Racism and the Dharma

Posted on December 21, 2018 by EricKVanHorn

There is an article in today’s Washington Post about a bizarre incident that took place at Lehigh University last year. A student from China was the roommate of a black man from the U.S. During their senior semester, there were a series of disturbing incidents involving their room being vandalized, racist notes being left, and a series of illnesses for the black man.

It turns out that the Chinese student was the culprit. The black student is puzzled as to why this suddenly happened. They had known each other for a number of years, and he thought they got along just fine.

This is a grim reminder that racism, sexism, and prejudice exist everywhere. I was in Silver City, New Mexico last spring, and a woman at the hotel where I was staying told me about racially charged remarks made by an Indian from Jemez Pueblo about the Navajo.

It is so easy to divide the world up in arbitrary ways, into the good guys and the bad guys. I heard a Dharma teacher recently mention multiple times the “patriarchal history of Buddhism.” I think that is quite an overstatement. If you read enough of the Pāli Canon you get a very even-handed view of gender and social status. In the Buddha’s time, then as now, India was a very status driven society. I think that most people know about the caste system in India. It was not quite as deeply divided during the Buddha’s time as it is now, but all of the modern-day divisions were in place.

But the Buddha’s own teaching is free from those divisions. Such is the case with the monk Venerable Upāli. Upāli was a barber, which was one of the lowest level professions in the Buddha’s home country of Sakya. But Upāli not only became a monk, he was one of the ten chief disciples of the Buddha. At the First Buddhist Council, Upāli recited the monastic code, being “foremost in the Vinaya.”

And at a time when women were treated as little more than servants, the Buddha famously ordained women as monastics. This story often gets mistold. The key fact that is often mistold is that when the Buddha’s step-mother, Pajapati, asked to ordain, we are told that the Buddha refused. However, when I read the actual account in the Pāli Canon, I noticed a subtle difference. It is a difference that I later discovered that Buddhist scholars and monks have also noticed. That difference is that the Buddha did not refuse to ordain Pajapati. He asked her to “carefully consider what she was asking.”

In a sexist society such as India, the reality of a woman samaṇa was highly problematical. Samaṇa depend on alms food. It was not clear that people would even give alms food to a woman. A woman who traveled in India at the time who was not under the protection of her father, a brother, or her husband had no legal protection under the law. They were fair game. So the Buddha was simply asking his step-mother to make sure that she understood the implications of what she was asking.

But back to the issue of prejudice. The Buddha’s teaching is a level playing field. It is based on the quality and skill of your actions: your thoughts, words, and deeds. Further, the Buddha taught that through infinite time, we have all been every kind of person that you can imagine. We have all been men and women, every race and sexual preference. We have all been in every kind of relationship that you can imagine. We have been each other’s mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters, fathers and sons. We have hated each other and been best of friends. This is the endless churning of the world of saṃsāra:

At Sāvatthı̄. “Bhikkhus, this saṃsāra is without discoverable beginning…. It is not easy, bhikkhus, to find a being who in this long course has not previously been your mother … your father … your brother … your sister … … your son … your daughter. For what reason? Because, bhikkhus, this saṃsāra is without discoverable beginning…. It is enough to be liberated from them.” – [SN 15.14-19]

The Abhidhamma goes even further. It breaks human experience into specific mind states, 52 of them to be precise. These mind states are experienced by everyone. It is the mind broken down into atomic units. This is the entire realm of human experience.

It has become a convention to look at racism as the domain of white people. There is, of course, a lot of history behind that. But to view racism as a white phenomenon is simple-minded and foolish. This is true for gender bias, as well. The issue is more fundamental than that. We are all capable of all of these feelings.

