Lotus Sutra, Chapter 22, The Ancient Devotion of Bhaishagyarâga

Using the translation I usually use...

Of yore, young man of good family, at a past epoch, at a time (as many) Æons ago as there are grains of sand in the river Ganges, there appeared in the world a Tathâgata, &c., by the name of Kandravimalasûryaprabhâsasrî, endowed with science and conduct, a Sugata, &c. &c. Now that Tathâgata, &c., Kandravimalasûryaprabhâsasrî had a great assembly of eighty kotis of Bodhisattvas Mahâsattvas and an assembly of disciples equal to the sands of seventy-two Ganges rivers. His spiritual rule was exempt from the female sex, and his Buddha-field had no hell, no brute creation, no ghosts, no demons; it was level, neat, smooth as the palm of the hand. Its floor consisted of heavenly lapis lazuli, and it was adorned with trees of jewel and sandal-wood; inlaid with a multitude of jewels, and hung with long bands of silk, and scented by censors made of jewels. Under each jewel tree, at a distance not farther than a bowshot, was made a small jewel-house, and on the top of those small jewel-houses stood a hundred kotis of angels performing a concert of musical instruments and castanets, in order to honour the Lord Kandravimalasûryaprabhâsasrî, the Tathâgata, &c., while that Lord was extensively expounding this Dharmaparyâya of the Lotus of the True Law to the great disciples and Bodhisattvas, directing himself to the Bodhisattva Mahâsattva Sarvasattvapriyadarsana. Now, Nakshatrararâgasankusumitâbhigña, the lifetime of that Lord Kandravimalasûryaprabhâsasrî, the Tathâgata, &c., lasted forty-two thousand Æons, and likewise that of the Bodhisattvas Mahâsattvas and great disciples. It was under the spiritual rule of that Lord that the Bodhisattva Mahâsattva Sarvasattvapriyadarsana applied himself to his difficult course. He wandered twelve thousand years strenuously engaged in contemplation. After the expiration of those twelve thousand years he acquired the Samâdhi termed Sarvarûpasandarsana (i. e. the sight or display of all forms). No sooner had he acquired that Samâdhi than satisfied, glad, joyful, rejoicing, and delighted he made the following reflection: It is owing to this Dharmaparyâya of the Lotus of the True Law that I have acquired the Samâdhi of Sarvarûpasandarsana. Then he made another reflection: Let me do homage to the Lord Kandravimalasuryaprabhâsasrî and this Dharmaparyâya of the Lotus of the True Law. No sooner had he entered upon such a meditation than a great rain of Mandârava and great Mandârava flowers fell from the upper sky. A cloud of Kâlânusârin sandal was formed, and a rain of Uragasâra sandal poured down. And the nature of those essences was so noble that one karsha of it was worth the whole Saha-world.

After a while, Nakshatrararâgasankusumitâbhigña, the Bodhisattva Mahâsattva Sarvasattvapriyadarsana rose from that meditation with memory and full consciousness, and reflected thus: This display of magic power is not likely to honour the Lord and Tathâgata so much as the sacrifice of my own body will do. Then the Bodhisattva Mahâsattva Sarvasattvapriyadarsana instantly began to eat Agallochum, Olibanum, and the resin of Boswellia Thurifera, and to drink oil of Kampaka. So, Nakshatrararâgasankusumitâbhigña, the Bodhisattva Mahâsattva Sarvasattvapriyadarsana passed twelve years in always and constantly eating those fragrant substances and drinking oil of Kampaka. After the expiration of those twelve years the Bodhisattva Mahâsattva Sarvasattvapriyadarsana wrapped his body in divine garments, bathed it in oil, made his (last) vow, and thereafter burnt his own body with the object to pay worship to the Tathâgata and this Dharmaparyâya of the Lotus of the True Law. Then, Nakshatrararâgasankusumitâbhigña, eighty worlds equal to the sands of the river Ganges were brightened by the glare of the flames from the blazing body of the Bodhisattva Mahâsattva Sarvasattvapriyadarsana, and the eight Lords Buddhas equal to the sands of the Ganges in those worlds all shouted their applause, (and exclaimed): Well done, well done, young man of good family, that is the real heroism which the Boddhisattvas Mahasattvas should develop; that is the real worship of the Tathâgata, the real worship of the law. No worshipping with flowers, incense, fragrant wreaths, ointment, powder, cloth, umbrellas, flags, banners; no worshipping with material gifts or with Uragasâra sandal equals it. This, young man of good family, is the sublimest gift, higher than the abandoning of royalty, the abandoning of beloved children and wife. Sacrificing one's own body, young man of good family, is the most distinguished, the chiefest, the best, the very best, the most sublime worship of the law. After pronouncing this speech, Nakshatrararâgasankusumitâbhigña, those Lords Buddhas were silent.

The body of Sarvasattvapriyadarsana continued blazing for twelve thousand years without ceasing to burn. After the expiration of those twelve thousand years the fire was extinguished. Then, Nakshatrararâgasankusumitâbhigña, the Bodhisattva Mahâsattva Sarvasattvapriyadarsana, having paid such worship to the Tathâgata, disappeared from that place, and (re)appeared under the (spiritual) reign of that very Lord Kandravimalasûryaprabhâsasrî, the Tathâgata, &c., in the house of king Vimaladatta, by apparitional birth, and sitting crosslegged.

The Nichiren translation avoids the tongue-twisting Pali/Sanskrit names (though you might prefer them).

From the Nichiren version the point of the above text is:

Great king, you should now understand this.
Having walked about in a certain place,
I immediately gained the samadhi
that allows me to manifest all physical forms.
I have carried out my endeavors with great diligence
and cast aside the body that I loved.

This theme of sacrifice out of devotion (taken intentionally perhaps to an extreme for we mortals) runs in this chapter, and it evidently is the reason why, as we'll see, compassion takes any expedient form. This would also explain why Hakuin could interpret the Lotus Sutra as being one in the world who operates in this world informed by a satori that addresses the Great Matter itself. And it also explains the far more "obvious" interpretation of the Nichiren/Soka Gakkai folks that think all references to the Lotus Sutra refer to the sutra itself.

All physical forms are all physical forms. From a Nomic point of view, you have to admire this sutra, for its implicit self-referentiality.

There's one more bit I'd like to look at as well:

So, Nakshatrararâgasankusumitâbhigña, this Dharmaparyâya of the Lotus of the True Law delivers from all evils, extirpates all diseases, releases from the narrow bonds of the mundane whirl. And he who shall hear this Dharmaparyâya of the Lotus of the True Law, who shall write it and cause it to be written, will produce an accumulation of pious merit the term of which is not to be arrived at even by Buddha-knowledge; so great is the accumulation of pious merit that will be produced by a young man of good family or a young lady who after teaching or learning it, writing it or having it collected into a volume, shall honour, respect, venerate, worship it with flowers, incense, fragrant garlands, ointment, powder, umbrellas, flags, banners, triumphal streamers, with music, with joining of hands, with lamps burning with ghee, scented oil, Kampaka oil, jasmine oil, trumpet-flower oil, Vârshika oil or double jasmine oil.

IOW, because there is great merit transferred by a bodhisattva long ago, you can obtain rescue from dukkha as suffering.

Your mileage may vary, but if you ever wondered why the SG folks kept on chanting "Namu Myo Renge Kyo" it's found here.

Speaking of the Lotus Sutra

It's evidently not for nothing that I'm not quite a Nichiren Buddhist. From a commentary in their translation of the Lotus Sutra...

Some Buddhist sects prohibit their priests and followers from practicing supernatural powers, but the Lotus Sutra encourages the showing of the powers in order to cause all living beings to rejoice. Therefore, Nichiren Shu issues amulets and ofuda and we perform kito. However, we must know that supernatural powers are only expedients to cause people to rejoice. The final aim is to attain Buddhahood, the salvation from all sufferings.

I suppose it's an expedient means to have these things in temples, but I'm not quite a guy who hobnobs with folks with supernatural powers.

Not like in the comic books.

Lotus Sutra, Chapter 21: Spells

Let's see what this says...

Thereupon the Bodhisattva Mahâsattva Bhaishagyarâga rose from his seat, and having put his upper robe upon one shoulder and fixed the right knee upon the ground lifted his joined hands up to the Lord and said: How great, O Lord, is the pious merit which will be produced by a young man of good family or a young lady who keeps this Dharmaparyâya of the Lotus of the True Law, either in memory or in a book? Whereupon the Lord said to the Bodhisattva Mahâsattva Bhaishagyarâga: Suppose, Bhaishagyarâga, that some man of good family or a young lady honours, respects, reveres, worships hundred thousands of myriads of kotis of Tathâgatas equal to the sands of eighty Ganges rivers; dost thou think, Bhaishagyarâga, that such a young man or young lady of good family will on that account produce much pious merit? The Bodhisattva Bhaishagyarâga replied: Yes, Lord; yes, Sugata. The Lord said: I announce to thee, Bhaishagyarâga, I declare to thee: any young man or young lady of good family, Bhaishagyarâga, who shall keep, read, comprehend, and in practice follow, were it but a single stanza from this Dharmaparyâya of the Lotus of the True Law, that young man or young lady of good family, Bhaishagyarag-a, will on that account produce far more pious merit.

Then the Bodhisattva Mahâsattva Bhaishagyarâga immediately said to the Lord: To those young men or young ladies of good family, O Lord, who keep this Dharmaparyâya of the Lotus of the True Law in their memory or in a book, we will give talismanic words for guard, defence, and protection; such as, anye manye mane mamane kitte karite same, samitâvi, sânte, mukte, muktatame, same avishame, samasame, gaye, kshaye, akshine, sânte sanî, dhârani âlokabhâshe, pratyavekshani, nidhini, abhyantaravisishte, utkule mutkule, asade, parade, sukânkshî, asamasame, buddhavilokite, dharmaparikshite, sanghanirghoshani, nirghoshanî bhayâbhayasodhanî, mantre mantrâkshayate, rutakausalye, akshaye, akshavanatâya, vakule valoda, amanyatâya. These words of charms and spells, O Lord, have been pronounced by reverend Buddhas (in number) equal to the sands of sixty-two Ganges rivers. All these Buddhas would be offended by any one who would attack such preachers, such keepers of the Sûtrânta.

