Elders and Stages

Vincent Horn has two posts worth checking. From "The Spiritual Map of the Elders":

Every map that describes the territory of awakening will have its strengths and weaknesses. Maps, in general, are only as good as the map-makers who’ve made them. They are also only, and always, mental representations of a place which one must explore for themselves. No amount of studying an idea about what a place will be like, or even studying what the path to that place will be like, can replace the actual journey. That being said, if one is going to take the journey to enlightenment, having a good map can do wonders!

A good map can point out the quickest route to your destination. It can also give you vivid descriptions of the landmarks along the way—and perhaps most importantly the pitfalls you may face. Knowing the landmarks along the route to enlightenment, especially when they are reached, provides a tremendous boost of faith & commitment to the journey itself. Also, having an idea of what obstacles one might encounter, and when these might arise, can save the spiritual practitioner years of confusion and stuckness. And in many cases it can keep one from falling off the path altogether. Good maps, again, are absolutely crucial with respect to making the daunting journey toward awakening.

From "The Stages of Enlightenment - A Revised Version":

The original model, created during the time of the Buddha and expanded since, described four progressive stages leading to the attainment of Arhantship. One who reaches the first stage was called a stream-winner (sotapanna), one who reaches the second stage a once-returner (sakadagami), one who reaches the third stage a non-returner (anagami), and finally there is the 4th stage, the arhant. Traditionally these designations were referring to re-birth, and the number of lifetimes that it would take to attain the 4th and final stage. They were also described in terms of various fetters that kept one stuck to the wheel of samsara. The 1st stage was said to cut 3 of 10 fetters (skeptical doubt, attachment to rites and rituals, and personality belief), the 2nd stage was said to weaken the 4th & 5th fetters (greed and hatred), and the 3rd stage was said to eliminate these two fetters. The last stage was said to cut the remaining 5 fetters (attachment to the first 4 jhanas, attachment to the formless jhanas, restlessness and worry, conceit, and the last veil of unknowing).

But don’t worry too much about the fetter-model as I’m going to largely ignore it in favor of Daniel Ingram’s revised 4-stage model. Ingram takes the same 4 stages but describes them much more in terms of how one’s perception changes, what the fundamental insights are, and the relationship to the diminishment of duality. He gets rid of the dogma surrounding certain emotional capacities completely disappearing as a result of enlightenment—what he calls the limited emotional-range models—and instead opts for a less dogmatic and more pragmatic understanding of these models. There is still quite a bit of overlap, and one can see how these two different models relate. That being said, if you’re a big fan of the original Theravada dogma, you may not be interested in reading any further. If instead, you’re interested in having an empowering, realistic, and achievable model of enlightenment, then keep on reading.

Three Nows

You know about present, right? While there are quite a few perspectives on present, including past present and future present, there are also developmental stages of presencing, simply conceivable as prereflective now, reflective now, and postreflective now. Everyone interested in the power of now, whether traditional Zen or Eckhart Tolle, would do well to distinguish between these three. Here's an example of a prereflective now, and since we all seem to know what reflective now means, postreflective now would be that which goes beyond both of these.

"Pre-trans fallacy" refers to the mistakes by the reflective in an attempt to identify the other two. It may be either elevation of pre- into post/trans or reduction of post/trans to pre-. To keep it simple, it's a mess.

But that ain't all, however. In each of these there is nunc stans, eternal present (i.e. dharmakaya for you buddhist folks) and the nunc fluent, flowing present (i.e. rupakaya, whether gross or subtle). And the relationship of these two, their separation/difference and unity/ identity will have to be addressed from one of those three nows. Gets interesting, right?

Wilber at Buddhist Geeks!

Philosopher and long-time Buddhist practitioner, Ken Wilber, shares with us a 10,000 foot view of the terrain of meditative experience. He describes several of the most common Buddhist maps and their progression, including the one presented in the Visuddhimagga (one of the most prevalent in the Theravada tradition), the 10 ox herding pictures in the Zen tradition, and the Anuttara Tantra from the Tibetan tradition.

He also gives an overview of the very difficult stages of practice called the Dark Nights. These are periods where after being plunged into a whole new experience of reality we have it stripped from us and feel like we have lost what was once discovered. Another meaning of the dark night has to do with dis-identifying with previous levels of consciousness, and the difficult journey of releasing our grasping and addiction to these lower levels.

This is part 1 of a two-part series.

Available at Buddhist Geeks.

Three Characteristics

Awhile ago Alan Chapman started a thread called "The absolute nature of the three characteristics" at Dharma Overground with the following post:

To what extent do you believe observing the three characteristics is fundamental to achieving fruition?

In a recent thread (Vipassana vs the Suttas) the question was asked 'what does ultimately lead to Nibbana? Seeing the Three Characteristics or understanding Dependent Origination?!' The resounding reply was that they are both the same thing, but I would like to propose that any idea of a fundamental characteristic to reality is nothing of the sort, as fruition clearly demonstrates. For those of you who believe the Buddha's teachings offer the truth, do you not think that the three characteristics would present themselves by any serious investigation of reality, as opposed to reqiuring perceptual cultivation?

Consider Centered Prayer, Maharshi's Self-Enquiry and Gurdjieff's Fourth Way. None of them offer the others' 'fundamental' or 'absolute' characteristics of reality, but each leads to fruition (I'm speaking from experience). In light of this, I'm of the opinion that simply observing reality is the key to the progress of insight, and vipassana (looking for the three characteristics) is just one more method for keeping the mind present and attentive, just like consenting to God's presence, finding the feeling of self or 'splitting the attention' . Taking any methodology for the truth is inherently problematic and the mess surrounding 'no-self' and emptiness is a prime example.

Don't get me wrong here - I'm not dismissing vipassana (on the contrary, I love it!); rather I am highlighting what I believe is a dogma developed from something that should have remained an injunction.

Thoughts?

My first reply was thus:

Nice intro to this important subject, Alan. I will approach this issue from a perspective of wider Buddhist tradition. The problem arising with three characteristics is of semantic and interpretative nature. Namely, the three characteristics are NOT a description of "reality", which is indeed obvious when we have a look at the four seals of the View, as follows:

All compounded things are impermanent.
All phenomena lack self-nature.
All dualistic experience is intrinsically painful.
Nirvana alone is peace, and is beyond concept.

The first three lines, obviously, refer to the three "lakshana" - characteristics, signs, or marks. These three actually refer to everything that can be witnessed, made an object of awareness, and of "any serious investigation" as you propose. Now, to "investigate reality", one need to also consider that which never becomes an object, and therefore escapes this methodology, but does however reveal itself once self-recognized as already obvious. The approach to this recognition does indeed differ among traditions, as it does differ among Buddhist traditions themselves. Indeed, many of which do not work with three characteristics, but all of which lead to three doors of liberation (signless, desireless, and emptiness) which are sometimes, but not exclusively, connected to the three characteristics in a one-to-one manner. As made clear by the fourth line, reality in its ultimate aspect transcends (yet includes) the three characteristics (as well as their opposites, which give content to wholly different methodologies).