This is why I am puzzled by so-called Buddhist institutions that have made white racism part of their calling card. It is to deny the existence of all the other forms of racism in the world. It does an end run around a basic tenet of the Dharma that only one thing matters, and that is the quality of a person’s character. No one is denied the opportunity to be loving, compassionate, kind, and generous. And no one automatically gets the moral high ground because they are male or female, white, black or whatever, transgender, gay, or straight:

Whoever does no wrong

in body,

speech,

heart,

is restrained in these three ways:

he’s what I call

a brahman. – [Dhp 391]

In this lifetime we have manifested in a particular way. But in the next lifetime, who knows how we will be? “Walk a mile in my shoes,” – in everyones’ shoes – because in the next life, those shoes may be yours.

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Compassion

Posted on December 2, 2018 by EricKVanHorn

I heard an extraordinary story today that I would like to share with you. It is a story told by Ajahn Brahm. If you would like to hear the entire Dharma talk, you can find it here. Start at about minute 48 for this story.

You may know that Buddhism has a history with animals. Many monasteries became sanctuaries for animals. The animals seem to know that they are safe there. At Abhayagiri Monastery in California, there are many deer. And in Thailand there is the famous Tiger monk, where even animals that are natural enemies live together in harmony.

Ajahn Brahm’s story is about a monk who went to live alone in the jungle. After a while, even a human being just becomes part of the scenery. Even I have experienced this here in New Mexico. Especially when you are meditating, animals have no reason to fear you. They will simply go about their business. When I was in India I meditated at Jetavana. When I opened my eyes, I was surrounded by monkeys and parrots.

So this monk was living in the jungle in his little hut. Sometimes he would leave a little food for the animals. Probably without even knowing it, he earned their trust. They knew that they were safe around him.

One night he heard a knock on the door. Now, you can imagine that he wondered who could possibly be at his hut in the middle of the night. When he opened the door, he saw a female monkey. She was holding a baby in her arms. She offered the baby to the monk, who saw that it was dead. The grief on her face was obvious. But the mother monkey clearly knew that there was something kind and compassionate about the monk. She was looking for comfort. So he held the baby for a while and then gently gave it back to the mother, who took it and disappeared back into the jungle.

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The Third Recollection

Posted on September 8, 2018 by EricKVanHorn

The Yaksa asked, “What is the most wonderful thing?”

Yudhisthira Maharaj replied, “The most wonderful thing is that although everyday innumerable humans and their animals go to the abode of death, still a man thinks he is immortal.”

– [Mahabharata, Meditation 128: The Lake of Death]

There is an old joke that Buddhists spend their whole lives preparing for death, and there is some truth to that. We are constantly being reminded that we are all subject to aging, sickness, and death. In one of the most common Pāli chants, The Five Subjects for Frequent Recollection, the first three recollections are just that. The fourth recollection is that when we die “all that is mine, beloved and pleasing, will become otherwise, will become separated from me.” [AN 5.57]

For most people, that sounds pretty depressing. But in the Buddha’s teaching, death is a natural and normal part of life. It is most definitely not a cause for grief, torment, and anguish. As one Tibetan teacher once told me, “In a certain sense, there is no such thing as death. There is simply the next moment.”

Death for a Buddhist is a simple reality. It is also a tool. While we are living, the recollection of death gives us a healthy sense of urgency. This life is precious. It is an opportunity to do something important. We have this chance to develop the path. When we die, we do not know how we will be reborn. So now, while we can, we need to devote ourselves to the path. And we need to train our minds so when the moment of death does come, we will be prepared, and we will not be subject to the whims and fears of a wild, untrained mind.

That sense of urgency is not limited to Buddhist training. My father died five days before my 18th birthday. It happened suddenly. The night before he died, we had an argument, so my last words to my father were angry ones. It took me a very long time to get over his death, and there was a lot of guilt over the argument. But when I did finally get over it, what I learned was not to put things off. Treat people as if you will never see them again. Never put off telling someone that you love them. Death can come at any time to anyone. It happens every day. Live your life with that thought always in mind.

That lesson came in very handy some years later. Shortly after my father died, I met the man who would become my father-in-law. We were close almost from the very beginning. In retrospect, we had a very unusual relationship. We did things together all the time. It all felt normal and natural.