The Lord expressed his approval to the Bodhisattva Mahâsattva Bhaishagyarâga by saying: Very well, Bhaishagyarâga, by those talismanic words being pronounced out of compassion for creatures, the common weal of creatures is promoted; their guard, defence, and protection is secured.

Thereupon the Bodhisattva Mahâsattva Pradânasûra said unto the Lord: I also, O Lord, will, for the benefit of such preachers, give them talismanic words, that no one seeking for an occasion to surprise such preachers may find the occasion, be it a demon, giant, goblin, sorcerer, imp or ghost; that none of these when seeking and spying for an occasion to surprise may find the occasion. And then the Bodhisattva Mahâsattva Pradânasûra instantly pronounced the following words of a spell: gvale mahâgvale, ukke mukke, ade adâvati, tritye trityâvati, itini vitini kitini, tritti trityâvati svâhâ. These talismanic words, O Lord, have been pronounced and approved by Tathâgatas, &c. (in number) equal to the sands of the river Ganges. All those Tathâgatas would be offended by any one who would attack such preachers.

It goes on like that.

I am thinking more and more Hakuin's right.

It is noteworthy that the other translation I was using (see also here for another example) does not (as far as I could tell) have a counterpart to this chapter.

To a modern mind this chapter is bizarre, to say the least. But if the sutra's "true meaning" points beyond and outside of itself, well, it might as well get scatological here if it's going to help beings recognize their nature to help others get through this life.

Something to think about when stuck in traffic on a freeway...

I had a horrendous time getting around yesterday because of this...

Portland police officers took a man into custody on the Interstate 5 Bridge Sunday evening, ending a standoff that blocked southbound traffic on I-5 for almost four hours.

The man was considered suicidal and had not been charged with a crime Sunday evening, but he was being held for a mental-health evaluation, said Portland police spokesman Sgt. Mike Marshman.

The man had been armed with a knife and a hunting bow. While nobody was injured, the big issue was what Marshman called "a mushrooming cloud of a traffic problem."

Southbound traffic was stopped "for everybody’s safety," he said. "The northbound side was open, but people were stopping to watch. So even though it was open, (northbound) traffic essentially was stopped."

Somebody was trying to save someone's life.

I do wish when they issued traffic reports they'd make that plain as day.

Lotus Sutra Chapter 20

"Conception of the Transcendent Power of the Tathâgatas" is the chapter title...

Thereupon those hundred thousands of myriads of kotis of Bodhisattvas equal to the dust-atoms of a macrocosm, who had issued from the gaps of the earth, all stretched their joined hands towards the Lord, and said unto him: We, O Lord, will, after the complete extinction of the Tathâgata, promulgate this Dharmaparyâya everywhere (or on every occasion) in all Buddha-fields of the Lord, wherever (or whenever) the Lord shall be completely extinct [Hence follows that Nirvâna is repeatedly entered into by the Lord]. We are anxious to obtain this sublime Dharmaparyâya, O Lord, in order to keep, read, publish, and write it.

It is difficult not to read "conflict of interest" into this text, from this paragraph, but on the other hand, there is a need that burns throughout existence.

And if you read it Hakuin's way, this passage has a meaning beyond the text itself (which is implicit as I think I've mentioned, in the "skillful means" expounded here):

Thereupon the Lord addressed the Bodhisattvas Mahasattvas headed by Visishtakâritra: Inconceivable, young men of good family, is the power of the Tathâgatas, &c. In order to transmit this Dharmaparyâya, young men of good family, I might go on for hundred thousands of myriads of kotis of Æons explaining the manifold virtues of this Dharmaparyâya through the different principles of the law, without reaching the end of those virtues. In this Dharmaparyâya I have succinctly taught all Buddha-laws (or Buddha-qualities), all the superiority, all the mystery, all the profound conditions of the Buddhas. Therefore, young men of good family, you should, after the complete extinction of the Tathâgata, with reverence keep, read, promulgate, cherish, worship it. And wherever on earth, young men of good family, this Dharmaparyâya shall be made known, read, written, meditated, expounded, studied or collected into a volume, be it in a monastery or at home, in the wilderness or in a town, at the foot of a tree or in a palace, in a building or in a cavern, on that spot one should erect a shrine in dedication to the Tathâgata. For such a spot must be regarded as a terrace of enlightenment; such a spot must be regarded as one where all Tathâgatas &c. have arrived at supreme, perfect enlightenment; on that spot have all Tathâgatas moved forward the wheel of the law; on that spot one may hold that all Tathâgatas have reached complete extinction.

This Dharmaparyâya, as I said in the last post, is your Dharmaparyâya. That is, the Lotus Law is none other than that which is you awake. Where you are is "where all Tathâgatas &c. have arrived at supreme, perfect enlightenment; on that spot have all Tathâgatas moved forward the wheel of the law; on that spot one may hold that all Tathâgatas have reached complete extinction."

So any benefit the writer of this sutra may have had might be achieved, amplified, and offered for others.

This Tathagata's True Meaning

Hakuin,in the Orategama, reads the Lotus Sutra differently than I've been reading it. He defines the "message" the thing that is propagated, as not the literal Lotus Sutra text itself, but rather the Awakened One's Meaning behind the Lotus Sutra. That's what will give the Multiverse ecstatic joy.

But Hakuin warns that "this meaning" is our meaning, as in Case 39 of the Mumonkan, as in what caused ancestors to lose limbs, to be threatened by wolves, and to be otherwise consensually posited on the knife's edge between life and death, as a "middle way" that might be middling enough for many people, but when it's your life it's YOUR life you're leading and with which you are resolving the Great Matter.

As they say in one of the standards bodies I've attended: "Document noted."

Which means: pay deep attention.

Which also means: the "conflict of interest" I wrote of earlier doesn't really enter.

It's not about the writer(s) of the Lotus Sutra.

"Groundhog Day"

I never saw the movie, but I suppose this is a good day, because the things I'm getting better at the things I am doing.

If that's the point of the movie, all well and good. I never was much of a fan of Bill Murray.

Suffering...

Now I know why I don't twitter...

OK, I gotta quote some of these...In response to this

Iranian twitter activity similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House.

twitterers replied:

ceedub7 @petehoekstra I got a splinter in my hand today. Felt just like Jesus getting nailed to the cross.

MattOrtega Walked out onto Constitution Ave in D.C. and was almost hit by a taxi. Reminded me of Tienanmen Square.

Lotus Sutra, Chapter 19

Still using this translation, still my own lay interpretation, etc....

The Lord then addressed the Bodhisattva Mahisattva Mahâsthâmaprâpta. In a similar way, Mahâsthâmaprâpta, one may infer from what has been said that he who rejects such a Dharmaparyâya as this, who abuses monks, nuns, lay devotees male or female, keeping this Sûtra, insults them, treats them with false and harsh words, shall experience dire results, to such an extent as is impossible to express in words. But those that keep, read, comprehend, teach, amply expound it to others, shall experience happy results, such as I have already mentioned: they shall attain such a perfection of the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind as just described...

...Bodhisattva Mahâsattva [Sadâparibhûta] was in the habit of exclaiming to every monk or nun, male or female lay devotee, while approaching them: I do not contemn you, worthies. You deserve no contempt, for you all observe the course of duty of Bodhisattvas and are to become Tathâgatas, &c. In this way, Mahâsthâmaprâpta, that Bodhisattva Mahâsattva, when a monk, did not teach nor study; the only thing he did was, whenever he descried from afar a monk or nun, a male or female lay devotee, to approach them and exclaim: I do not contemn you, sisters. You deserve no contempt, for you all observe the course of duty of Bodhisattvas and are to become Tathâgatas, &c. So, Mahâsthâmaprâpta, the Bodhisattva Mahâsattva at that time used to address every monk or nun, male or female devotee. But all were extremely irritated and angry at it, showed him their displeasure, abused and insulted him: Why does he, unasked, declare that he feels no contempt for us? just by so doing he shows a contempt for us. He renders himself contemptible by predicting our future destiny to supreme, perfect enlightenment; we do not care for what is not true. Many years, Mahâsthâmaprâpta, went on during which that Bodhisattva Mahâsattva was being abused, but he was not angry at anybody, nor felt malignity, and to those who, when he addressed them in the said manner, cast a clod or stick at him, he loudly exclaimed from afar: I do not contemn you. Those monks and nuns, male and female lay devotees, being always and ever addressed by him in that phrase gave him the (nick)name of Sadâparibhûta.

BTW, "contemn" and "descry" are real words. "Contemn" means "to show contempt," and "descry" means to see from a distance.

It continues...

It was the Lord Bhîshmagargitasvararâga, the Tathâgata, &c., who expounded this Dharmaparyâya in twenty times twenty hundred thousand myriads of kotis of stanzas, which the Bodhisattva Mahâsattva Sadâparibhûta heard from a voice in the sky, when the time of his death was near at hand. On hearing that voice from the sky, without there appearing a person speaking, he grasped this Dharmaparyâya and obtained the perfections already mentioned: the perfection of sight, hearing, smell, taste, body, and mind. With the attainment of these perfections he at the same time made a vow to prolong his life for twenty hundred thousand myriads of kotis of years, and promulgated this Dharmaparyâya of the Lotus of the True Law. And all those proud beings, monks, nuns, male and female lay devotees to whom he had said: I do not contemn you, and who had given him the name of Sadâparibhûta, became all his followers to hear the law, after they had seen the power and strength of his sublime magic faculties, of his vow, of his readiness of wit, of his wisdom. All those and many hundred thousand myriads of kotis of other beings were by him roused to supreme, perfect enlightenment.