When the ultimate is referred to from the perspective of the relative, then three characteristics are used which neither describe the relative itself (that being more properly done by dependent co-arising), nor the ultimate, but are instead used as path (this corresponds somewhat to the via negativa, or the apophatic approach); other Buddhist vehicles equally use a positive language (corresponding to via positiva, or the cataphatic approach) whence Nirvana itself - the fourth line - is described as "self, purity, eternity, and bliss" but again in a special sense.

Now, methodology shouldn't be taken for the truth, as you say, unless we're clear which truth it refers to. There is the twofold truth, but there is also the threefold scheme known as basis, path, and fruit (or fruition). The three characteristics belong to the truth of the path, and specifically to the method and not the wisdom. There are stages in the relationship of relative and ultimate (e.g. five ranks of Tozan in Zen are a good example) and the language used always involves some paradox in absence of fruition.

As to your remark that "looking for the three characteristics is just one more method for keeping the mind present and attentive", this also requires some qualification. Technically, "keeping the mind present and attentive" may mean different things in different methodologies. In Buddhism, presence and attentiveness is generally known as shamatha (pali: samatha), sometimes referred simply as "calm", and the three characteristics are specifically used in a way that is referred to as vipashyana (pali: vipassana), referred to simply as "insight" or "seeing".

Insight may indeed be into the three characteristics, but also may be into the ineffable nature of mind ("suchness"), or even into the inseparability of the three characteristics and suchness itself, and that's why interpretation becomes crucial in the process of realization, and what is usually understood as "fruition" is only the beginning of an integrative process, a rather long road for most. Specifically, seeing the three characteristics is not identified with seeing the reality as it is, the three being precisely referred to [in Western translations] as "characteristics of existence", and existence not being identical with ultimate reality. As clear from the four seals, impermanence refers to compounded phenomena, lack of self-nature to all phenomena, and suffering to dualistic experience. (As to the fourth line, there's the Heart sutra as a widely available entry point.)

Meditation (both calm and insight) is necessary but not enough, and concepts used in the path are balanced by the View, without which methodology easily becomes a dogma. Just as, without practice, the View itself degenerates into mere doctrine.

See the rest of the ensuing discussion.

The No-Self Fallacy

No-self, non-self, or not self? And that's only the beginning. An interesting interview in Tricycle with scholar and author John Peacocke, available online. Here's a snip:

What is the Buddhist answer to metaphysical inquiry, then?
The Buddha’s method is a phenomenological one. How does something appear, how does this thing that we call the self operate? He’s not asking, Is there a self or is there not a self? One possible answer is deterministic and eternalistic, and the other, nihilistic. So the Buddha is asking not so much what as how.

I should add that I feel “not-self”—anatta—is actually a much-misunderstood teaching. The Buddha is not saying that there is no self, which is an idea that I think in a Western context can be extremely dangerous.

Why?
Because it’s nihilistic. The Buddha himself says it’s better to teach self than to teach annihilationism; given the choice, it’s better to teach that there is something because this leads at least to some kind of ethical responsibility. I think in our Western culture sometimes people have a very fragile notion of what the self is anyway, so to come along and tell them there’s no self could be very destructive.

I'm very much in agreement with these points. So, basically, the Buddha is not saying that there is no self, plus it's better to teach self than to teach nihilism. Many Buddhists stumble on this crucial point of something vs. nothing, not seeing that nairatmya (pali: anatta) is indeed neither. In short, nairatmya is path, not the ultimate.

Read the whole interview.

Consciousness and Life

"The Two Pillars of Buddhism: Consciousness and Ethics" by Pier Luigi Luisi, From the Proceedings of the meeting Mind and Life XII, ‘What is matter, what is life?’, held in Dharamsala, India, in 2002, in the presence of His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama.

Some excerpts from the section on consciousness and life:

Dalai Lama said: ‘If Buddhism adopts the notion of the Big Bang as the beginning at this universe, then the origin of matter in this universe is not a preceding continuum of consciousness, or divine consciousness. Nothing like that. The origin or substantial cause of the first matter in this universe was preceding matter. Only mass-energy gives rise to mass-energy, and consciousness always gives rise only to consciousness.’
...
From Eric Lander: ‘As scientists we think that consciousness is a property somehow of the organization, but we have no idea what. What’s interesting to me is that Buddhists, as Matthieu explained, seem very disturbed by the idea of a first cause for the universe. I share that disturbance, which is not to say I am any happier with the idea of beginninglessness. That also disturbs me. But you go from the idea that there is no first cause for the whole universe, to the idea that there can be no first cause for consciousness. It seems to me that in Buddhism you can’t imagine consciousness arising from nothing. And we scientists, perhaps because of our world view, cannot imagine a different explanation. I don’t know that either of us have a logical reason to say that it must have persisted forever, or that it must have arisen from complexity. In science we have so little to say about it because so few experiments try to probe consciousness. Mostly we avoid the question.’
...
More from the Dalai Lama: ‘Buddhist philosophy employs the logical reasoning that if consciousness can arise from matter, then we have to posit a beginning to consciousness and a beginning to the continuum of sentient beings. By extension of that reasoning, we would also have to accept a beginning to the whole universe, which opens up a whole can of worms. Since Buddhism rejects that, and accepts the beginningless continuum of consciousness, it also accepts the beginningless continuum of sentient beings. And since sentient beings have no beginning, Buddhism interprets the evolution of the physical universe as intimately interdependent with the sentient beings who inhabit and experience the external world. ‘As to the question of why it matters: first, it presents a philosophical problem. If we are forced to accept a beginning to the universe, we have two options. Either something comes from nothing, or else we have to posit a divine creator, a transcendent being, neither of which Buddhism finds comfortable. Second, from a soteriological point of view, a single lifetime is an extremely brief duration in which to achieve liberation and enlightenment. It’s said to be possible in principle to achieve enlightenment in three years, three months, and three days, but this is much like Communist propaganda: the chances of this happening are so remote you might as well forget about it! Even in a lifetime of sixty years, the chances of achieving enlightenment for most of us are remote. So we need a bit more time…’

Read or download the whole article (.pdf format).

Into the Wild

"For the bodhicitta of intention, the training has three stages: considering others as equal to oneself, exchanging oneself and others, and taking others as more important than oneself. For the bodhicitta of application, the training consists of practicing the six perfections."