Then we got the phone call. He was only in his mid-50’s, but he had a heart attack and died just as suddenly as my own father had. I was in shock and upset, of course, but the bigger part of me was grateful. I had been given a second chance, and while I was sad that he was gone, the larger part of me was simply grateful that we had the time together that we did. The glass was more than half full.

When the time of our own death comes, it is very important to have a calm and supportive environment. People who have had near death experiences tell us how sensitive the consciousness is at the moment of death. So it is very important to be around people who will be calm and loving. For many Buddhists, having a monk or a nun in attendance is a wonderful boon. Conversely, being in an emergency room full of frantic nurses and doctors and loudly screaming machines and wailing family members is without doubt a worst-case scenario.

My mother died in 2012, and she was in a coma for the last week of her life. Because I knew about near death experiences and the state of the consciousness, I spent a lot of time with her. And after she died, I spent the entire night with her, thinking thoughts of gentle loving-kindness. It was actually quite wonderful for me. My final hours with my mother were spent in love and gratitude for all of the kind things that she did for me and all the good things that she gave to me. By the end of the night, I was completely at ease with her death, and I never really experienced any grief. What I did experience was love and gratitude.

During our death and after our death, the trained mind gives us a better chance to either escape from the rounds of rebirth completely, or to at least have an auspicious rebirth, one where we can continue the practice. This is not necessarily a human rebirth, as some schools of Buddhism believe. We know from the Buddha’s teachings that there are once returners and non-returners who are reborn in the heavenly realms. And if you don’t have to worry about a fussy human body and all of its relentless demands, and you don’t have to deal with so many cranky people and getting an education and finding a job and paying a mortgage, etc., doing the practice may be quite a bit easier.

Because of the Buddha’s teachings and his transcendent understanding of existence, we are very fortunate to have a rational, sensible way to think about life and death. This is why those of us who are his followers are so deeply grateful to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Saṇgha. Without the Three Jewels, we are just lost, wandering around in the desert with no way out.

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Non-self

Posted on September 5, 2018 by EricKVanHorn

One of the most fascinating teachings of the Buddha is the one on anatta, non-self. Not surprisingly, it is enormously misunderstood.

The Buddha was focused on one thing, and that is teaching us how to escape from dukkha (suffering/stress/unsatisfactoriness) and to attain the liberation of nirvana. He was relentless in his single-minded devotion to that objective.

What he did not do was to describe the ultimate nature of reality. Rather, he said that if you follow his course of training, you will see it for yourself. He also seems to have been skeptical that if you tried to understand the ultimate nature of reality without seeing it for yourself, that you would not understand it anyway. Nirvana, he said, is “the unconditioned.” It lies beyond time and space. It defies conventional notions.

This is very important to remember when undertaking the Buddha’s system of training. His teaching is designed to help us to become free from dukkha. This is true of the teaching on non-self as well. The Buddha actually abstained from saying whether the self actually exists. In Buddhism the ultimate nature of the self is called one of the “ten indeterminate questions.” (Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta, MN 72). He even went on to say that pondering these questions is a hindrance to awakening:

Therefore, oh monks, do not brood over [any of these views] Such brooding, Oh monks, is senseless, has nothing to do with genuine pure conduct, does not lead to aversion, detachment, extinction, nor to peace, to full comprehension, enlightenment and Nibbāna, etc.– [SN 56]

So the Buddha’s teaching on non-self is not a statement about ultimate reality. It is, as Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu says, a strategy.

This is one reason why the practice of jhāna – meditative absorption – is so important. At some point, when your concentration is very good, you will feel a sense of freedom. It is temporary and conditioned, of course, but it gives you a taste of the possibilities of freedom when you fully awaken.

And when you are very concentrated, you can turn your attention to the feeling of “me.” The deeper your concentration is, the more likely you are to feel the sense of “me” weakening. As Ayya Khema says, the less “me” there is, the more free you feel. There is significantly less stress. And when you attain stream-entry, the sense of “me” disappears completely.