Afterwards, Mahâsthamaprâpta, that Bodhisattva Mahâsattva disappeared from that place and propitiated twenty hundred kotis of Tathâgatas, &c., all bearing the same name of Kandraprabhâsvararâga, under all of whom he promulgated this Dharmaparyâya. By virtue of his previous root of goodness he, in course of time, propitiated twenty hundred thousand myriads of kotis of Tathâgatas, &c., all bearing the name of Dundubhisvararâga, and under all he obtained this very Dharmaparyâya of the Lotus of the True Law and promulgated it to the four classes. By virtue of his previous root of goodness he again, in course of time, propitiated twenty hundred thousand myriads of kotis of Tathâgatas, &c., all bearing the name of Meghasvararâga, and under all he obtained this very Dharmaparyâya of the Lotus of the True Law and promulgated it to the four classes. And under all of them he was possessed of the afore-mentioned perfectness of sight, hearing, smell, taste, body, and mind.

Self serving? Yes, in the sense that the authors of the sutra don't address the conflict of interest issue (saying "this text is IT" serves the purpose of the writers of the text to benefit materially - yes materially - from the dissemination of this text). Literally true? It'd be difficult to justify that in this universe, from what we know today, so I'd say the evidence is against more Tathâgatas than say, the number of planets on which life might be inhabited, at least in this universe.

Useful?

I'd say yes. You know not when someone might be struck to embody boundless compassion, wisdom and generosity.

Nota bene: I'll be somewhat glad when this sutra'd done. But I will be going on to the Lankavatara Sutra, and the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra, if I can find a good version on the Net.

We're all familiar with the Heart Sutra (heh...my 42 readers per day might be familiar, so "we're all" isn't meant to be exhaustive of humanity here), I'd like to get to that too.

It's shorter though.

It's the same at the US Open in Tennis, too...

I don't play golf. OK, I tried to hit balls a couple of times at it, but I profoundly suck at it. On the other hand, I'm not bad at tennis if I practice. So whether it's golf or tennis, my cultural ancestry mind takes a small bit of pride at these people in the Bethpage NY region who are essentially my home-town folks, even though I'm not a golfer at all. Bethpage State Park is within cycling distance of where I grew up.

Seven years after what many golfers still consider the loudest, rowdiest tournament they have played, the second United States Open at Bethpage Black is expected to be a notable sequel.

The party, which is likely to reach full crescendo Sunday afternoon, is just getting started. Phil Mickelson was the people’s choice in 2002, when he had not yet won a major championship and finished as runner-up to Tiger Woods. He figures to be lifted by full-throated good will again, given the recent news that his wife, Amy, has breast cancer. He did not appear Tuesday, but is expected to play an early-morning practice round Wednesday...

Bethpage was the first municipal course to stage a United States Open, and the 2002 event turned golf inside-out. Instead of a private club opening its gates for a few days, temporarily allowing the masses into golf’s cozy kingdom, the commoners own this place. The players are the guests, playing by the fans’ rules of engagement.

“If you take a New Yorker and a few beers and you get him on a golf course that he’s played 100 times, that’s a bad combination,” Stuart Appleby said in 2002.

Some golfers loved it. Some detested it, saying the rules of etiquette were trampled by the masses. Fans, turning the consummate spectator sport into a participatory one, offered opinions of all kinds — about which way the next putt would break, the nattiness of a golfer’s attire or anything else that might draw a laugh.

Sergio García was teased mercilessly for his habit (since broken) of waggling his club a dozen or more times before each swing, and some jokes centered on his relationship (since broken up) with Martina Hingis.

“I love New York,” García said Tuesday, knowing that a sound strategy at Bethpage, beyond hitting the ball long and straight, includes getting fans on your side. “I love the people around here.”

Seven years ago, though, the sense was that the United States Open at Bethpage Black was a turning point in the way golf would be cheered: vociferously, and with a personal edge.

“You’re going to have to have some thick skin to play this game from now on because New York just opened a nice big can of worms,” Jerry Kelly said after winning the Western Open that summer.

Though it should be pointed out, as you might suspect, people from my home area are as easily offensive as offended.

A bit of wisdom from James Ford

by way of Danny Fisher, who rightly calls Ford's post on faulty Zen teachers a must read.

I am fond of that little pseudo psychological model based in the observation we're created out of three demons: greed, hatred and ignorance. I see these as the constellation of grasping, the constellation of aversion, and after much reflection, the constellation of certanties.

So, I am aware of who I am, at least in all the big strokes and many of the smaller ones. And I can tell you, I am a greed type. I want. I have always wanted. And I have to report I know I shall always want. My chances of becoming one of the scandals is always there. I am aware of it...

I think Zen masters are useful. They have walked the way a long time and someone who has also walked the way a long time has endorsed them. They have no magical powers. Their shit stinks. And, if they don't bind themselves to rule and direction they are liable to moral drift, as is true of anyone. And even if they do bind themselves, they're liable to various abuses of themselves and others. Like all of us. I would be wary of teachers who do not have some form of continuing checking of themselves, either with teachers or peers.

I am far from perfect; and some ask why I "still" have the faults that I do, and why my behavior is not of perfection. I get pissed off from time to time. Not as much or as bad as I used to, but I do indeed get pissed off. I mistake what's going on in my head as reality.

I could list all my faults and character flaws here, but it's not necessary. Those that know, know. They know I'm not perfect.

But perfection is itself dukkha.

If we get there we're stuck.

That we can give rise to compassion, even for those who hurt us in acting on their own fear and hatred is improvement. That we can even understand there is a home to leave, a way to do things that might be better, is itself progress, it is hope.

So I continue to practice, because there simply is no other way, based on where I've been in life and what works and what does not.

No birth no death nothing is defiled nothing is pure...

Well, John Tierney's quotable today.

At the World Science Festival Thursday night, four physicists spent nearly two hours under the jocular and irreverent grilling radio broadcaster John Hockenberry, cohost of “The Takeaway,” and barely scratched the surface of the void that is the background or perhaps the platform of all our experience. They did in the end offer an answer to the question that has plagued philosophers and scientists: Why is there something rather than nothing at all?

“Nothing is unstable,” Frank Wilczek, a physicist and Nobel laureate from MIT, finally said to a general murmur of agreement of his colleagues on stage, John Barrow of Cambridge University in England, Paul Davies of Arizona State and George Ellis of the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

Given a chance, nature will make nothingness boil with activity...

But that insight, which is unlikely to put theologians out of business, is getting ahead of a story that starts with the Greeks, who were so uncomfortable with the Big Zero that they didn’t have it in their number system. Along the way, as Dr. Barrow told us in a breezy history review, Nothing got replaced by something called the Vacuum, which the physicist James Clerk Maxwell defined as what was left when you took everything else away.

And that proved to be quite a bit ­– the laws of physics, for example. Where do they come from? For them to guide the universe into existence out of pure old-fashioned nothingness, Dr. Davies pointed out, would require them to have “a transcendent existence.” Nobody claimed to know what that would mean.

But quantum weirdness has made the Nothing known as the vacuum even more substantial. According to the uncertainty principle, empty space is boiling with so-called virtual particles zipping in and out of existence on borrowed energy, and measurements of a small quantum suction called the Casimir effect, have validated the idea.

The problem for modern physics and cosmology is that there is both too much and too little of this vacuum energy. Sometimes it is all cosmologists talk about. Today it is known as dark energy and seems to be gently boosting the expansion of the universe, even though otherwise unassailable theoretical calculations suggest that the dark energy should be overwhelmingly greater.

Well, let's cue up the theologians and such, or at least go into details of the Dharmakaya...but first...

Dr. Wilczek compared modern physicists to a fish, who has suddenly realized that he is surrounded by water and that if he could understand what the water is, what it is made of, he could make better sense of the world.

I don't quote Dogen often on this blog, but this seems more than apt:

Now when dragons and fish see water as a palace, it is just like human beings seeing a palace. They do not think it flows. If an outsider tells them, "What you see as a palace is running water," the dragons and fish will be astonished, just as we are when we hear the words, "Mountains flow." Nevertheless, there maybe some dragons and fish who understand that the columns and pillars of palaces and pavilions are flowing water. You should reflect and consider the meaning of this. If you do not learn to be free from your superficial views, you will not be free from the body and mind of an ordinary person. Then you will not understand the land of Buddha ancestors, or even the land or the palace of ordinary people. Now human beings well know as water what is in the ocean and what is in the river, but they do not know what dragons and fish see as water and use as water. Do not foolishly suppose that what we see as water is used as water by all other beings. Do not foolishly suppose that what we see as water is used as water by all other beings. You who study with Buddhas should not be limited to human views when you are studying water. You should study how you view the water used by Buddha ancestors. You should study whether there is water or no water in the house of Buddha ancestors.

Lotus Sutra Chapter 18

(in this translation).

Any one, young man of good family, who shall keep, read, teach, write this Dharmaparyâya or have it written, let that person be a young man of good family or a young lady, shall obtain eight hundred good qualities of the eye, twelve hundred of the ean, eight hundred of the nose, twelve hundred of the tongue, eight hundred of the body, twelve hundred of the mind. By these many hundred good qualities the whole of the six organs shall be perfect, thoroughly perfect.By means of the natural, carnal eye derived from his parents being perfect, he shall see the whole triple universe, outwardly and inwardly, with its mountains and woody thickets, down to the great hell Avîki and up to the extremity of existence. All that he shall see with his natural eye, as well as the creatures to be found in it, and he shall know the fruit of their works...