From "Words of My Perfect Teacher", Patrul Rinpoche

This is a fine example of traditional Buddhist teaching at its best. Patrul Rinpoche's masterpiece "Kunzang Lama'i Zhalung", aka "Words of My Perfect Teacher", brings a thorough exposition of introductory teachings in Dzogchen of the Nyingma school. It's a great example in that it systematically expounds the steps by which an aspirant in Mahayana steps into wakefulness. Simultaneously, it is in many ways a snapshot of traditional beliefs - not just Buddhist ones - and of the universe as understood by premodern folks, confused or awakened.

Back to the quote, and into the 21st century: imagine if "considering others as equal to oneself" would imply seeing everyone - that is, oneself and others - as a result of 13.7 billion of years of cosmic evolution. Then, "exchanging oneself and others" would imply the ability to shift horizontally and vertically, actually taking and honoring all perspectives that have arisen so far and are thus available to us now in the 21st century. Not just available, but constituting the perspectival space of this moment's arising, just as the perspectives held by Dza Patrul Rinpoche and his teacher Jigme Gyalwai Nyugu and his teacher Jigme Lingma etc. constituted their space at that time. And finally, "taking others as more important than oneself" would definitely imply abandoning the self-centered position, and instead embracing the cosmocentric impulse, bolstered by the pristine recognition of universal primal kinship, and repeatedly choosing to live for the sake of everything, as if everything depended on it, because it does. Becoming awake constantly in this sense, one is born into the realm of emergent bodhicitta, already enlightened and always interested in creating the future.

As to the application in the last line, remember that the six modes of excellence (plus skillful means, intention, power, and knowledge) are rooted in deep awareness (i.e. emptiness), but imagine these simultaneously permeated and enlivened by a surge of evolutionary urgency, a quickening of will and clarity that finds great bliss in plunging the novelty of human enhancement and in uplifting the ethical, intellectual, cultural, economic, and social conditions. Imagine what would that, what should that, and what must that be like today if it's really going to make an impact. So, what in the world can stop you embodying That now and then, gradually ripening to become a living, knowing, feeling, and acting expression of That?

Buddha on the Brain

Steve Paulson did an interview with B. Alan Wallace. It's from November 2006, but who cares. Here's a snip:

Is that what Buddhism offers -- a rigorous methodology?

Yes. I'm not saying we should fuse religion with science. Rather, we should select very specific methodologies from Buddhism and other contemplative traditions where the ability to monitor the mind has been honed over thousands of years -- beginning with the training of attention and then using sophisticated methods for investigating the nature of the mind, feelings and the very nature of consciousness itself during the waking state, the dream state, even during deep sleep. Now, because of the great advances in transportation and communications, we have easy access to the Taoist tradition of China, the Sufi tradition of the Near East, the Buddhist tradition of Tibet and Southeast Asia. I'm convinced this would add much greater depth and breadth to the types of questions that are raised in modern cognitive science.

In science, you have a hypothesis that's tested, and it can be disproved. Does that happen in Buddhism?

On its home turf, frequently not. But I'm also waiting for a neuroscientist to tell me how the hypothesis that mental states are nothing more than neural states will be repudiated. I don't see that as a testable hypothesis. So there's a fair amount of dogma, not in science per se but in the minds of scientists. Likewise, there's plenty of dogma in the minds of Buddhists. But Buddhism at its best -- and we go right back to the teachings of the Buddha himself -- encourages a spirit of skepticism. He said, "Do not take my statements to be true simply out of reverence for me. But rather, put them to the test." Well, if you do that, you should be able to repudiate them as well as confirm them.

Well, let me ask you about that. I know there is a tradition, particularly among advanced contemplatives, that you have your meditative experience, and then you talk about it, you analyze it, and your peers critique it. Does that really happen? When someone comes out of meditation, would someone else say, "Sorry. You didn't do it right"?

Absolutely. You know, Buddhism, like any other tradition, is subject to degeneration. So if you and I headed off to India or Nepal or Tibet, we'd find plenty of Buddhist meditators who are simply going through rote ritual, who are just trying to come up with the right answers at the end of the book. But when Buddhism is really thriving, it's exactly what you described. You go into a three-year retreat, where you are meditating eight to 12 hours a day. You're training the mind. You're investigating the nature of the mind. But you're probably not doing that in entire isolation. You're in consultation with a mentor who's going to review your experience and help you deepen your experience. You'll be questioning your insights. So [your] relationship with your mentor is analogous to working on your Ph.D. with a mentor. If at any point your research becomes flaky or not up to snuff, the mentor is there to say, "No, that's a dead end. This is not good research." This happens frequently in the Buddhist contemplative tradition when it's really robust and healthy.

Read the whole interview at Salon.

Emergent Bodhicitta

(The previous post on Buddhist Evolution concluded that "Giving birth to bodhicitta becomes nondual with giving birth to a new level of authenticity, the latter a natural continuation of the former." Let's move on.)

I guess you know about bodhicitta, the awakening mind. It's often presented as absolute and relative, so there you have the very subject (i.e. citta) as the locus of the greatest tension: the tension between that which is only and self-evidently real yet hidden from most, namely the absolute, and that which appears to be for some and appears to not be for others while all remain excited about it, namely the relative. Absolute bodhicitta is born from wisdom beyond all elaboration, the truth of emptiness, and is in short the non-relative position to everything - all phenomena, all experiences, all situations, all conditions, all states. The relative bodhicitta is usually explained as intention and application, or aspiring and engaging, to realize the absolute bodhicitta. According to the traditional understanding of the path, as in the five stages on the path of a bodhisattva, training in relative bodhicitta to realize absolute bodhicitta takes a very, very, very long time. In short, it most probably ain't in this life, so....

(*If we go into details of that model, we'll quickly have to conclude that it does not fit our reality. I'm not aiming at that, not here. If you're interested in a no non-sense perspective on un/realistic models, see Dan Ingram's discussion by reading chapter 31, parts I-XI, from his book "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha".)

Absolute bodhicitta is, therefore, as yet unrealized for the regular aspirant to awakening. But the View must be in place if we are to practice properly, right? And absolute is crucial in the View, yes? We need correct intellectual intimations and strong direct intuitions of this fundamental fact to aspire and be moved to translate that aspiration into a discipline of purification and transformation. So, the absolute must be established by experience, through a spontaneous recognition, or through association with a teacher, or through pointing out, or through diligent study and analysis, or all of the above or whatever - it must be established for the View to be in place, for without the absolute the View cannot be. Admittedly, the absolute has not as yet arisen as a realization for the seeker, as an unassailable fact from which there is no lapse, but a non-relative recognition must be there for practice to make any real sense. This paradox involves and/or introduces the notion of buddha-nature, which is synonymous with absolute bodhicitta. Some schools see the relative bodhicitta as an aspect of buddha-nature, while some would go one step further and make the two bodhicittas essentially one. The situation gets very interesting very quickly, because what you're seeking for is who you in fact already are, and who you in fact are is not passive but unceasingly active in relation to your myopic predicament, and your seeking is in turn - at least ideally - a response to that. So there are these two levels of knowing and will in mutual resonance. Enter evolution.