Something else you can see – and this is clearest in the fourth jhāna – is how much energy we put into protecting this sense of “me.” Our discursive thinking – our internal dialog – is all designed to protect that sense of “me.” This is why when the mind starts to quiet down, it will rebel. There may even be a sense of panic. This is because the perception of “me” is dying, and it will fight to survive. This is where patience and persistence are critical. You must gently ease the mind back into quiet, serenity, and stillness.

It can be useful at that stage to tap into the feeling of joy, happiness, and freedom that come with the still mind. In other words, rather than paying attention to the stress and fear of the still mind, turn your attention to the peace of stillness. In that way we focus on the positive aspect of the stillness rather than the negative.

You will hear it said – because it is true – that when you awaken, the issue of whether the self exists or not is irrelevant. What is left is only the sense of ease, peace, tranquility, and freedom. You are simply happy. The mind is clear. Concepts and opinions fall away. There is just this.

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What the Buddha Taught

Posted on September 1, 2018 by EricKVanHorn

I remember reading years ago that one problem that Buddhists have is easily explaining what they believe. If you are a Christian or a Muslim or a Jew, this is not so hard. But trying to put the Buddha’s vast system of teachings into a few catch phrases is, well, impossible.

Even different schools of Buddhism disagree on what the Buddha taught. I suppose that is not so strange. The same is true in other religions as well.

For those of us who practice the Buddha’s path, having a framework for his teachings is very important. For example, I have written frequently about acts of sexual misconduct among people who claim to teach the Buddha’s Dharma. But if you understand what the Buddha taught, it is not possible to behave in that way.

So for a while I have wanted to write a paper that outlines what the Buddha taught. And finally, on an unusual rainy day here in New Mexico, I have done this. The result is on the Papers and Projects tab. It is called “What the Buddha Taught.”

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Joy Redux

Posted on August 24, 2018 by EricKVanHorn

I want to revisit a topic about which I have written previously, and that is the topic of joy.

I have been listening recently to some of Ayya Khema’s Dharma talks. If you are not familiar with her, Ayya Khema is one of the most remarkable practitioners of the 20thcentury. She died in 1997. But thanks to the miracles of technology, over 400 of her Dharma talks are available at Dharmaseed.org.

In this talk, Ayya Khema spends quite a bit of time talking about joy in meditation. This is one of the most important parts of the Buddha’s path. It is one of the factors of awakening. However, in all my years of going to retreats, I hardly ever remember hearing it discussed. But I have heard people talking about how hard it is to meditate – regularly – many times.

This has never made any sense to me. Of course, meditation does not always go smoothly. Some days are harder than others. But think of something that you really enjoy doing. Does that always go perfectly? Of course not. But you do it because the enjoyment you get from it outweighs the time when things do not go as well.

The problem is, I believe, the way in which meditation is mis-taught.

The first step in any meditation practice is to establish a sense of well-being. We learn to enjoy the simple act of breathing. And of course this is not easy because our whole lives we have been taught that what we want is to excite the senses. We want good food, sex, music, luxury, etc. And when the Buddha points out to us that this is inevitably going to be a failed strategy for happiness, we think that he is teaching a doctrine of denial.

But wait, there’s more (!). Much more. While we whittle away at our habitual craving for sense pleasure, we simultaneously cultivate joyful states of mind. We replace the unreliable and addictive sense pleasures with the more reliable pleasure that comes from meditation. We can learn to “gladden the mind,” as the Buddha tells us in the Ānāpānasati Sutta [MN 118]. And since we can learn to do this on demand, it does not require us to produce certain conditions so that we can be happy. And as Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu points out, it is a happiness that causes no harm. We are not taking anything from anyone.

And what eventually happens – naturally, in my view – is that the joy, happiness, contentment, and peace that comes from being able to simply stay with the breath becomes eminently more desirable. Now of course this is not the end of the path. We must then use these wonderful states of mind to gain insight and to develop what Ṭhānissaro likes to translate as “discernment.” It is often translated as “wisdom,” but I think that “discernment” more properly captures the active, in-the-moment quality of the Pāli word “pañña.” And this is the fundamental, three-step process of meditation: well-being, jhāna, and discernment.