[T]he young man of good family or the young lady who proclaims this Dharmaparyâya and preaches it to others, is possessed of the twelve hundred good qualities of the ear. The various sounds that are uttered in the triple universe, downward to the great hell Avîki and upward to the extremity of existence, within and without, such as the sounds of horses, elephants, cows, peasants, goats. cars; the sounds of weeping and wailing; of horror, of conch-trumpets, bells, tymbals; of playing and singing; of camels, of tigers; of women, men, boys, girls; of righteousness (piety) and unrighteousness (impiety); of pleasure and pain; of ignorant men and âryas; pleasant and unpleasant sounds; sounds of gods, Nâgas, goblins, Gandharvas, demons, Garudas, Kinnaras, great serpents, men, and beings not human; of monks, disciples, Pratyekabuddhas, Bodhisattvas, and Tathâgatas; as many sounds as are uttered in the triple world, within and without, all those he hears with his natural organ of hearing when perfect. Still he does not enjoy the divine ear, although he apprehends the sounds of those different creatures, understands, discerns the sounds of those different creatures, and when with his natural organ of hearing he hears the sounds of those creatures, his ear is not overpowered by any of those sounds...

[T]he Bodhisattva Mahâsattva who keeps, proclaims, studies, writes this Dharmaparyâya becomes possessed of a perfect organ of smell with eight hundred good qualities...

This is not quite a benefit, and not quite a curse. It is the origin, eventually, of compassion.

Moreover, one will perceive one's self.

Selfish?

Only if it's constantly made the focus, but as I've often said, the famine workers must eat first or no one eats.

Good reporting on the Iran situation

in the New Yorker.

When it comes to the instruments of democracy in Iran, there is understandable confusion abroad. Iran has elections, and in 1997 Mohammad Khatami won them by a landslide and initiated an eight-year period of internal reform. But this is only half the story of the reform years. The other half involves the relentless occlusion of the reform agenda by clerics who outrank the president, and the systematic elimination of every loophole through which another Khatami might creep into the state apparatus. By 2005 the country’s hard-line Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, had made it abundantly clear that he did not intend to tolerate a divided government. The mood of the electorate, in 2005 and at the two mid-term elections since, has been cynical and despondent. It was logical to conclude that no candidate who ran in the 2009 race could be expected to put up real resistance to the Leader, and that no reforms would be successful. And so it was particularly stunning to watch Iranians resurrect their hopes and place them in Mir Hossein Mousavi—even if they did so for the main purpose of ejecting Ahmadinejad from power.

When the Leader approved Mousavi and Karroubi as presidential candidates earlier this year, Karroubi lacked a constituency, and Mousavi was no liberal. Perhaps Khamenei did not count on Mousavi’s emergence as the vehicle for a groundswell of youthful democratic sentiment—meaning whatever his personal views or background, if Mousavi became president, he would carry with him the same social forces and the same expectations as Khatami, who was fatefully paralyzed between the demands of his supporters and the constraints of his superiors. Where Khatami was conciliatory by nature, Mousavi had a reputation for a steelier resolve. And there is the small matter of Obama, the outreach from the United States, and the unavoidable sense that most of the Iranian public and its political establishment, including all three presidential challengers, support dialogue with America. The major exceptions have been the Leader himself, his hard-line inner circle, and Ahmadinejad. Did Khamenei fear the presence of unreliable forces in government during such a sensitive moment in Iran’s foreign policy? Or did he want to shut down the possibility of dialogue altogether?

That the reformists, who urged participation in the system in order to change it, have been so thoroughly shown up this June is depressing on many levels. For all its failings, the reform movement has been the most constructive and effective channel for Iranian frustrations and desires under the Islamic Republic. While Iranian opposition activists have fiercely debated the efficacy of voting—whether it provided a fig leaf for dictatorship or a necessary choice among evils—hardly anyone in Iran’s opposition wants a bloody uprising. That road has been too well traveled in Iran, and so the contemporary debate has been among nonviolent tactics, some with longer timelines than others. But now the regime has forced the issue, leaving Iranians who oppose strong-arm tactics and hard-line policies with just two cards in their hands. One is passivity, and the other is revolt. The outcome depends in part on how high a price the regime is willing to extract from its people.

History being made right now!

Holy crap, Iran is coming apart.

Casey Luskin: Not a scientist

The Lotus Sutra, Chapter 17

I'm using this text...its basic point is good things will happen for accepting or believing in this sutra...

So immense, incalculable, Agita, is the merit which a person, ranking the fiftieth in the series of the tradition of the law, produces by joyfully accepting, were it but a single stanza, a single word, from this Dharmaparyâya; how much more then (will) he (produce), Agita, who hears this Dharmaparyâya in my presence and then joyfully accepts it? I declare, Agita, that his accumulation of merit shall be even more immense, more incalculable.

And further, Agita, if a young man of good family or a young lady, with the design to hear this discourse on the law, goes from home to a monastery, and there hears this Dharmaparyâya for a single moment, either standing or sitting, then that person, merely by the mass of merit resulting from that action, will after the termination of his (present) life, and at the time of his second existence when he receives (another) body, become a possessor of carriages yoked with bullocks, horses, or elephants, of litters, vehicles yoked with bulls, and of celestial aerial cars. If further that same person at that preaching sits down, were it but a single moment, to hear this Dharmaparyâya, or persuades another to sit down or shares with him his seat, he will by the store of merit resulting from that action gain seats of Indra, seats of Brahma, thrones of a Kakravartin.

I'd said before that these devices might have been included to make the sutra more widely accepted.

The interesting thing to me is that this sutra obliquely implies a literal reincarnation, as though there were soul transmigration, which is not exactly what Buddhism is about.

Although all of this may not be tabloid fodder, it presents some interesting questions about religious tolerance, about self-referential laws, and about how to interpret a religious text.

One more thing about this chapter, which probably is a fine enough reason for embracing the message of the Lotus sutra:

And, Agita, if some one, a young man of good family or a young lady, says to another person: Come, friend, and hear the Dharmaparyâya of the Lotus of the True Law, and if that other person owing to that exhortation is persuaded to listen, were it but a single moment, then the former will by virtue of that root of goodness, consisting in that exhortation, obtain the advantage of a connection with Bodhisattvas who have acquired Dhâranî. He will become the reverse of dull, will get keen faculties, and have wisdom; in the course of a hundred thousand existences he will never have a fetid mouth, nor an offensive one; he will have no diseases of the tongue, nor of the mouth; he will have no black teeth, no unequal, no yellow, no ill-ranged, no broken teeth, no teeth fallen out; his lips will not be pendulous, not turned inward, not gaping, not mutilated, not loathsome; his nose will not be flat, nor wry; his face will not be long, nor wry, nor unpleasant. On the contrary, Agita, his tongue, teeth, and lips will be delicate and wellshaped; his nose long; his face perfectly round; the eyebrows well-shaped; the forehead well-formed. He will receive a very complete organ of manhood.

Not just complete. Very complete.

Seriously, this is but a restatement of the father saying to his children in the burning house, "There's good stuff out here."

Except it's more like a Buddhist Enzyte commercial.

Of course, the other translation renders this text as:

"Ajita! If, further, a person says to another, ‘There is a Sutra by the name of Dharma Flcwer. Let’s go together and listen to it,’ and taking that person’s advice, the second person goes and hears it but for a moment,, the former person’s merit and virtue will be such that in his next life he will be born in the same place as the Dharani Bodhisattva. He will have keen faculties and wisdom.

"For one hundred thousand myriad lifetimes he will never be mute, his breath will not stink, his tongue will always be free from disease, and his mouth will also be free from disease. His teeth will not be dirty, black, yellow, or wide-spaced, not missing or falling out, not uneven or crooked. His lips will not be pendulous, twisted or pursed, rough, chapped, or covered with sores, or split. They will not be askew, thick or large, or black, and there will be nothing repulsive about them. His nose will not be flat, thin, crooked, or out of joint. His face will not be dark, thin, concave, or crooked, or in any way unpleasant.

"His lips, tongue, and teeth will all be beautiful; his nose long, high, and straight. His face will be handsome, his eyebrows high and long, his forehead broad and even. Thus his human features will be perfect.

"In life after life, wherever he is born he will see the Buddhas, hear the Dharma, and believe and accept the teachings.

For whatever reason, somebody airbrushed out the penis, evidently.

Well, presumably someone thought that was skillful means as well.

Deepak Chopra: I Can't Adequately Convey His Hucksterness

From the Huffington Post:

A recent cover story in a struggling news magazine, under the title "Crazy Talk:" accuses Oprah Winfrey of spreading "dubious advice" in a wide range of health issues from menopause and hormone replacement therapy to autism, cancer, aging, and weight loss. The tone of the article was the same tiresome blend of gotcha journalism and selective fact-reporting that fills tabloid coffers.

The story failed to gain traction for obvious reasons. Oprah has aired innumerable shows on health, of which the controversial ones are a tiny minority. Her intention to improve women's lives on all fronts is so obvious as to be almost above criticism. The credibility for women's well-being and welfare she has earned day after day over the past two decades will not be undone with a story that cherry-picks the guests who can be made easy targets of ridicule by the medical establishment. And the fact that she has celebrity guests who have causes and crusades in the area of health, such as Jenny McCarthy or Suzanne Somers, is not the same as Oprah herself endorsing what they say.

Actually, that's true, but not in the way Chopra intends. Let's play the tape, which Deepak Chopra wouldn't:

On Oprah's show, there is one opinion more equal than others; and by the end of the program there was no doubt where Oprah herself stood on the issue. She told her audience that she found Somers's bestselling books on bioidentical hormones "fascinating" and said "every woman should read" what she has to say. She didn't stop there. Oprah said that although she has never had a hot flash, after reading Somers she decided to go on bioidenticals herself. "After one day on bioidentical estrogen, I felt the veil lift," she wrote in O, The Oprah Magazine. "After three days, the sky was bluer, my brain was no longer fuzzy, my memory was sharper. I was literally singing and had a skip in my step." On the show, Oprah had her own word of warning for the medical establishment: "We have the right to demand a better quality of life for ourselves," she said. "And that's what doctors have got to learn to start respecting."

Clearly there is a mind-body connection to health, but what Oprah - and Chopra (hey, that rhymes! ) are selling is denial of the inevitable. And they don't want to admit that this fattens their bottom line, because desperate people will buy this exrement; they'll lap it up.

