narrative. 

Indeed family and relationships are often seen at the heart of the meaning of life, and what is central to making us happy. Friendship is co opted by Buddhism in service of the mission. The fantasy of sangha, the closeness of 

"I hope you are all keeping well, Anuruddha, I hope you are all comfortable, I hope you are not having any trouble getting alms food." They replied: "We are keeping well, Blessed One, we are comfortable, and we are not having any trouble getting alms food." Buddha: "I hope, Anuruddha, that you are all living in concord, with mutual appreciation, without disputing, blending like milk and water, viewing each other with kindly eyes." 

Anurruddha: "Surely, venerable sir, we are living in concord, with mutual appreciation, without disputing, blending like milk and water, viewing each other with kindly eyes."

Buddha: "But, Anuruddha, how do you live thus?"

Anuruddha: "Venerable sir, as to that, I think thus 'It is a gain for me, it is a great gain for me, that I am living with such companions in the holy life.' I maintain bodily acts/verbal acts and mental acts of loving-kindness towards those venerable ones both openly and privately. I consider: 'Why should I not set aside what I wish to do and do what these venerable ones wish to do?' Then I set aside what I wish to do and do what these venerable ones wish to do. We are different in body, venerable sir, but one in mind." The venerable Nandiya and the venerable Kimbila each spoke likewise. (MN 31 Culagosinga sutta)

Finding the right sangha is a little like the quest for love, it can be fraught with many frustrations. 

On the one hand you want to be tolerant and inclusive, but on the other hand, it can be like an exclusive club, not everyone gets into.

Can you treat everyone with love and reverence? Following this line of thinking I'm thinking that the Brahma Viharas are pretty important. I've started reading Bhikkhu Analayo's book Compassion and Emptiness in Early Buddhist Meditation.

Free books can be got from Wildmind. The Dharma is supposed to be free, but publishing a book isn't free, and well, if an author makes a living, well that's not bad either. If the people who work at a publishing house earn a living, that can't be harmful. And most committed Buddhists put their sangha charity in their wills.

Blogging and my obsession with Buddhist culture might be an obsession distracting me from practicing meditation. Do you need anything more than some rudimentary instructions and committing to meditating a lot? 

Can Konmari and Thoreau guide us past the thicket of materialism and culture? Marshall Rosenberg can help us to communicate. 

The majority of forces in society are away from stillness, simplicity and contentment. 

Today's reflections? What distracts me? What do I not want to be distracted from?

Unknowns

 I know you don't always have to zoom in on those who are suffering most, but when I went to contemplate people I don't know, today I thought about those oppressed groups worldwide. My first thought was the Uyghurs. I just want to focus on my own problems, but pushing myself to think about people I know little about, my mind went along the lines of Samantha Powers, and wondered if we could rally support to stop unfair persecution and genocide.

I saw this photo and read the caption: A possible Tocharian or Sogdian monk (left) with an East Asian Buddhist monk (right). A fresco from the Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves, dated to the 9th or 10th century (Kara-Khoja Kingdom).

Basically the Chinese rulers are not into multiculturalism and diversity, and feel that their culture should dominate and conquer other cultures (BBC). The above picture represents the opposite, a 9th century ethnic group related to the Uyghurs, in friendship with a Buddhist. "Since 2017 when President Xi Jinping issued an order saying all religions in China should be Chinese in orientation, there have been further crackdowns."

Check out this picture: Tocharian Prince mourning the Cremation of the Buddha, in a mural from Maya Cave (224) in Kizil. He is cutting his forehead with a knife, a practice of self-mutilation also known among the Scythians.

Most of the Tocharian inscriptions are based on Buddhist monastical texts, which suggests that the Tocharians largely embraced Buddhism.

So... the idea that the Uyghurs have un-Chinese culture ... but some in China are trying to get rid of Buddhism too, so OK. It's not just culture, it's culture as they define it, and they find reasons to hurt others. Not cool.

Bonus Quote: Analayo

"This is vital in so far as the meditative cultivation of compassion can only lead to deeper concentration if it is undertaken with a positive or even joyful mind. From a practical perspective this means that one’s cultivation of compassion needs to steer clear of sadness. This is not easy, since what causes the arising of compassion can naturally lead to being afflicted oneself by sadness. Therefore it is important to monitor closely one’s own response to the affliction of others. This should ideally proceed from the opening of the heart that is genuinely receptive to the pain and suffering of others, to the positive mental condition of being filled with the wish for others to be free from affliction and suffering." (Compassion and Emptiness)

 

 

You know I don't think any religion owns good acts. Even so, good acts exemplify something important. In a way what the above man did is probably just what every other person would do in that situation, but it's still commendable that doing the right thing wasn't blocked in him.

Happy birthday Samantabhadra!

Some things are so deep you can learn about them your whole life. Like psychotherapy, psychology, literature and Buddhism. 

Yesterday was Avalokiteshvara's birthday. Not sure how a archetypal buddha can have a birthday, but I need to commit more, so hey, he's a deity. We make the world with our minds, n'est pas? 

"The first birthday falls on the 19th day of the 2nd Chinese lunar month. The second birthday falls on the 19th day of the 6th Chinese lunar month and the third birthday falls on the 19th day of the 9th Chinese lunar month." I'll have to take your word for it. The Chinese calendar is different than the Gregorian calendar which is what is followed around me, so much so that I didn't even know it was called the Gregorian calendar. The Chinese calendar has a leap month! So anyway, I'm not going to be able to verify that yesterday was Avalokita's birthday, but I'll take the word of people in Singapore. I chanted the mantra some to celebrate, and read the 25th chapter of the Lotus Sutra.