Ayya Khema further points out that this discernment can happen through any of the Three Characteristics of dukka (stress/suffering), annica (impermanence), and anatta (non-self), although seeing one of these inevitably leads to the other two. It is just that for different people, one of them may provide a more optimal doorway.

But back to the topic of joy. In the first jhāna, joy is the pre-eminent quality. It may manifest in a number of ways, and it may be stronger or weaker. The first jhāna is usually strongest in people who need its healing power the most. In the second jhāna, the joy gets toned down a little into something closer to happiness and contentment. And in the third jhāna, the calm contentment and happiness is joined by equanimity. In the third jhāna you can – as Sharon Salzberg describes it – “sit in the midst of your own experience.” You can conjure up even painful memories, and they simply float by.

All of this is accompanied by stillness and silence. The mind grows quieter. There is a deep sense of peace.

None of this is very easy. There is nothing in our experience that tells us to cultivate a mind at peace. In worldly affairs, no one will encourage us to be in this way. Even most meditation teachers do not tell us that this is what we are working at, that this is a very important part of the path, that we want to learn to get the mind to settle down and then experience the beauty of a mind at ease.

Ayya Krema also points out in this talk that while everyone knows what it means to be angry, hardly anyone knows what it is like to experience joy, especially joy that is self-generated and does not rely on external sense pleasure. That is an astonishingly simple and true statement.

There are so many benefits to the joy, happiness, and contentment that come with the meditative absorptions. A mind at peace has no ill will. It does not want anything. You can experience true metta, the mind that cannot hate. You can experience true muditā. If you are truly happy, why would you not be happy when others are happy? You are already happy, so there is no reason for jealousy.

The stillness also provides a place of healing. We can look at our own suffering – even our most painful memories – with compassion, patience, kindness, and perspective. And as we get more skilled at looking at our pain, when we can see it and not be overwhelmed by it and learn from it, we also naturally develop compassion for all beings. This is the experience of dukkha that we all share. There is no reason to judge others. We see in them our own foolishness, and in their foolishness, we see ours.

And at the center of it all is the cultivation of joy. This is the hub of the wheel of meditation.

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Jack Kornfield and the Coverup

Posted on July 23, 2018 by EricKVanHorn

Apropos of my last blog entry about Lama Surya Das and his acts of sexual misconduct, I ran across this entry from a forum on Surya Das’ sexual abuse at Against the Stream (ATS) Buddhist Society. Most of this entry is about Surya Das himself. But this paragraph about Jack Kornfield really stuck out to me:

In your article you speak of “Kornfield” and his “investigation.” Kornfield is a close friend of Das. One time I rejected Das’ invitation to give me a ride. I guess he finally realized he was never going to get anywhere with me, it took years to convey this message. The next day, Das sicced Kornfield on me during a Dharma event. In fact, Kornfield singled me out to have a talk with me. I’d never met or had spoken to Kornfield. Kornfield tried to intimidate me and tried to force me to leave the Dharma event. When I stood my ground, Kornfield called me a “demon” and referred to Das as his “close friend.” Kornfield is no saint.

You can read the entire entry at https://engagedharma.net/2018/04/08/ats-and-sexual-misconduct/.

Western Buddhism is full of what I call “celebrity teachers.” They are people who – for the most part – are popular because of their personalities, not their understanding of the Dharma or the depth of their practice. Most Western teachers do not even teach rebirth or jhāna. Very few of them understand dependent co-arising or non-self.

This is not just a modern problem. In the well-known and mostly misunderstood Kālama Sutta [AN 3.65], the Kālama people go to the Buddha and ask him how to know if a teaching or a teacher are authentic:

Come, Kālāmas, do not go by oral tradition, by lineage of teaching, by hearsay, by a collection of scriptures, by logical reasoning, by inferential reasoning, by reasoned cogitation, by the acceptance of a view after pondering it, by the seeming competence [of a speaker], or because you think: ‘The ascetic is our guru.’ But when, Kālāmas, you know for yourselves: ‘These things are unwholesome; these things are blameworthy; these things are censured by the wise; these things, if accepted and undertaken, lead to harm and suffering,’ then you should abandon them. – [AN 3.65]

The passage that stands out to me is the “seeming competence of the speaker.” Some people have dynamic, forceful personalities. They can be very convincing even when trying to sell you a bill of goods. Have you ever had a saleperson sell you something that you did not want or need?