As I noted below, my mother is dying. Multiple organ systems are failing at once. Decades of obsessive-compulsive massive over-consumption of vitamins, minerals and other "alternative" methods did nothing to help her.

Let me quote more more piece of his garbage:

We're just scratching the surface here. Yet even if these massive problems didn't exist, the Oprah affair raises the question of sins by omission. It's one thing for official medicine to decry alternative medicine and hurl accusations of quackery, not just at the non-M.D.s who work as health practitioners but at licensed, highly educated and qualified physicians who are creative enough to explore new avenues of treatment. Their own lack of curiosity and creative thinking is disturbing. Does the most brilliant researcher in the world know why cancer sometimes spontaneously disappears? Why a patient with obsessive-compulsive disorder or depression can respond equally well to talk therapy and drugs -- that is, why talk is as effective as chemicals in altering the brain? Or how the body's healing system is influenced by outside forces?

The answer is no. Which means that mysteries remain to be solved, and creative solutions have every chance of arising from unexpected quarters. Scientific medicine is leery of so-called anecdotal evidence, that is, individual stories of disease and cure.

I am a scientist, albeit not a physician, and I DO look at outliers for evidence, just as any other scientist would.

And the we DO have some knowledge of why the placebo effect works: the human body is not in and of itself a "closed system," it's nonlinear, and it's composed of multiple interconnected subsystems.

Is there a spiritual connection to human life that interacts with the physical condition of the body?

It appears to be the case, but it also appears that there is a time to die.

We are born to die, and Deepak Chopra would do anything to distract from this, but as a Buddhist I have to constantly echo Suzuki Shosan's "You will die."

Because it's true, and because that gives anyone enough pause to live their life fully.

"Dr." Chopra's position skirts ethical boundaries that if I were him, I would not cross. The desperate WANT to hear that those nasty scientists are mean and not letting him have a good real alternative medicine treatment. And if he helps those exploit the dying, it's beyond the pale.

On Leaving Home...

My mother's conditioned has worsened and I probably won't be going to see her again before she dies; she's seriously ill.

I have left home.

I will not be able to see her in her last moments, though I did see her a couple of weeks ago.


She could go at any time. But I think my responsibility is to the living, and to her, I will honor her memory with realizing and using the best of what she has given me. And give that best and much more to the rest of my family.

Lotus Sutra, Chapter 16

I'll this this translation, for no other reason that I want to see how it reads...here's Chapter 16:

"The Thus Come One’s [i.e., "Tathagata's"] power of spiritual penetrations is acknowledged by all gods, humans, and asuras in the world. They say that Shakyamuni Buddha, having left the palace of the Shakyan clan and having gone to a place not far from the city of Gaya to sit in the Bodhimanda, has now attained anuttarasamyaksambodhi.

"However, good men, I actually realized Buddhahood limitless, boundless, hundreds of thousands of myriads of kotis of nayutas of eons ago.

"Suppose a person were to grind into fine motes of dust five hundred thousand myriads of kotis of nayutas of asamkhyeyas of three thousand great thousand world systems. Then, suppose he traveled to the east across five hundred thousand myriads of kotis of nayutas of asamkhyeyas of lands, and there he deposited one mote of dust. Suppose he continued in this way, traveling to the east, until all the motes of dust were gone.

"Good men, what do you think? Could the number of worlds he passed through be reckoned or counted?"

Maitreya Bodhisattva and the others all said to the Buddha, "World Honored One, those world systems would be limitless, boundless, beyond calculation, and beyond the power of the mind to know. All the Hearers and Pratyekabuddhas, using their nonoutflow wisdom, could not conceive of them or know their limit or number.

"We now dwell on the ground of avaivartika, but we cannot comprehend this matter, World Honored One, and so such world systems would be limitless and boundless."

At that time the Buddha spoke to the great hosts of Bodhisattvas, saying, "Good men, I shall now explain this clearly for you. If all these world systems whether a dust mote was deposited in them or not were reduced to dust motes, and if each dust mote were an eon, the time that has passed since I became a Buddha would exceed even that by hundreds of thousands of myriads of kotis of nayutas of asamkhyeyas of eons.

"From that time on, I have always remained in the Saha World, speaking the Dharma to teach and transform beings. Also, in other places, in hundreds of thousands of myriads of kotis of nayutas of asamkhyeyas of lands, I have guided and benefited living beings.

"Good men, in that interval, I spoke of the Buddha Dipankara and others, and I further spoke of them as entering Nirvana, but those were just discriminations made expediently.

"Good men, if a living being comes before me, I observe with my Buddha eye his faith and other qualities, as well as the keenness or dullness of his faculties, and I take him across in an appropriate manner.

"In all places, although the names by which I refer to myself are different and I may be older or younger, I also appear and announce that I am about to enter Nirvana. I also employ various expedient devices, speaking the subtle and wonderful Dharma and enabling living beings to bring forth happiness in their minds.

In contrast to some religions, what's being stressed here is the ubiquity of opportunity to extinguish the negative effects from the encounter with suffering and misfortune, which might have been an answer to the question of what happened before the historical Buddha came into the world. That is, before the historical Buddha arrived, was there transcendance of dukkha? The Lotus Sutra answers this in the affirmative, and thereby provides at least a scriptural basis for avoiding the issue Christianity has (whether you believe any of either Buddhist or Christian scriptures on any level - literal or allegorical and which is which is your problem).

To further underscore this ubiquity of transcendence, there is in this chapter yet another parable on skillful means.

Torture...

This article in Mother Jones about some guys in a hellhole in Louisiana being in solitary confinement for decades points to this recent article in the New Yorker:

The problem of isolation goes beyond ordinary loneliness, however. Consider what we’ve learned from hostages who have been held in solitary confinement—from the journalist Terry Anderson, for example, whose extraordinary memoir, “Den of Lions,” recounts his seven years as a hostage of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Anderson was the chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press when, on March 16, 1985, three bearded men forced him from his car in Beirut at gunpoint. He was pushed into a Mercedes sedan, covered head to toe with a heavy blanket, and made to crouch head down in the footwell behind the front seat. His captors drove him to a garage, pulled him out of the car, put a hood over his head, and bound his wrists and ankles with tape. For half an hour, they grilled him for the names of other Americans in Beirut, but he gave no names and they did not beat him or press him further. They threw him in the trunk of the car, drove him to another building, and put him in what would be the first of a succession of cells across Lebanon. He was soon placed in what seemed to be a dusty closet, large enough for only a mattress. Blindfolded, he could make out the distant sounds of other hostages. (One was William Buckley, the C.I.A. station chief who was kidnapped and tortured repeatedly until he weakened and died.) Peering around his blindfold, Anderson could see a bare light bulb dangling from the ceiling. He received three unpalatable meals a day—usually a sandwich of bread and cheese, or cold rice with canned vegetables, or soup. He had a bottle to urinate in and was allotted one five- to ten-minute trip each day to a rotting bathroom to empty his bowels and wash with water at a dirty sink. Otherwise, the only reprieve from isolation came when the guards made short visits to bark at him for breaking a rule or to threaten him, sometimes with a gun at his temple.

He missed people terribly, especially his fiancée and his family. He was despondent and depressed. Then, with time, he began to feel something more. He felt himself disintegrating. It was as if his brain were grinding down. A month into his confinement, he recalled in his memoir, “The mind is a blank. Jesus, I always thought I was smart. Where are all the things I learned, the books I read, the poems I memorized? There’s nothing there, just a formless, gray-black misery. My mind’s gone dead. God, help me.”

He was stiff from lying in bed day and night, yet tired all the time. He dozed off and on constantly, sleeping twelve hours a day. He craved activity of almost any kind. He would watch the daylight wax and wane on the ceiling, or roaches creep slowly up the wall. He had a Bible and tried to read, but he often found that he lacked the concentration to do so. He observed himself becoming neurotically possessive about his little space, at times putting his life in jeopardy by flying into a rage if a guard happened to step on his bed. He brooded incessantly, thinking back on all the mistakes he’d made in life, his regrets, his offenses against God and family.

His captors moved him every few months. For unpredictable stretches of time, he was granted the salvation of a companion—sometimes he shared a cell with as many as four other hostages—and he noticed that his thinking recovered rapidly when this occurred. He could read and concentrate longer, avoid hallucinations, and better control his emotions. “I would rather have had the worst companion than no companion at all,” he noted...

And what happened to [prisoners kept in solitary confinement] was physical. EEG studies going back to the nineteen-sixties have shown diffuse slowing of brain waves in prisoners after a week or more of solitary confinement. In 1992, fifty-seven prisoners of war, released after an average of six months in detention camps in the former Yugoslavia, were examined using EEG-like tests. The recordings revealed brain abnormalities months afterward; the most severe were found in prisoners who had endured either head trauma sufficient to render them unconscious or, yes, solitary confinement. Without sustained social interaction, the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic injury.

Read the whole article. People who practice this "punishment" including Americans who do this, can be barbaric.

Microsoft does it again with "Bing!"

As an intrepid letter writer to the NY Times points out:

In Mandarin Chinese, the official dialect of China, the syllable romanized as bing holds many meanings, with the most common being ice, frozen and sick — hardly associations one would want users to make to a dynamic and nimble search engine that seeks to challenge the global industry leader.

I remember reading somewhere that the original way that the old Coke slogan "Coke Adds Life" was rendered into Chinese to mean "Coke brings your dead ancestors back to life."

Microsoft follows this pattern admirably.

Buddhism and Business...

Ah, yes, the "Mindful Leader"...

By slowing down and reflecting, you can function better, says Michael Carroll, author of "Awake at Work" and "The Mindful Leader."

Carroll was the speaker a Berkshire Entrepreneurs Network forum at the Unitarian Church last month on "How Mindful Mediation Can Help Us Build Successful, Healthy Careers" and how to bring Buddhism into business as a "Mindful Leader."...

