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.