Evolution is the becoming itself - samsara plus directionality - and at this point when evolution is becoming aware of itself in us, and as us, the one awakening to consciousness is beginning to recognize the purpose behind the very potential of freedom. Embracing evolution is embracing the world of causes and conditions in a very special way, from the position of what I would call emergent bodhicitta. This is an opportunity not simply for awakening - because Wakefulness in any of its modalities (ground, path, or fruition) is already at the heart of this emergence, hence bodhi citta - but for giving an ever-fresh meaning, purpose and expression to what has already begun awakening to itself in both ultimate and relative terms. While such emergent bodhicitta has several important ramifications in Buddhism for the 21st century, the crucial one is making sure that the mysterious motive inherent in the continuity of Ground, Path, and Fruition gets reaffirmed as a fathomless drive to novelty. In short, this entails creating a new culture of radical awareness, beyond sectarian loyalties with their crippling effect on individuals' critical faculties, and beyond the patent unwillingness to face awakening in real time while indefinitely postponing transformation and creating buddhistish nestworks (I'm not sure this translates well... whatever).

Of course we'll always have a downtranslated, horizontal Buddhist culture at various levels of sophistication, but such culture of what is essentially spiritual embellishment is dependent on and owes its very existence to the culture of depth, that is, to authenticity and vitality at the core of liberation. Authenticity is preserved by maintaining constant access to absolute realization, and vitality by maintaining full relevance in terms of understanding and presenting the purpose and meaning of that realization. The former equals utmost depth, the latter equals highest perspective.

Buddhist Evolution

Buddhism has often and rightfully been presented as a path of "inner revolution". In fact, the term "dharmacakra pravartana", literally "turning of the dharma-wheel", may be rendered as "spiritual revolution". The early sangha is a result of the great revolution initiated by the Gautama Buddha's own awakening and teaching; Mahayana is a result of the revolution initiated among the early Sangha; Tantra and Zen are results of revolutions initiated within Mahayana itself. Now, looking at 25 hundred years of continuation, we can see that these revolutions proceeded along a spiritual evolutionary trajectory hardly envisaged or planned. Every shift was a reaction to a limitation that became evident, and certainly there was a potential for both the limitation and the breakthrough into novelty provided by the preceeding stage in the unfolding of Dharma. Each of these revolutions preserved what was necessary to retain an organic continuation at the level of the View, while advancing fresh formulations and perspectives on the Ultimate and introducing new applications in terms of method. And the last such revolutions happened long before the advent of modernity, before the dawn of awareness which found everything in manifest universe to have evolved, that is, developed through vast stretches of time.

So, for approximately 2,500 years the View, or in other words the Big Picture, has been summarized as follows:

All compounded things are impermanent.
All phenomena lack self-nature.
All dualistic experience is intrinsically painful.
Nirvana alone is peace [and is beyond concept].

With the advent of modernity, evolution enters the Big Picture, becoming a compelling aspect of, well... everything. All compounded things are still impermanent, but their mode of impermanence is held in place by laws of evolution. All phenomena still lack self-nature, and this allows them to be relatively unobstructive to emergence of novelty. And yes, all dualistic experience is intrinsically painful, while Nirvana beyond concept alone is peace. But the View doesn't stop there, not if we embrace what we discovered in "Western" enlightenment and digested in postmodernity. This indeed is just the beginning of something new altogether: this is where we embrace cosmic evolution as the very purpose of awakening. Giving birth to bodhicitta becomes nondual with giving birth to a new level of authenticity, the latter a natural continuation of the former.

Emergent Dharma

Evolution is not simply birth/death, as in the classical, cyclic model of samsara. Evolution is something coming out of no-thing and then developing through time, and once we're aware of this everything changes in a significant way. Not only the material universe, but also our life-forms, our spirituality, and everything in the range of dependent co-arising, including all forms of natural perception and all levels of cultural complexity, have developed through time.

This means that, instead of having one cyclic model of samsara (worldly or laukika pratityasamutpada) and another unfolding model of liberation (transcendent or lokuttara pratityasamutpada), we need to recognize the unfolding in the world-process itself, an unfolding which allows a much deeper integration of the two models in a post-metaphysical manner.

So, basically dharmas don't simply arise - though they appear to simply arise when observed phenomenologically from a 1st person position - they arise in a developmental space. And, in 13.7 billion years of this cosmic evolution, not all dharmas have arisen simultaneously. At the beginning of this story, there were no sentient beings to be reborn and no five skandhas to start with. And so starts the recalibration of abhidharma to embrace and acknowledge a perspective-based, instead of a phenomena-based, evolutionary reality.

Ritual: Theory in Practice

Review of Zen Ritual: Studies of Zen Buddhist Theory in Practice, ed. by Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright, review written by Zoketsu Norman Fischer for the Spring 2008 issue of Buddhadharma. Excerpt:

There’s no doubt that if you read Buddhist texts—from the Zen masters’ sayings to the Pali canon materials—you will find a basic philosophy and recommended practice that does lend itself to the idea of Buddhism as a sort of rational self-improvement religion. And Zen and early Buddhist texts do express, to some extent, the notion that ritual, faith, and sacrifice are to be rejected in favor of personal ethics, meditational cultivation, and transformative insight. So the early scholars, however blinded they were by their own cultural biases, were not making something up out of whole cloth. They had texts to cite.

But the essays in this book are not based on the study of sacred texts. These essays are valuable because they reflect a crucial sea change in the contemporary study of religion: a shift away from the study of what religion says it is about (as explained in sacred texts) to what religion is actually about (as discovered in historical records and sociological observation). And this turns out to be one of the most astonishing and salient facts about Buddhism and religion in general—that there is always a huge gap between what a religion says and thinks it is about, and what it is actually about. And the question of ritual, why and how it is practiced, and how important or unimportant it is lies at the center of this gap.

Read the whole piece.

On Just Sitting

Another cross-post from Dharma Overground. The thread entitled "Fundamental Non-discrimination" was opened with the following remark:

I've been lurking on this forum for a while now. I thought I would see what you guys thought about the method of no method found in Chan (Zen), Dzogchen, MahaMudra and Taoism. Just sitting in Fundamental Non-discrimination. Just relaxed, still awareness of what is. Do you guys feel, assuming one is capable of actually achieving it, one can practice this alone and skip structured shamatha and vipassana practice? Do you guys think "just sitting" can take one all the way to enlightenment - the realisation of one's fundamental nature as it is here and now?