Mindful Leadership emphasizes truthfulness and clarity of being; being honest about our relationship with work and why are we doing it; working to fully engage our minds; being comfortable with ourselves and completely who we are while in touch with the world; rising above toxic work environments by treating others with respect and helping to find a level of health and well-being for others; and developing an ease of being where you are comfortable simply to be here, not always striving to be somewhere else.

Meditation is an important path towards being a Mindful Leader and achieving successful, healthy careers, Carroll told the several dozen participants during the hourlong talk.

For the last 15 minutes of the session, he took the members of the audience through a meditation exercise that can easily be done sitting anywhere, with a simple posture with your eyes open so that "you can be completely engaged." Carroll said it is important in teaching to develop a mind that is fully awake. He reminded the audience that he didn't have "the" answer, but suggested that through Mindful Leadership, an individual finds mindfulness in their self and extends — not inflicts — it to others.

You're not going to get there from there, at least not in 1 hour or so. Seriously, it's quite a difficult discipline to train one's mind and understand what Peter Drucker was saying.

Sometimes you'll find from his writings that Drucker's had insights that you wouldn't get from a meditation teacher.

Of course you have to bring your practice to work.

It's just you're hardly likely to get to career Nirvana from an hour long talk.

Lotus Sutra Chapter 14 & 15...

Just the title, "Issuing of Bodhisattvas from the Gaps of the Earth," is intriguing, no? I mean, how can you have a title like this and not test credibility?

Again, I'm reading this as a layman...

Out of the multitude of Bodhisattvas Mahâsattvas who had flocked from other worlds, Bodhisattvas eight (times) equal to the sands of the river Ganges then rose from the assembled circle. Their joined hands stretched out towards the Lord to pay him homage, they said to him: If the Lord will allow us, we also would, after the extinction of the Lord, reveal this Dharmaparyâya in this Saha-world; we would read, write, worship it, and wholly devote ourselves to that law. Therefore, O Lord, deign to grant to us also this Dharmaparyâya. And the Lord answered: Nay, young men of good family, why should you occupy yourselves with this task? I have here in this Saha-world thousands of Bodhisattvas equal to the sands of sixty Ganges rivers, forming the train of one Bodhisattva; and of such Bodhisattvas there is a number equal to the sands of sixty Ganges rivers, each of these Bodhisattvas having an equal number in their train, who at the end of time, at the last period after my extinction, shall keep, read, proclaim this Dharmaparyâya.

No sooner had the Lord uttered these words than the Saha-world burst open on every side, and from within the clefts arose many hundred thousand myriads of kotis of Bodhisattvas with gold-coloured bodies and the thirty-two characteristic signs of a great man, who had been staying in the element of ether underneath this great earth, close to this Saha-world. These then on hearing the word of the Lord came up from below the earth...

You gotta give the writers of this sutra credit for originality; it's quite ....baroque...
Eventually Shakyamuni Buddha gets around to saying:

Be attentive all, young men of good family - be well prepared and steady on your post, you and the entire host of Bodhisattvas; the Tathâgata, the Arhat, &c., is now going to exhibit the sight of the knowledge of the Tathâgata, young men of good family, the leadership of the Tathâgata, the work of the Tathâgata, the sport [i.e. magic display of creative power, lîlâ, synonymous with mâyâ.] of the Tathâgata, the might of the Tathâgata, the energy of the Tathâgata...

These Bodhisattvas Mahâsattvas, Agita, so innumerable, incalculable, inconceivable, incomparable, uncountable, whom you never saw before, who just now have issued from the gaps of the earth, these Bodhisattvas Mahâsattvas, Agita, have I roused, excited, animated, fully developed to supreme, perfect enlightenment after my having arrived at supreme, perfect enlightenment in this world. I have, moreover, fully matured, established, confirmed, instructed, perfected these young men of good family in their Bodhisattvaship. And these Bodhisattvas Mahâsattvas, Agita, occupy in this Saha-world the domain of the ether-element below. Only thinking of the lesson they have to study, and devoted to thoroughly comprehend it, these young men of good family have no liking for social gatherings, nor for bustling crowds; they do not put off their tasks, and are strenuous. These young men of good family, Agita, delight in seclusion, are fond of seclusion. These young men of good family do not dwell in the immediate vicinity of gods and men, they not being fond of bustling crowds...

To which Maritreya questions...

How is it possible that within so short a moment, within the lapse of so short a time so many Bodhisattvas, so countless, have been roused and made fully ripe to reach supreme, perfect enlightenment? Then the Bodhisattva Mahâsattva Maitreya asked the Lord: How then, O Lord, has the Tathâgata, after he left, when a prince royal, Kapilavastu, the town of the Sâkyas, arrived at supreme, perfect enlightenment on the summit of the terrace of enlightenment, not far from the town of Gayâ, somewhat more than forty years since, O Lord? How then has the Lord, the Tathâgata, within so short a lapse of time, been able to perform the endless task of a Tathâgata, to exercise the leadership of a Tathâgata, the energy of a Tathâgata?...

Chapter 15 seems like a continuation of Chapter 14...whereupon the answer to Maritreya's question is given:

But, young men of good family, the truth is that many hundred thousand myriads of kotis of Æons ago I have arrived at supreme, perfect enlightenment...

The Tathâgata sees the triple world, not as the ignorant, common people, he seeing things always present to him; indeed, to the Tathâgata, in his position, no laws are concealed. In that respect any word that the Tathâgata speaks is true, not false. But in order to produce the roots of goodness in the creatures, who follow different pursuits and behave according to different notions, he reveals various Dharmaparyâyas with various fundamental principles. The Tathâgata then, young men of good family, does what he has to do. The Tathâgata who so long ago was perfectly enlightened is unlimited in the duration of his life, he is everlasting. Without being extinct, the Tathâgata makes a show of extinction, on behalf of those who have to be educated.

The theme of skillful means is re-introduced here, albeit in a somewhat hyper-operatic fashion.

The next chapter reiterates, in the same hyper-operatic fashion, that eventually with practice all get enlightened.

I'm probably not in any way reading this like Hakuin read it, or Nichiren, but on the other hand, maybe the doctrine of skillful means can be expounded in a style I wouldn't use in a trip report, but these means have to be mindfully adapted for the present circumstances.

And regarding Falun Da Fa (aka "Falun Gong")

This is something you ought to know:



It's true, yeah, that no doubt this was "selectively quoted," but all this Armageddon stuff is, I think a distraction.

This is from the Chinese government, but on the other hand, having seen Li Hongzhi myself (from Falun Da Fa itself) this does not seem like an exaggeration.

Don't ask me how I got to an old David Brooks column but...

I'd never read it before and it deserves a brief comment:

f you survey the literature (and I’d recommend books by Newberg, Daniel J. Siegel, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Jonathan Haidt, Antonio Damasio and Marc D. Hauser if you want to get up to speed), you can see that certain beliefs will spread into the wider discussion.

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.

In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day. I’m not qualified to take sides, believe me. I’m just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We’re in the middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to have big cultural effects.

It is kind of interesting that Brooks went there when he did, though I think that Dawkins and others in particular have cogent arguments for not having belief in Western monotheistic deities.

But, I think he's uh... missing the point.

I should also point out I think Gudo Nishijima misses the point again, too, with his emphasis on the autonomic nervous system "balance," but then again I'm a layman, he's not, and he does Dogen, and I do Hakuin.

Re: Tibet: Oh, yeah, this is gonna fly..

And regarding Tibet:

DHARAMSALA, India — The influx of Han Chinese and the growing restrictions on religious practice have become the biggest threats to Tibet, which faces “something like a death sentence” under Chinese rule, said the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.

The only solution is to allow genuine autonomy for the six million Tibetans, he said. The regional authority would make policy on education, religious practice and the use of natural resources, while Beijing would retain the right to keep military forces in the region and oversee foreign affairs, he added.

An autonomous Tibetan government would not force out Han Chinese who had already settled in the vast Tibetan plateau in China’s west, but would place limits on any future migration. “Autonomous regions should be the native peoples’ majority,” the Dalai Lama said during an hourlong interview this week.

I'm sorry but this is kind of nonsensical given the historical relations of Tibet and the rest of China.

As I've mentioned, Tibet's thought to be ridiculously rich in resources such as copper and other metals, and despite what other bloggers might have written, HH the DL is making it quite plain that "genuine autonomy" would start from a position of "You Lose" when it comes to being able to develop the regions natural resources. Gee, that ought to go over well with the folks who wield ultimate control over this stuff.

Yes Tibetans are very poor, but is there not a way to have all prosper? Without making nasty on the environment?

And why should anyone be 2nd class citizens in their country, whether Tibetans or Han Chinese?

There was once a time when the ancestors of Tibetans and Han Chinese did not think of themselves as such, just as there was a time when my ancestors thought of themselves as Slovaks or Poles or Germans.

Isn't it the American thing to transcend such things?

At any rate, of course, as an American I find it reasonable to understand why one wants to adhere to cultural traditions, and do believe that there's certainly blame to go around when it comes to Tibet. But to truly have peace, all concerned are going to have to make concessions. Including the Dalai Lama and Tibetans.

Fascinating article on Tienanmen Square from English language Chinese media

Reported on in the NY Times (who linked to it), the Times didn't even go into the depth of import of the article; the first time "the events of May 35th" have been mentioned.

Here's an excerpt of the the original article from the Chinese Global Times:

Twenty years after the June 4 Tiananmen incident, public discussion about what happened that day is almost nonexistent in mainstream society on the Chinese mainland.

It’s still a sensitive topic. Scholars, officials and businessmen declined interviews with the Global Times on the subject. And searches for “June 4 incident” on the Chinese versions of Google, Baidu and Yahoo were blocked.

When asked to comment on China’s road to development in the last 20 years, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences cautiously responded with his own question, “Why the last 20 years (1989-2009) instead of 30 years?” After all, economic reform started in 1978.