We are particularly vulnerable when it comes to our spiritual practice. Women can be particularly vulnerable to men with dynamic personalities. It is a worst-case scenario.

This is an important issue. When a Buddhist teacher commits an act of sexual misconduct, it reflects badly on the beautiful teachings of the Buddha. I am especially sad that people who could benefit from the Buddha’s teachings turn away from them because they have been sexually mistreated, or simply badly treated in any way. The latter has happened to me many times, and often it was by a celebrity teacher.

The Buddha’s teachings could not be clearer on this topic. The third precept says that a disciple of the Buddha – male or female, lay or monastic – agrees to abstain from sexual misconduct. “Sexual misconduct” is using your sexual energy to harm yourself or others. How much clearer can that be?

As we have learned so many times over the years, first there is the crime, and then there is the coverup. The coverup is always worse. Someone like Jack Kornfield should know better than to engage in juvenile, bullying behavior toward someone who is the victim of sexual assault.

Jack Kornfield… shame on you.

 

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It’s Simple

Posted on July 20, 2018 by EricKVanHorn

I have a dear friend who was once a student of Lama Surya Das. I went to a short retreat with Surya Das at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies many years ago. I quite enjoyed it. I also really enjoyed his first book, “Awakening the Buddha Within.” I have recommended that book to many people, although to be sure I read it a very long time ago, and I do not know what I would think about it today.

In any event, my friend told me that when she started to study with Surya, a woman with whom she became friends told her that she had had an unwanted affair with Surya. She also said that later she found out that he had multiple affairs with students, some of which overlapped, and some of which occurred while he was still married. I did some research on the Internet, and while it was difficult to find, sure enough there are references to his sexual indiscretions on various forums.

Surya Das claims to be “enlightened,” what we now more properly call “awakened.” I heard him describe his moment of awakening at the retreat. However, we know from the Buddhist texts that this cannot be possible. According to the texts, someone who is awakened is “accomplished in the Precepts.” This means that they are incapable of breaking them. Surya apparently had some sort of meditative experience that he interprets as awakening. It may have been jhāna. This is a common error. But he certainly is not awakened.

This type of sexual misconduct is – sadly – so common, and yet the Buddha was very clear about karma and how our actions have consequences. For some reason, in many schools of Buddhism they have this notion that you can do an end run around ethical behavior. The Buddha would never have said such a thing. It would be like trying to ignore the law of gravity. The basis for everything the Buddha taught was generosity and virtue, virtue being most clearly defined as the Five Precepts.

One of my favorite discourses is the “Instructions to Rahula at Mango Stone” [MN 61]. In the discourse, the Buddha was talking to his son Rahūla, who was only seven years old. When you think of the Buddha as father talking to his little boy, it is quite endearing. He started the discourse by talking about the importance of always speaking the truth. The commentaries tell us that this is because someone had come to the Bamboo Monastery looking for the Buddha, and Rahūla, who was trying to protect his father’s privacy, told the man that the Buddha was not there. So the Buddha started this discourse by telling Rahula how important it is to always speak the truth.

But then the Buddha talked in detail about how to train yourself in proper conduct. I hope you will read the entire discourse. But this passage will give you the flavor of the teaching:

“What do you think, Rahula: What is a mirror for?”

“For reflection, sir.”

“In the same way, Rahula, bodily actions, verbal actions, and mental actions are to be done with repeated reflection.”