These are interesting and challenging questions, of course, and throughout history the dispute remains strong between proponents of gradual cultivation and direct realization, and simultaneously between those who emphasize a combination of methods vs. those who prefer the simplicity of a non-method. Some of my reflections, taken from that thread--

The method [of just sitting, or simple awareness] is practiced in conjunction with View, which is differently formulated in [various] traditions, but the method is essentially identical, even when instructions differ. In Theravada, this is practiced as "choiceless awareness". This "non-method" (a tricky term itself pointing to the innate cognizance at the root of experience, instead of something introduced through cultivation) also proceeds through stages of unfolding in practitioners' capacity to maintain natural, uncontrived attention. This process may be used to explore the conventional nature of mind (e.g. what is mind), but only rarely will it result in spontaneous recognition of mind's nature, without specific investigation being undertaken. The first is equivalent to shamatha, and the second to vipashyana. "One method" is a slippery notion. Still, it's quite impossible to reach higher stages of realization WITHOUT recourse to non-meditation. It's not a panacea, however.

Speaking of practical application, naked awareness can give one an initial taste of the nature of mind, especially through pointing out instructions of a qualified teacher. To stabilize this flash of recognition more than one technique is needed, even if it's the non-technique. Thus, the suitability of naked awareness to cover the early and middle stages is rather limited to individuals with a rare predilection. Even for them, though, it will not be sufficient for a mature, integrated wisdom. Combining structured and unstructured approaches seems the way to go.

Also, such practice is not designed to specifically address different obstacles and imbalances that will arise for most if not all. So, in all traditions mentioned, we find many other methods along with the non-method. And, again, the View is crucial for less structured (not entirely unstructured) forms of meditative cultivation, as in other cases...

As far as awakening to the ever-present nature of our mind is concerned, that is, as far as liberating insight in itself is concerned, [the non-method] may very well be all you need (if that's the path you choose, of course, in the context of those teachings that indeed offer this option). But then, there are several additional dimensions you may want to explore both before and after such an awakening or, more precisely and more probably, series of several awakenings.

These several dimensions have everything to do with how one would interpret and integrate the realization, even when dealing with the self-confirming and unquestionable clarity of full awakening. The first that comes to mind is conceptual understanding (and I have emphasized that before as View) which not only provides a map of the path, but also the basis for a balanced interpretation of that which arises during and after meditation. Everyone has a view, whether or not they work on it, and the view they have can do real damage to an otherwise fine contemplative effort. The ridiculous taboo of intellectual sophistication present among certain practitioners of meditation is so baseless. Of course, when on cushion, shut up and practice.:-) But every single school makes good use of intellectual training, including Zen, Dzogchen and Mahamudra, about which thousands of books have been written through the centuries, most by accomplished practitioners.

The second is development of compassion. Pre-awakening as actual heart-based discipline of opening and embracing, and post-awakening as integration of the liberated awareness into everything one does and feels and thinks and says, so to thoroughly dismantle the dichotomy of sacred and mundane in action.

And the third is developing experience of fullness along with insight into emptiness, without which one may develop a very lopsided awakening. Along with traditional methods, as found in tantric practice, one may also think of complementary methods, such as qigong and other forms of physical exercise that engage subtle energies. Further on, speaking of fullness, awakening does develop through centuries, at least in the relative domain. And so one will want to have the fullest available expression of this inner awakening not just in an intellect that can coherently express the core of what has been discovered without undue gross distortion, plus broad and flexible enough to accomodate and share that expression with people of different inclinations and levels of sophistication, but also in a body that serves as a vehicle for both pre-awakening and post-awakening activity in accordance with real enlightened motives and not some medieval idea of purity and sainthood. To round up the fullness issue, one would not want to miss the shadow aspects in psychological unraveling (unmapped in traditional teachings), since these tend to become fixed forever when one uses spiritual realization to bypass psychological quirks.

However, going back to [the] original question: can one really reach awakening by choiceless awareness (by whatever name) alone? Yes, most possibly yes, but with quite unpredictable results, though some may find it preposterous to think awakening can be an unpredictable result, but there you are. The process called awakening (i.e. bodhi) is usually pursued in several steps, ordered in a dialectic fashion, so that what's good at one stage is contraindicative before or after. Also, while awakening may be reduced to bare essence as a liberation of awareness from false self-identification, in fact it's a complex process in which we do our best to emancipate the whole potential as far as that doesn't interfere with the path of awakening itself, since those additional dimensions are indeed ornaments of the awakened mind, ultimately inseparable from it. Does this help?

On Mindfulness and Effort

I wrote this for a recent thread at Dharma Overground --

Great conversation! I'm strongly in agreement with the argument Vince has made on the importance of mindfulness as the one factor that one never has too much of. It's the meta-capacity in both seven factors and five faculties/powers. One could even go as far as seeing all other items as functions of mindfulness itself. For those not into qualia conducing to awakening, here's a link for a basic intro:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Factors_of_Enlightenment

Anyway, it seems crucial to have a useful understanding of mindfulness, because only such mindfulness, when applied consistently, will produce right effort. To be precise: (1) mindfulness always goes along with introspective clarity, so that sometimes they're listed as a composite term (smrtisamprajanya / satisampajanna), and basically it makes not much sense being mindful while confused about what's going on in your awareness in phenomenological terms, and (2) mindfulness equally embraces what is going on, what was going on, and what will be going on, since there's no way to make sense of your present-moment practice without reference points of past results and future aims, so it's not a flat present one's aware of. Meditation is, in large part, a process of learning from one's mistakes, and the continuity mentioned by Vince arises from a willingness to accept that. An ability to reconstruct the whole cushion time minute-per-minute (or even second-per-second) immediately after coming out of meditation can also be taken as a measure of mindfulness, and of the general quality of one's sessions. An ability to remember instructions you received and decisions you made in the past is also a measure of mindfulness etc. Remembering something at the time you need it is crucial for any endeavor.

The question of maintaining effort arises as part of shamatha training, where - after conquering the more gross obstacles - one is required to learn the subtle balance of effort, i.e. applying when necessary, and not applying when the mind is balanced. What this results in goes beyond intentional effort to maintain mindfulness, otherwise the sheer intentionality would cumulatively intensify whatever gestalt was there to begin with, including the not so obvious imbalances in one's psyche. In other words, while risking to over-simplify, the sheer intentionality itself would become an obstruction to the expense of our mind's natural capacity of becoming and remaining aware and alert when obstacles to it are removed. So in this context training is a matter of restoring mind's innate capacities.

Now, a solution to this is definitely not to cultivate non-mindfulness. Non-mindfulness is always there anyway, in reference to everything outside the scope of mindfulness. To cultivate mindfulness (and introspective clarity) is to recognize such a quality as already existing and then learn to remove obstacles to its optimal functioning. It's not that we actually generate mindfulness out of nothing. Secondly, one ought to make space for a relaxed, natural flow of awareness in mid-sessions and after-sessions. According to my experience, in these periods, awareness is checked very gently, almost without deliberation. At more advanced stages, a deliberation is necessary only at a beginning of a certain formal period (including after-sessions), after which one is largely immersed in whatever one is doing without necessity for a self-conscious point of reference. But at a more basic level, people tend to slack or overdo, and the only way to learn this balance is by trying.