People born in the late 1970s and after have little memory and vague ideas of the incident.

During a training session for 120 college volunteers before the Olympic Games in Beijing last year, Chen Ping, former deputy venue manager for Media Operations at the Olympic Green Tennis Center, told the volunteers that China failed its first bid for the Olympic Games in 1993 because international society was unfriendly toward China after the turmoil in 1989. He asked the volunteers, mostly sophomores aged 19-20, if they knew what he was talking about. They all looked puzzled.

Li Xiang, who worked as a computer programmer for a small IT company in Beijing, was 9 years old in 1989. He lived on Fuxing Road, a west extension of Chang’an Avenue. His memory? The primary school he attended near the China National Radio building complex on Nanlishi Road was closed for a week in June 1989.

“I was happy for no school and no homework,” Li said. “My parents watched news broadcasts on CCTV attentively with serious looks. I also took a few glimpses. The pitch-black burnt bodies of soldiers impressed me, but I had no idea what happened.”

The comments are even more interesting.

I'll say one thing about this: there's a bit of karma working around here. Tienanmen Square is one of those places one should visit if one has the means to do so; it's hugeness is hard to imagine even if you've been there.

If you haven't been there you have no idea how huge it is, and its symbolism is striking: it proclaims by its hugeness that the sovereignty of China rests with the people.

To the extent that any ruling class in China recognizes this fact that built the "New China" (warts and all), they're legit. If they don't they aren't. At least that's the message of the architecture.

Lotus Sutra Chapter 12: Exertion and Chapter 13: Peaceful Life

Text is here for Chapter 12.

Even when things turn bad the "in monks" would preach from the Lotus Sutra.

In case you were wondering. Here's a few of stanzas worth noting (emphasis mine):

4. At that dreadful last epoch men will be malign, crooked, wicked, dull, conceited, fancying to have come to the limit when they have not.

5. 'We do not care but to live in the wilderness and wear a patched cloth; we lead a frugal life;' so will they speak to the ignorant.

6. And persons greedily attached to enjoyments will preach the law to laymen and be honoured as if they possessed the six transcendent qualities.

7. Cruel-minded and wicked men, only occupied with household cares, will enter our retreat in the forest and become our calumniators.

8. The Tîrthikas, themselves bent on profit and honour, will say of us that we are so, and-shame on such monks!-they will preach their own fictions.

9. Prompted by greed of profit and honour they will compose Sûtras of their own invention and then, in the midst of the assembly, accuse us of plagiarism.

10. To kings, princes, king's peers, as well as to Brahmans and commoners, and to monks of other confessions,

11. They will speak evil of us and propagate the Tîrtha-doctrine. We will endure all that out of reverence for the great Seers.

12. And those fools who will not listen to us, shall (sooner or later) become enlightened, and therefore will we forbear to the last.

13. In that dreadful, most terrible period of frightful general revolution will many fiendish monks stand up as our revilers.

14. Out of respect for the Chief of the world we will bear it, however difficult it be; girded with the girdle of forbearance will I proclaim this Sûtra.

This is the kind of religious text that raises a red flag, or should, although (or because?) this sutra does contain its own "escape clause" i.e., the doctrine of skillful means, to allow for such "new texts" to be added to a scriptural canon (provided it does indeed help foster transcendence over suffering and delusion).

Knowing a bit of the history of this sutra can make one conclude, as I've said earlier, that there was likely a great deal of skepticism expected toward this sutra when it was to have been "rolled out," and this text was evidently thought of as a way to inoculate the audience from skepticism. The problem though was that twenty centuries down the pike, such text fuels greater skepticism, provided, of course, you don't read the text as coming from the place in all beings that can transcend suffering, greed, and ignorance. As for me, thankfully there's enough "meat" in this sutra to be, uh, skillfully applied, and I can live with what reads like unnecessary theatrics which can't but be read in light of being jaded by watching The Life of Brian. "Skillful means" is an important and effective moral doctrine which although there are allusions to it elsewhere in the Buddhist writings, aren't really as summed up here.

Chapter 13, deals with how, among other things, how a Bodhisattva Mahâsattva comports himself. It mentions vendors of pork, jugglers, and transgendered people as classes that Bodhisattva Mahâsattvas should avoid, except insofar as one preaches the Lotus Sutra.

However, there is a bit more to this:

Further, Mañgusrî, a Bodhisattva Mahâsattva looks upon all laws (and things) as void; he -sees them duly established, remaining unaltered, as they are in reality, not liable to be disturbed, not to be moved backward, unchangeable, existing in the highest sense of the word (or in an absolute sense), having the nature of space, escaping explanation and expression by means of common speech, not born, composed and simple, aggregated and isolated, not expressible in words, independently established, manifesting themselves owing to a perversion of perception. In this way then, Mañgusrî, the Bodhisattva Mahâsattva constantly views all laws, and if he abides in this course, he remains in his own sphere. This, Mañgusrî, is the second proper sphere of a Bodhisattva Mahâsattva.

The law's ineffable. Hmmm...and then again...

Again, Mañgusrî, the Bodhisattva Mahâsattva who lives after the extinction of the Tathâgata at the end of time when the true law is in decay, the Bodhisattva Mahasattva who keeps this Sûtra is not envious, not false, not deceitful; he does not speak disparagingly of other adherents of the vehicle of Bodhisattvas, nor defame, nor humble them. He does not bring forward the shortcomings of other monks, nuns, male and female lay devotees, neither of the adherents of the vehicle of disciples nor of those of the vehicle of Pratyekabuddhas. He does not say: You young men of good family, you are far off from supreme, perfect enlightenment; you give proof of not having arrived at it; you are too fickle in your doings and not capable of acquiring true knowledge. He does not in this way bring forward the shortcomings of any adherent of the vehicle of the Bodhisattvas.

The text starts to fold in on itself, doesn't it?

Seriously, to a great degree Chapters 12 & 13 stand in contrast to each other. One is trying to shill the legitimacy of the Lotus Sutra, but the other (more sensibly, I'd submit), after allowing for some class-separation with respect to religious, economic or sexual minorities (yeah, it's the 21st century) says that they should be disparaging of other Mahayana Buddhists.

And if you're thinking I (yes, layman) am just making this up, consider this:

Further, Mañgusrî, the Bodhisattva Mahâsattva, living at the time of destruction of the true law after the extinction of the Tathâgata, who is desirous of keeping this Dharmaparyâya, should live as far as possible away from laymen and friars, and lead a life of charity. He must feel affection for all beings who are striving for enlightenment and therefore make this reflection: To be sure, they are greatly perverted in mind, those beings who do not hear, nor perceive, nor understand the skilfulness and the mystery of the Tathâgata, who do not inquire for it, nor believe in it, nor even are willing to believe in it. Of course, these beings do not penetrate, nor understand this Dharmaparyâya. Nevertheless will I, who have attained this supreme, perfect knowledge, powerfully bend to it the mind of every one, whatever may be the position he occupies, and bring about that he accepts, understands, and arrives at full ripeness.

I love when things are considered self-referentially, and I do not think that's an anachronism. I think a self-referential reading was intended for this sutra.

Your mileage might vary.

Lotus Sutra Chapter 11

Test is here.

Then there arose a Stûpa, consisting of seven precious substances, from the place of the earth opposite the Lord, the assembly being in the middle, a Stûpa five hundred yoganas in height and proportionate in circumference. After its rising, the Stûpa, a meteoric phenomenon, stood in the sky sparkling, beautiful, nicely decorated with five thousand successive terraces of flowers, adorned with many thousands of arches, embellished by thousands of banners and triumphal streamers, hung with thousands of jewel-garlands and with hourplates and bells, and emitting the scent of Xanthochymus and sandal, which scent filled this whole world. Its row of umbrellas rose so far on high as to touch the abodes of the four guardians of the horizon and the gods. It consisted of seven precious substances, viz. gold, silver, lapis lazuli, Musâragalva, emerald, red coral, and Karketana-stone. This Stûpa of precious substances once formed, the gods of paradise strewed and covered it with Mandârava and great Mandâra flowers. And from that Stûpa of precious substances there issued this voice: Excellent, excellent, Lord Sâkyamuni! thou hast well expounded this Dharmaparyâya of the Lotus of the True Law. So it is, Lord; so it is, Sugata.

At the sight of that great Stûpa of precious substances, that meteoric phenomenon in the sky, the four classes of hearers were filled with gladness delight, satisfaction and joy. Instantly they rose from their seats, stretched out their joined hands, and remained standing in that position. Then the Bodhisattva Mahâsattva Mahâpratibhâna, perceiving the world, including gods, men, and demons, filled with curiosity, said to the Lord: O Lord, what is the cause, what is the reason of so magnificent a Stûpa of precious substances appearing in the world? Who is it, O Lord, who causes that sound to go out from the magnificent Stûpa of precious substances? Thus asked, the Lord spake to Mahapratibhâna, the Bodhisattva Mahâsattva, as follows: In this great Stûpa of precious substances, Mahâpratibh'ana, the proper body of the Tathâgata is contained condensed; his is the Stûpa; it is he who causes this sound to go out.