“Whenever you want to do a bodily action, you should reflect on it: ‘This bodily action I want to do — would it lead to self-affliction, to the affliction of others, or to both? Would it be an unskillful bodily action, with painful consequences, painful results?’ If, on reflection, you know that it would lead to self-affliction, to the affliction of others, or to both; it would be an unskillful bodily action with painful consequences, painful results, then any bodily action of that sort is absolutely unfit for you to do. But if on reflection you know that it would not cause affliction… it would be a skillful bodily action with pleasant consequences, pleasant results, then any bodily action of that sort is fit for you to do.”

This is such a common theme in the Buddha’s teaching that every time that I hear one of these sexual misconduct stories, I slowly pound my head on the nearest available hard object. This is not rocket science. Don’t do things that cause harm. And if you do, think about it and try not to do it again. Do not turn it into an exercise in self-judgment. Conversely, try and do things that are beneficial. That’s it. It is not complicated. And if you don’t cultivate ethical behavior, there is no point in meditating or studying the Dharma. You certainly should not be teaching it.

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One Moment

Posted on March 11, 2018 by EricKVanHorn

In Buddhism we often talk about the present moment. And in each life there are billions of present moments.

Most of them are noise. But every so often we have a deeply profound moment. We need to cherish and remember those moments. They are our connection to a greater reality.

There is a lovely article in today’s New York Times about a young woman in Japan. Her village and the local Buddhist temple – where her father is the head monk – were destroyed in the 2011 tsunami. After spending a lot of time providing relief for the local community, she was inspired to succeed her father as the chief monk at the temple.

This story reminded me of one of those moments in my life. I went to India in 2004 on a Buddhist pilgrimage. We had a free day in Bodh Gaya, the Mecca of Buddhism. We were free to walk around, visit the main temple, and do whatever we pleased.

I found myself mainly going to all of the wonderful temples there. Bodh Gaya is full of temples from Buddhist countries around the world. Each temple is in its own native country’s style. It is like a Buddhist United Nations.

After a fashion I found myself in a Japanese Zen temple. I wandered in and there was a nun giving a talk to a group of Japanese. It was in Japanese so obviously I could not understand her. But the mood in that temple was so serene and so deeply profound that I found in that temple a Dharma talk that did not need words. I was completely overwhelmed by the power of that moment.

When I first began practicing the Buddha’s path, a teacher of mine said that even in Asia true Dharma is hard to find. To tell you the truth, at the time I did not believe him. Now many years later I have found that, sadly, that is too true.

But every so often you get a moment like that one. One of the beauties of the Buddha’s path is that in those moments there is no nationality, no religion, no gender, and no race. There is only being, in the most transparent and transcendent way that can be meant. And it is in those moments that the possibilities of this path are revealed.

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Endless School Shootings

Posted on February 16, 2018 by EricKVanHorn

Those of you who follow this blog know that I am working my way through the 547 Jātaka Tales, editing and illustrating them. One of the things that strikes me as I go through this exercise is that these stories were how people for many centuries learned about the teachings of the Buddha. But even more importantly, they were the popular entertainment of the time. If you were a child in a Buddhist culture, you probably spent your evenings listening to these stories. They were TV.

When you grow up immersed in stories about patience, kindness, caring for animals, honesty, compassion, wisdom, and all the other virtuous qualities, they become part of your marrow.

Compare that to how we live.

I used to watch the program The Blacklist, but after a while I was so horrified by the extreme violence that I stopped. I could not believe that anyone thought it was appropriate to put such images on over-the-air television. More recently I started to watch the Netflix series Godless, partly because it was filmed near where I live in New Mexico. By the time they had shown the second graphic rape scene, I decided that this is not something in which I wanted to participate.

Did television cause the shootings in Parkland, Florida? Of course not. Life is always complicated. How we get to a specific point in time is influenced by an infinite array of causes and conditions. The Buddha once said:

“The result of kamma is an inconceivable matter that one should not try to conceive; one who tries to conceive it would reap either madness or frustration.” – [AN 4.77]

But at a certain point people decide how they want to be. This happens to us as individuals and it happens to us collectively. And unless we decide that we want virtue to be a centerpiece in our country, then it will be – as the New York Times headline said – “Leaders Offer Prayers. Children Are Buried. Repeat.”

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