The levels of awkwardness and introspective incompetence we bring to the meditation cushion are fantastic. That is, the degree to which we can estrange ourselves from our own natural capacity to be simply alert and reflective of what is happening is amazing. It doesn't mean, however, that we should allow this prevailing state to define or seriously limit the way we envision the nature of this learning process or even the simple skill of being present. So from this vantage point, the weight lifting metaphor is definitely not so useful, though I still like the way it sounds.:-)

See the whole thread here.

Projecting the Dharma

An intriguing talk by Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche on "projecting" Dharma in the Western world, given at Yale Law School, New Haven, Connecticut on 25 January, 2008. Time 82 minutes. Note: the first half is most interesting, and an AQAL analysis of the discourse Dzongsar Khyentse uses with this audience gives interesting - though not surprising - results.


Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche: Projecting the Dharma from Siddhartha's Intent on Vimeo.

Thurman at NYTimes Magazine

Thanks to WH for pointing to this interview with Robert Thurman at NYTimes. It's fun, as usually, to read Thurman's observations on the Dalai Lama, China, and Buddhism in American culture -

...when I am annoyed with Dick Cheney, I meditate on how Dick Cheney was my mother in a previous life and nursed me at his breast.

Nice image there. Then we have the inevitable E-question:

Do you consider yourself enlightened? Someone who goes around saying, “I’m enlightened,” is almost categorically not.

That's exactly the kind of generalization and evasion we don't need these days. Gautama the Buddha went around and said he was awakened every single day, throughout his life. His awakened disciples, from Shariputra to Kashyapa to Maudgalyayana, even his aunt Pajapati Gotami, freely proclaimed their attainment to everyone who'd listen. Examples too numerous to list abound in the histories of every major Buddhist school from India to Japan. Robert Thurman's answer should have been (1) Yes; (2) No; (3) Sometimes; (4) Partially; (5) I'm on my way but haven't made much progress; or the tantric (6) Ask my wife!

Granted, it's become customary with institutionalization of Buddhism in most Eastern cultures - from Tibet to Japan - to consider open disclosure of accomplishment as something of a taboo. Others are supposed to do it for you, and they usually do, even when it's not the case and you've been appointed to an important position.

But it's simply not true that proclamation of awakening demonstrates the opposite. And it's unbeneficial to spread this sort of political correctness in these days when most Buddhists in the West of every tradition and ilk don't even consider enlightenment in their own lives as something really doable. That is almost categorically not beneficial.

What is Yoga?

Herbert Günther wrote in his "What is that which is called Yoga?":

"The Indic word yoga has become a household word in any Western language where, as in its original Indian cultural context, it has become a cover term for a variety of disciplines and techniques, each claiming to be the last word. Given this state of affairs the question "What is that which is called Yoga" is still pertinent and must be dealt with in its historical context."

Read the whole article.

Portraits of Masters

Some of the greatest Tibetan masters and yogins portrayed in this brief video (plus some annoying music). Enjoy!

Buddhism Made to Measure

From Donald Lopez at the Immanent Frame:

'...By the end of the nineteenth century, Methodist missionaries in Sri Lanka, Chinese revolutionaries in Shanghai, and Japanese reformers in Tokyo were all dismissing Buddhism as superstition and (in the case of the former) dismissing its followers as idolaters. A group of Buddhist elites, several of whom would visit the West, responded to these charges by claiming that Buddhism was not primitive, but instead was modern. Indeed, with its lack of a creator God and its mechanistic universe (driven by the engine of karma), it was the religion most suitable for the modern world. Some went so far as to say that Buddhism was not a religion at all, but rather a philosophy, even a science. In this way, viewed in light of the academic model of the day, which saw a movement from superstition to religion to science, Buddhism was able to leap from the beginning of the evolutionary chain to its end.

But the formation of Buddhist Modernism cannot be credited entirely to Asian Buddhists. Central to the process was the work of nineteenth-century European Orientalists. Although there were Buddhists almost everywhere else in Asia they found no Buddhists in India, the land of the Buddha’s birth; Buddhism had disappeared there by the fourteenth century. Instead, they found monuments (often in ruins), cave temples (overgrown by jungle), and statues (often broken). There were stone inscriptions to be deciphered, and there were Sanskrit manuscripts preserved in Nepal to the north and Pali manuscripts in Sri Lanka to the south. These were the materials from which European scholars would build their Buddhism.

What would come to be called “original Buddhism” or “primitive Buddhism,” became the domain of European and, later, American and then Japanese scholars. They would create a Buddha and a Buddhism unknown in Asia, one that may never have existed there before the late nineteenth century. Just as there was a quest for the historical Jesus, there was a quest for the historical Buddha, and European Orientalists felt they found him. Like Jesus, the Buddha wrote nothing and, unlike Jesus, nothing that he said was written down until four centuries (rather than four decades) after his death. This Buddhism then became a model against which the various contemporary Buddhisms of Asia were measured, and were generally found to be lacking, not only by Europeans, but eventually by Buddhist elites in Asia as well.

The Buddha was transformed from a stone idol into a man of flesh and blood, a man very much of modern times. Described by some as “the Luther of Asia,” he became famous for having spoken out against the corrupt priestcraft and the crippling caste system of “Brahmanism.” He also became something of a Romantic hero. In 1879, Edwin Arnold published a poem on the life of the Buddha, entitled The Light of Asia, that would become one of the most popular books of the Victorian period, and a favorite of Queen Victoria herself; Arnold was knighted for his work. The Buddha became an alternative Jesus, a Jesus who was not a Jew, but an Aryan. In a Europe obsessed with questions of race and questions of humanity, the Buddha was both racially superior and a savior for all humanity, an ancient kinsman, a modern hero. This Buddha was the product of a different Enlightenment...'

Precious points. Read the whole entry.

Matthieu Ricard on France 24

"30 years ago, Matthieu Ricard, the son of French philosopher Jean-François Revel, decided to convert to Buddhism and become a monk. He now lives in Nepal and is the French interpreter for the Dalai Lama, with whom he has built close ties."

Have a look at the interview touching briefly on politics, meditation, and scientific research.