Today is Samantabhadra's birthday! Now I don't remember Samantabhadra but he is associated with practice and meditation. I like that. I had to pull out my trusty Meeting The Buddhas by Vessantara.

Sundhana is supposed to have traveled all over and studied with all the great teachers, and then he meets with, who culminates all his teachings and is the pinnacle. Samantabhadra has a lavish vow of making offerings to the Buddhas that is referred to in some Tibetan pujas. They imagine they are giving great offering like Samantabhadra.

Samantabhadra appears in two sutras: The Lotus Sutra (Chapter 26), and Gandavyuha Sutra (The Excellent Manifestation Sūtra). So for devotion, I will read the 26th chapter of the Lotus Sutra with devotion, to imbue the magical spirit of these lovely deities. But Chapter 26 is about medicine buddha, Bhaisajyaguru. Opse. My info was wrong. Turns out it's at the end, the Samantabhadra Meditation Sutra. (Online version)

Sundhana learns from Manjushri: "The Gaṇḍavyūha suggests that with a subtle shift of perspective we may come to see that the enlightenment that the pilgrim so fervently sought was not only with him at every stage of his journey, but before it began as well—that enlightenment is not something to be gained, but "something" the pilgrim never departed from." (Wikipedia)

Sndhana learns from Samantabhadra: "wisdom only exists for the sake of putting it into practice; that it is only good insofar as it benefits all living beings. Samantabhadra concludes with a prayer of aspiration to buddhahood, which is recited by those who practice according to Atiśa's Bodhipathapradīpa"

I like that this is put in it's epistemological place.

Samantabhadra is revered in Sri Lanka. Their main shrine to him is in Ratnapura, 101km southeast of Kandy, at Maha Saman Devalaya. If I were getting $341m like Lindor, would I spend money to travel there? I think I would.

In Japan Samantabhadra is Fugen and rides an elephant and is green. He has 10 vows.

And in north America, Samantabhadra ... I hope to see the day we have a unique twist of devotion that cottons to our culture, time and place.

I'll end with a trippy ecstatic part of the sutra and his elephant:

"The Bodhisattva Universal Worthy is boundless in the size of his body, boundless in the sound of his voice, and boundless in the form of his image. Desiring to come to this world, he makes use of his sovereign psychic powers and compresses his stature to a smaller size. Because the people in Jambudvipa have the Three Weighty Obstacles, by the power of his wisdom he appears by transformation as mounted on a white elephant. The elephant has six tusks, and seven limbs, (supports its body on the ground?). Under its seven limbs, seven lotus flowers grow.

The elephant is white as snow, the most brilliant of all shades of white, so pure that even crystal and the Himalaya Mountains cannot compare with it. The body of the elephant is four hundred and fifty yojanas in length and four hundred yojanas in height. At the tip of the six tusks rest six bathing pools. In each bathing pool grow fourteen lotus flowers as large as the pools. The flowers bloom majestically, like the king of celestial trees.

On each of these flowers sits a jade maiden whose countenance is red as crimson and whose radiance surpasses that of a goddess. In the hand of that maiden five harps appear by transformation, each of them with five hundred musical instruments as its accompaniment.

Five hundred birds fly up, including ducks, wild geese, and mandarin ducks, in color like precious gems, and settle among flowers and branches.

On the elephant's trunk there is a flower with a stalk the color of a red pearl. Its blossom is golden, its shape is still a bud that has not yet blossomed.

After witnessing this event, if a person further repents of his offenses, and contemplates the Great Vehicle attentively, with entire devotion, and ponders it in his mind without cease, he will be able to see the flower spontaneously bloom, and radiate with a golden color. The blossom of the lotus flower is made of kimsuka gems en laid with wonderful, pure Mani jewels; the stamens are made of diamond.

A transformation Buddha appears, sitting on the petals of the lotus flower with a host of Bodhisattvas sitting on the stamens. From the eyebrows of the transformation Buddha a ray of light appears and enters the elephant's trunk.

This ray, the color of a red lotus flower, emanates from the elephant's trunk and enters its eyes; the ray then shines from the elephant's eyes and enters its ears; it then comes from the elephant's ears, illuminates its head, and changes into a golden platform.

On the elephant's head there are three transformed attendants: one holds a golden wheel, another a jewel, and another a vajra pestle. When the attendant raises the pestle and points it at the elephant, the latter immediately walks (a few steps?).

The elephant does not tread on the ground but hovers in the air, seven feet above the earth, yet the elephant leaves its footprints on the ground. The footprints are altogether perfect, marking the wheel's hub with a thousand spokes. From each hallmark of the wheel's hub grows a great lotus flower, upon which an elephant appears by transformation.

This elephant also has seven legs and walks after the great elephant. Every time the transformed elephant raises and brings down its legs, seven thousand elephants appear, all following the great elephant as its retinue.

On the elephant's trunk, in hue like a red lotus flower, sits a transformed Buddha who emits a ray from his eyebrows.

This ray of light, in similar fashion, enters the elephant's trunk.

The ray emerges from the elephant's trunk and enters its eyes;

the ray then shines from the elephant's eyes and again enters its ears; it then comes from the elephant's ears and reaches its head.

Gradually rising to the elephant's back, the ray is transformed into a golden saddle which is adorned with the Seven Precious Gems.

On the four sides of the saddle are the pillars made of the Seven Precious Gems, which are decorated with precious objects, forming a jeweled pedestal. On this pedestal there is a lotus flower stamen bearing the Seven Precious Gems, and that stamen is also composed of a hundred jewels. The blossom of that lotus flower is made of a great Mani-jewel.