In the point of space below, Mahâpratibhana, there are innumerable thousands of worlds. Further on is the world called Ratnavisuddha, there is the Tathâgata named Prabhûtaratna, the Arhat, &c. This Lord of yore made this vow: Formerly, when following the course of a Bodhisattva, I have not arrived at supreme, perfect enlightenment before I had heard this Dharmaparyâya of the Lotus of the True Law, serving for the instruction of Bodhisattvas. But from the moment that I had heard this Dharmaparyâya of the Lotus of the True Law, I have become fully ripe for supreme, perfect enlightenment. Now, Mahapratibhâna, that Lord Prabhûtaratna, the Tathâgata, &c., at the juncture of time when his complete extinction was to take place, announced in presence of the world, including the gods: After my complete extinction, monks, one Stûpa must be made of precious substances of this frame (or form) of the proper body of the Tathâgata; the other Stûpas, again, should be made in dedication (or in reference) to me. Thereupon, Mahapratibhâna, the Lord Prabhûtaratna, the Tathâgata, &c., pronounced this blessing: Let my Stûpas here, this Stûpa of my proper bodily frame (or form), arise wherever in any Buddha-field in the ten directions of space, in all worlds, the Dharmaparyâya of the Lotus of the True Law is propounded, and let it stand in the sky above the assembled congregation when this Dharmaparyâya of the Lotus of the True Law is being preached by some Lord Buddha or another, and let this Stûpa of the frame (or form) of my proper body give a shout of applause to those Buddhas while preaching this Dharmaparyâya of the Lotus of the True Law. It is that Stûpa, Mahâpratibhana, of the relics of the Lord Prabhûtaratna, the Tathâgata, &c., which, while I was preaching this Dharmaparyâya of the Lotus of the True Law in this Saha-world, arose above this assembled congregation and, standing as a meteor in the sky, gave its applause.

There's clearly a metaphysical notion in play here (despite what must have seemed clearly to have been allegorical, as when this was a "new" sutra Buddhism was already in play for a few hundred years).

Or there was much credulousness.

Why such melodrama? Was it a case of the more gilding the more faith? I cannot read this text with my mind, skeptically, objectively and still read this in the frame of mind of the people who believe in this sutra (whatever that might mean).

On the other hand, It's hard to ignore what happens when one practices; the sense of harmony from acting with the state where you are. And perhaps because of the oddity of this text I'm spurred on to find out why they wrote this (besides conflict of interest?) because when I practice properly there is a notion of great "rightness" that was always there, that even in dreadful situations can be observed.

It's not a Western god, to be sure. I don't see any flying stupas, though, either. It's quieter. More like in accord with Garrison Keillor's version of the Lotus Sutra, if there were such a thing.

But to keep and preach this Sûtra in the dreadful period succeeding the extinction of the Chief of the world, that is difficult.

I'm doubtful we're there yet frankly, despite my skepticism and the state of the world.

Little Murders: The Wedding Scene

I've had family get togethers as absurd as this.

Yes there are times when one must harm another

Of course, unlike the cartoon at PZ Meyer's post (here) it's important that such things be well thought out.

One should not harm another unless there is a real chance of a greater harm arising from not doing harm, and one ought to be near metaphysically sure of that.

Yet another day

Right now is eternal,
As is suffering for those dying.

Must make the most of today,
tomorrow there may be a funeral,
and I'll have to pay respects.

Lotus Sutra Chapters 9 & 10:

Chapter 9 continues more or less in the flavor of Chapter 8.

Chapter 10's a bit more interesting.

• One should support those who expound from the Lotus Sutra.



• Those who are hostile to those who expound from the Lotus Sutra aren't going to fare well.



• And those who support this are indeed fortunate.
  
  

  ...[O]n any spot of the earth where this Dharmaparyâya [i.e., the Law of the Lotus Sutra] is expounded, preached, written, studied, or recited in chorus, on that spot, Bhaishagyarâga, one should build a Tathâgata-shrine, magnificent, consisting of precious substances, high, and spacious; but it is not necessary to depose in it relics of the Tathâgata. For the body of the Tathâgata is, so to say, collectively deposited there. Any spot of the earth where this Dharmaparyâya is expounded or taught or recited or rehearsed in chorus or written or kept in a volume, must be honoured, respected, revered, worshipped as if it were a Stûpa, with all sorts of flowers, incense, perfumes, garlands, ointment, powder, clothes, umbrellas, flags, banners, triumphal streamers, with all kinds of song, music, dancing, musical instruments, castanets, and shouts in chorus. And those, Bhaishagyarâga, who approach a Tathâgata-shrine to salute or see it, must be held to be near supreme and perfect enlightenment.

My reading of this - again as a lay person - is that what is really being promulgated is the use of skillful means as an adjunct to what was already widely considered to be Buddhism, along with generally "good karma" for acting in harmony with this sutra.

Whether the Lotus Sutra as a whole helped or hindered the growth or decline of Buddhism, I suppose one could debate, as one could see the use of skillful means as perhaps both supporting a more inclusive Dharma, yet possibly allowing (a "false detection") of things being peddled as the Dharma which were not conducive to the cultivation of generosity, wisdom or compassion.

Lotus Sutra Chapter 8: Announcement of the future destiny of the 500 monks

A sublime, grand, splendid, and matchless prediction,
but what about those gods? And that nasty bit about women?

And as to the Buddhas, monks, who have in future to appear in this Bhadra-kalpa, to the number of a thousand less four, under the mastership of them also shall this same Pûrna, son of Maitrayanî, be the foremost among the preachers of the law and the keeper of the true law. Thus he shall keep the true law of innumerable and incalculable Lords and Buddhas in future, promote the interest of innumerable and incalculable beings, and bring innumerable and incalculable beings to full ripeness for supreme and perfect enlightenment. Constantly and assiduously he shall be instant in purifying his own Buddha-field and bringing creatures to ripeness. After completing such a Bodhisattva-course, at the end of innumerable, incalculable Æons, he shall reach supreme and perfect enlightenment; he shall in the world be the Tathâgata called Dharmaprabhâsa, an Arhat, &c., endowed with science and conduct, a Sugata, &c. He shall appear in this very Buddha-field.

Further, monks, at that time the Buddha-field spoken of will look as if formed by thousands of spheres similar to the sands of the river Ganges. It will be even, like the palm of the hand, consist of seven precious substances, be without hills, and filled with high edifices of seven precious substances. There will be cars of the gods stationed in the sky; the gods will behold men, and men will behold the gods. Moreover, monks, at that time that Buddha-field shall be exempt from places of punishment and from womankind, as all beings shall be born by apparitional birth. They shall lead a spiritual life, have ideal bodies, be self-lighting, magical, moving in the firmament, strenuous, of good memory, wise, possessed of gold-coloured bodies, and adorned with the thirty-two characteristics of a great man.

Yes, this book is very much a product of its time and place, and thankfully this can be read allegorically.

One wonders what sorts of doubts existed amongst whom that gave rise to such cheer leading.

Yet....yet...

It can be seen that there is the possibility of a better future destiny if one lives one's life one way as opposed to another.

I recently saw the movie The Legend of Baggger Vance (again.) The parts where Will Smith's character describes how the shot one takes one's was prepared by one's whole life is a worthwhile point, gilded in its own way.

One can quibble with the cultural and historical aspects of much of the Lotus Sutra, for sure, but it is undeniable that there are better ways to live one's life, and there are worse ways to live one's life, and the whole past gives rise to what it's like to be in this present moment, and what can be done in this present moment.

Is that in Chapter 8 of the Lotus Sutra? Not really, I'd admit, but I suspect a sentiment was in effect when they wrote it.

Back in the Northwest

I am back from seeing my mother who is ill. I have found that resentments in others aren't inflamed when applying some of the techniques used to ward off distracting thoughts during meditation. (Or, see "Relaxation of Thoughts.") It had occurred to me that what I heard from others was what I was hearing in my mind, and perhaps a similar "Relaxation of Thoughts" process applied to dialogue might bear fruit.

It's a pity I didn't learn that years ago, but it's an awesome thing to discover.

Ah well, the roads I took were roads to this present point in space and time. Not bad. I'm somewhat optimistic about things in the future with respect to my family. Now to be expertly skilled at such things...ah...well, practice continues.

"Quackadoo"

Newsweek finally says the obvious about Oprah Winfrey:

The secret of The Secret was something called the Law of Attraction. As Oprah put it on the show, "It says that the energy, that the thoughts and feelings that you put out into the world, both good and bad, are exactly what is always coming back to you, so you have the life that you have created." Oprah and the teachers of The Secret, as they call themselves, did not mean this metaphorically. They explained that the universe and everything in it are made of vibrating energy, and by thinking positively we can actually "attract" the positive vibrations of the universe and bend them to our will. "You're a field of energy in a larger field of energy," one of The Secret's teachers said. "And like attracts like, and that's very, very scientific."

By harnessing this powerful science, they said, we can have anything we want—happiness, love, fabulous wealth. This was so inspiring to Oprah that she devoted three shows to the product and appeared on Larry King to talk it up more. She said it encapsulated everything she believes. "I've been talking about this for years on my show," she said. "I just never called it The Secret."

On one of the Secret shows, Oprah gave an example of the scientific power of the concept. She said that once, while she was hosting an episode about a man who could blow really big soap bubbles, she was thinking to herself, "Gee, that looks fun. I would like to blow some bubbles." When she returned to her office after the show, there, on her desk, was a silver Tiffany bubble blower. "So I call my assistant," Oprah told the audience. "I say, 'Did you just run out and get me some bubbles? 'Cause I got bubbles by my desk.' And she says, 'No, the bubbles were always there. I bought you bubbles for your birthday and you didn't notice them until today'."

There are many lessons that might be drawn from this anecdote. One is that if you give Oprah a thoughtful gift, she may not bother to notice it or thank you for it. This is not the lesson Oprah took away from her story. Because the way she sees it, her assistant hadn't really given her the gift at all. She gave it to herself. Using the power of The Secret, she said, "I had called in some bubbles."

According to The Secret, however, the Law of Attraction can use the vibrations of the universe to deliver more than just bubbles. The book that Oprah urges everyone to live by teaches that all diseases can be cured with the power of thought alone: "The question frequently asked is, 'When a person has manifested a disease in the body temple … can it be turned around through the power of "right thinking"?' And the answer is absolutely, yes."

Death will happen. No sense denying it. Live with that in mind.

Still on the East Cost...

There are so many things I cannot talk about on this blog, both because some of the things cannot be put into words as well as the fact that there are confidences to uphold.

It was a useful synchronicity that last week I was able to watch The Legend of Bagger Vance, and then deal with some of the things in which I had to be involved.

The world is very dense. At this very moment there is need.