Matthieu Ricard, Buddhist monk - Interview
Uploaded by FRANCE_24

Kukai Revisited

June 15th marks the birth of Kukai, founder of Shingon Buddhism, also known as Kobo Daishi. Two fine articles on master Kukai and Shingon Mikkyo. The first one by John Krummel at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

...What distinguishes Kûkai's understanding of the Buddha is that he takes the notion of the “embodiment of the Dharma” literally and radically. Hosshin in Shingon thought is not an abstract truth transcending the mundane world. Rather all phenomena and thing-events of this cosmos, in their very transience, are each themselves embodiments of truth and the cosmos as a whole comprised of these impermanent and interdependent beings is eternally an embodiment of truth, the hosshin. Moreover this concrete cosmic identification between Buddha, truth, and the cosmos of thing-events, was “personal.” That is, hosshin was equated with the Buddha Dainichi. The cosmos as the manifestation of truth, the Dharma, was itself hence equated with the body of the personal Buddha Dainichi. And in turn, Dainichi with his cosmic body is then the embodied personification of the universal Buddha-nature inherent in all beings and the Dharma that is manifest everywhere. (read the whole article)

The second article, entitled "Metaphysical vision of ancient Japanese esoteric Buddhism", is found at the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy as part 3 in the series on Japanese philosophy by Thomas Kasulis:

...First, esotericism has a distinctive view of the relation between part and whole. The whole is recursively manifest or reflected in the part. It is not that the parts constitute the whole nor that the whole is more than the sum of its parts; rather, since the part is what it is by virtue of the whole, if we truly understand the part, we find the whole imprinted in it. In Shingon’s case, for example, since any individual thing is an expression of the cosmos as Dainichi, when we truly understand the part (the individual thing), we encounter the whole (Dainichi) as well.

...Second, esotericism’s metaphysics argued that reality is self-expressive. Human beings are, of course, part of reality. When humans speak authentically or truly, therefore, they do not refer to reality, but rather are part of its self-expression. This position undermines any philosophical tendencies toward idealism (reality as a production of mind), realism (reality as pre-existing our expressions and truth as matching our expressions with that reality) or radical nominalism (expressions refer primarily to other expressions without necessary connection to non-linguistic reality). (read the whole article)

A Message from a Japanese Buddhist Priest

A declaration of solidarity by a Japanese Buddhist priest (of Tendai school), uploaded at Dailymotion. Available also with French subtitles, or see English rendering of the declaration itself below. The reading of declaration is preceded by some informal talk in the studio concerning the Tibetan/Chinese situation and the absence of adequate response from the Japanese Buddhist community.

I hope this is accurate -

"We, Japanese Buddhist monks, are now put to the test. We cannot help expressing our deep sadness and protest against China's military actions in Tibet that deprive Tibetans from religious freedom. As spiritual practitioners and Buddhists, we cannot overlook Tibetan monks and lay people suffer any more. The most important thing is that Tibetans preserve their religious tradition of Tibetan Buddhism by Tibetan people's free intention.

You might wonder what monks throughout Japan are doing. Each sect and religious organization in Japan have devoted their energies to the restoration of Buddhist temples related to their temples in various parts of China after the normalization of diplomatic relations between Japan and China. I myself was also involved in the restoration of Buddhist temples in China.

However, it was not possible to exchange with Buddhist temples in China without the approval of Beijing (government) and actually we had no freedom. Most monks across Japan know this and think that this might be unchanged even in the future. We also know that Beijing (government) feels unpleasant when Japanese Buddhist organizations exchange with the Dalai Lama. I think that religious freedom is the most important issue.

However, Japanese Buddhists have not expressed anything in 3 weeks or more after the Tibetan case broke out. If Chinese Buddhism association is our important friend, why do we tell nothing to it? Is it good without doing? Tibet that has accumulated its history as a Buddhist country with the leadership of the Dalai Lama is about to disappear. To save them, we should give the voice from grass roots as spiritual practitioners and Buddhists.

Even so, if we do, Chinese Buddhists concerned may protest to the religious sect I belong to, and I may be scolded by it. So, it does not mean that I request you to act together with me. But, I ask you who are Buddhist monks and supporters to think voluntarily with this case as a start. Some of you as Buddhist monks may plan to visit the Chinese temples related to your temples during the Beijing Olympics 2008.

Under such circumstances, what will you talk with them? If you are not able to say your opinion to your Chinese counterparts in a resolute attitude, what can we preach to our supporters and followers in Japan? This might be the last chance for us as spiritual practitioners and Buddhists."

Two Interviews

These are not new articles, but are still worth reading (or re-reading). Enjoy!

Adapting Eastern Spiritual Teachings to our Western Culture: A discussion with Shinzen Young (by Charles T. Tart) Abstract:

Eastern spiritual teachings about mindfulness and enlightenment are important sources of stimulation, methodologies and concepts to our emerging discipline of transpersonal psychology. These are embedded in a cultural matrix, however, that makes understanding and transfer of the essence difficult. The author discusses this problem of adaptation with a Western meditation teacher well trained in the Eastern methods, Shinzen Young, who had deliberately adapted Eastern methods and concepts to Western culture. Factors important in his adaptation included egalitarianism vs. hierarchy, de-emphasize of doctrine in favor of practical meditation technology, drawing key understandings out of Western students' experiences as opposed to directly teaching them, using Western scientific and psychological terminology to effectively evoke responses in Westerns, and placing the Eastern methods in the broader context of the world mystical tradition. The importance of reinforcement of practice through interpersonal networks is discussed, as well as relations between psychotherapy and meditation, including a form of one-on-one meditation counseling which has been especially effective in teaching meditation skills.

Then, Towards a Culture of Awakening, Wes Nisker interviewed Stephen Batchelor for Inquiring Mind. Excerpt:

IM: In the Pali texts the historical Buddha often seems to be addressing a particular class of people, notably "the well-born sons and daughters." Perhaps those early followers of the Buddha were the social equivalent of the highly educated and mostly middle-class folks who have now taken up Buddhism in the West.

SB: Yes, I think that's right. One can imagine the Buddha, during his time, as having had the same status and authority that a Nobel Prize winning physicist would have in our culture today. He was someone who, by virtue of what he accomplished, became worthy of the greatest respect. We have to remember that the Buddha was speaking in the context of a culture which supported and valued spiritual realization as the highest form of achievement. In the West we have a rather different set of cultural values that define what is worthy of respect.

It has always been the case, historically, that the Dharma has entered a society through first gaining acceptance by an articulate minority, through whom it then spreads into the rest of the culture. At the Buddha’s time this minority were the samanas - drop-outs effectively - who sought another way of life to the one currently on offer. It was the same in China: those initially drawn to Buddhism were disaffected intellectuals and Taoist hermits. It is no coincidence that those of us involved in Buddhism in the West tend to be products of the Sixties’ counter-culture, intellectuals, artists, eco-nuts and so on.

IM: Don't you find it curious that most of the great thinkers and philosophers of the Western world have either ignored or dismissed Buddhist thought and practice?

SB: Most Western thinkers are still stuck in their own Eurocentricity. They seem convinced that philosophy has it's origins in Plato and is an exclusive exercise of the West. Even someone like Nietzsche, who begins to question the assumptions of Western philosophy, does not look to the East for other sources of philosophical inquiry but instead goes further back into Western history, to the pre-Socratics. Camus and Sartre, who were considered radical, are really only radical within the confines of their own European paradigm.

It is amazing to me that even today, Buddhism has failed to gain notice in Western philosophical circles. One of the most famous of modern thinkers, Michel Foucault, goes right into Buddhist territory with many of his ideas, yet he never makes a reference to Buddhism. The same with Richard Rorty, one of the most important contemporary American philosophers, whose book Contingency, Irony and Solidarity reads in part almost like a Buddhist text. His analysis of the contingency of the self, for example, is a pure Buddhist analysis, but he never even mentions Buddhism.

Zizek scores on Tibet

Quite a few valid points made by the "orthodox Lacanian Stalinist" Slavoj Zizek in Le Monde Diplomatique. Several excerpts follow:

...Before 1950 Tibet was no Shangri-la, but a country of harsh feudalism, poverty (life expectancy was barely 30), corruption and civil wars (the last, between two monastic factions, was in 1948 when the Red Army was already knocking at the door). Fearing social unrest and disintegration, the ruling elite prohibited any development of industry, so all metal had to be imported from India. This did not prevent the elite from sending their children to British schools in India and transferring financial assets to British banks there.

...The Cultural Revolution which ravaged the Tibetan monasteries in the 1960s was not imported by the Chinese. Fewer than a hundred of the Red Guards came to Tibet with the revolution, and the young mobs burning the monasteries were almost exclusively Tibetan.

...A main reason why so many in the West have taken part in the protests against China is ideological: Tibetan Buddhism, deftly spun by the Dalai Lama, is a major point of reference of the New Age hedonist spirituality which is becoming the predominant form of ideology today. Our fascination with Tibet makes it into a mythic place upon which we project our dreams. When people mourn the loss of the authentic Tibetan way of life, they don’t care about real Tibetans: they want Tibetans to be authentically spiritual on behalf of us so we can continue with our crazy consumerism.

Read the whole article.

Ordinary mind

Patrick Sweeney on tamal gyi shepa, ordinary mind. Time 09:48 Enjoy!

Vesak by Reuters

Here's a series of photos of Vesak festivities.

Karmapa in US (2)

Today was an incredible day for Buddhism in America. His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, gave his first public teaching in the West, at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom. His Holiness sat regally on a sofa in front of the audience of nearly 3,000 people, a giant three-story-tall thangka image of Shakyamuni Buddha hanging behind him. Jumbotron screens on either side of the stage brought close-up views to audience members throughout the Hammerstein...

His Holiness noted that the 16th Karmapa established a strong connection with the people of America that lives on in the deep love and affection he feels for the American people.

“The American people have never been outside the mind of the Gyalwang Karmapa,” His Holiness stated. “The Gyalwang Karmapa has never forgotten the people of America for an instant.”

Read more at the Karmapa Visit Blog.

Karmapa in US

It's the first visit to the West for H.H. the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, scheduled to stop in New York City, Boulder, and Seattle. See the details. His predecessor, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, paid much attention to Western Buddhist developments. It will be interesting to see how this Karmapa's relationship with the West unfolds.

U.S. visit blog

Who is Karmapa

Karmapa Facts

"Lion's Roar" about the 16th Karmapa in 5 parts at Youtube:
one | two | three | four | five

"Living Buddha" by Clemens Kuby about the 17th Karmapa is also available on Youtube in 12 parts (too bad the quality isn't better):
one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine | ten | eleven | twelve

Enjoy!

NYTimes on Michael Roach

The article at N Y Times begins:

"Ten years ago, Michael Roach and Christie McNally, Buddhist teachers with a growing following in the United States and abroad, took vows never to separate, night or day.

By “never part,” they did not mean only their hearts or spirits. They meant their bodies as well. And they gave themselves a range of about 15 feet.

If they cannot be seated near each other on a plane, they do not get on. When she uses an airport restroom, he stands outside the door. And when they are here at home in their yurt in the Arizona desert, which has neither running water nor electricity, and he is inspired by an idea in the middle of the night, she rises from their bed and follows him to their office 100 yards down the road, so he can work.

Their partnership, they say, is celibate. It is, as they describe it, a high level of Buddhist practice that involves confronting their own imperfections and thereby learning to better serve the world."

And so it goes on with pictures and even an audio slideshow. Now, the story might have been charming if it wasn't a bit of a problem for the Tibetan sangha West and East, involving even the office of the Dalai Lama. The woman mentioned in the article is not the only woman involved (link on four dakinis), while Roach insists on still being a Gelugpa monk, and Robert Thurman won't talk to him.

I don't think a traditional framework ("mind your vinaya") can or should be applied in this case. Geshe Roach, on the other hand, should probably change clothes but he seems to be stuck in the same sort of rhetoric as his critics, "Good karma does this, bad karma does that," while looking for a perfect definition of "good" is their favorite pastime. A painful contest in dull orthodoxy, and some medieval politics.

Cry of the Snow Lion

A 2002 documentary on the history of Tibetan tragedy. Time 1 hour 43 minutes. Spread the word!

On Models of Wakefulness

Vincent Horn writes in his post "How you Approach Enlightenment and Why it Matters":

It’s often recognized by meditation teachers that the notion of enlightenment carries with it a whole host of misconceptions and unhelpful interpretations. In Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, Theravada teacher Daniel Ingram writes about this at length in his section on the models of enlightenment. He describes and distinguishes between the many different models we have for what enlightenment bestows on the individual, including things having to do with emotional, physical, psychological, and spiritual perfection. He also points out how dangerous some of these models can be, as they do at least two things: First, they make enlightenment appear to be completely impossible as most of the models people have, and especially when you combine several of them, are largely unattainable. Secondly, they take the focus off of what enlightenment is really about, the realization of non-duality, or “those models having to do with eliminating or seeing through the sense that there is a fundamentally separate or continuous center-point, agent, watcher, doer, perceiver, subject, observer or similar entity.” These Non-Duality models, Daniel claims, are the only models that one can trust from the beginning of the path, until the very end.

Yes, music for my ears. Read the whole post.

Habits of Happiness

A video from TED. What is happiness, and how can we all get some? Buddhist monk, photographer and author Matthieu Ricard has devoted his life to these questions, and his answer is influenced by his faith as well as by his scientific turn of mind: We can train our minds in habits of happiness. Interwoven with his talk are stunning photographs of the Himalayas and of his spiritual community. Time 21 min. Enjoy!





*I posted previously a video of a lecture Matthieu Ricard held at Googletech (click here to watch).

Hitchens and Buddhism

It's a non-issue, really. However, George Dworsky wrote in his "Hitchens gets it wrong about Buddhism" at the IEET, quote:

"...Hitchens’s special claim into the true nature of reality aside, he is a bit off course here and his concern is exagg