Buddha's Army — Part Two: Shirahige Shrine at Lake Biwa

There has always been an instinct in East Asia to clone objects of Buddhist veneration for the purpose of acquiring merit -- for example the endless reproduction of mani stones in Tibet, the ritual copying of the Heart Sutra with ink and brush, the countless stone-carved Buddhas and Bodhisattvas that adorn the temples and cemeteries.

Stonecarved Buddha statues are ubiquitous in Japan, found not only on holy ground but in also quite unexpected places: one can go for a hike in the mountains and stumble upon a little stone shrine next to the trail, a propos apparently of nothing at all.

The little statues can be centuries old, and more often than not the tourist will encounter them in small assemblies, where they have been collected to make use of the land where they were first erected.

There is a particularly nice congregation gathered at the Shirahige Shrine at Lake Biwa. The statues are considerably larger than normal, and the little park integrates a traditional Shinto shrine as well, which is somewhat unusual in Japan since Buddhist and Shinto sites generally maintain a respectful distance.

Each figure retains its own individual personality, in contra-distinction to Southeast Asia,
where standard canonic forms are conventionally reproduced. 

The famous tori-i stands directly opposite the Shirahige Shrine.

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Buddha's Army — Part One

The surprising discovery early this year of about 3000 Buddha figures buried in a riverbed in Hebei Province will be a source of fascination to anyone interested in East Asian Buddhist iconography and archaeology. This photo which accompanied an article about the find in the National Geographic Daily News from April 12 might represent the future Maitreya Buddha in a traditional contemplative posture as he cogitates upon ways to assist mankind in its restless quest for  enlightenment:

This sculpture is technically sophisticated enough to have originated in the Tang period, yet the theme is as old as Northern Wei, and the gesture universal in appearance, even if  considerably less agonized than Rodin's grunting thinkers.

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Slavoj Žižek and Buddhism

Dharma-protector Manjusri

Slavoj Žižek criticizes Buddhism in two ways: by ridiculing the Dalai Lama's dictum that Buddhism makes you happy—My God, hasn't this man heard about Freud?—and by referencing the support afforded to nationalist militarism in WW II by the Japanese zen sects, citing in particular laudatory remarks expressed by D.T. Suzuki.

The second argument is more easily dispensed with: the political ideologies associated formerly with the zen establishment in Japan have as much relation to the teachings of the Buddha as the Spanish Inquisition does with the teachings of Christ. The abuse and perversion of religious ideals by institutional authority is a sad and ancient story, but there is nothing especially Buddhist about it. Indeed in all the Asian countries where Buddhism flourished, there are remarkably few instances.

The Dalai Lama however can be criticized for advertising the view that Buddhism makes you happy, giving critics the chance to speak of it as "fast-food religion," or see it as simplistic New Age-ism. It's not that Buddhism doesn't make you happy—why would so many people practice it for 2.5 millennia if it didn't?—the question is rather whether the Buddha actually taught that and that the answer is clearly no.

The original teachings of the Buddha—as closely as we can discover them through philological analysis of the earliest layers of the Pali Canon sutras— are contained in the Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path. These teachings say that suffering exists, that the unreflected pursuit of desires is responsible, and by committing to certain ethical precepts and to the practice of meditation, such suffering can be overcome. This is anything but some "Don't worry, be happy" species of spiritual dumbdown. In truth the practice of Buddhism is really quite challenging.

Slavoj Žižek would be better advised to view the Buddha as a kindred spirit, since he was in fact an early philosopher working at the dawn of human literacy, addressing themes common to the Greek Pre-Socratics, and, as evidenced by the early Pali Canon narratives which show him in dialectical exchange with all kinds of contemporary philosophers, ready and eager to respond to any kind of criticism.

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Korea in October

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Every autumn I think of my visit to Korea in October, 1985, where I'd come after a year of teaching in Fukui, Japan. I was studying Buddhist temple architecture at the time, and the temples of Korea are unique and fascinating. I spent a couple weeks backpacking around the countryside, which I found to be geologically like NewYork State or New England, very different from Japan.

The library at Haeinsa contains 81,258 wooden printing blocks from the Tripitaka Koreana. It may be the oldest intact library in the world.

 

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In praise of this phenomenal world

Michael Kenna - Hangshan Mountains Study 1 - Anhui, China

The mountains and rivers of the immediate present 
are manifestations of the paths of the ancient Buddhas. 
(Dogen Zenji)



disclaimer

The Second Turning of the Wheel of Dharma

I was asked to clarify Sunday's post about the Namgyal Monastery inscription in Dharamsala. I don't where it is taken from, but the text derives from the Prajna-Paramita literature, known as the Second Turning of the Wheel. It summarizes the entire teaching in a few simple lines.

Because phenomena are empty—in other words, because things exist only temporarily and can't exist independently of other things—the world is as it were apparitional, even if its constituent elements are subject to cause-and-effect (because nothing exists independently).

Our existence as biorganisms adrift in this world of birth-and-death makes us instinctively view phenomena as permanent and self-sustaining, and inevitably we want to glom onto them. But because we cannot, we are led to suffering. This awareness makes us want to help others.

I should add perhaps that although people can and do practice meditation to good effect without reference to any of this, it is the above that defines meditation as a Mahayana Buddhist practice.

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On the nature of phenomena

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Standing Buddha from Sahri Bahlol, Pakistan, 2nd-3rd c. CE

     

     All phenomena are like a reflection,

     clear and pure without turbulence,

     ungraspable and indescribable, purely

     derived from cause and effect without

     self-nature and location.

     If you, by understanding phenomena

     in this way, work for the welfare of

     sentient beings without discrimination,

     you will be born as sons or daughters

     of the Buddhas.

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I copied this inscription placed over the entrance to Namgyal Monastery, the temple of HH the Dalai Lama, in 1993. Image source unknown. 

Sogyal Rinpoche at Herbst Theatre

I braved the rains last Friday night to attend teachings by Sogyal Rinpoche at Herbst Theatre. (No problem, the Dharma falls like rain, it says in the sutras.) He did not appear anywhere near as devout as the above photo lifted from Wiki Commons might suggest, but seemed altogether cordial while informally interacting with an auditorium full of happy Buddha-folk, many of whom no doubt traveled from afar to hear him.


Rinpoche is one of three great Buddhist masters educated in Tibet and Japan who settled in the West and  published seminal works of American Buddhism that sold millions of copies: "Zen Mind, Beginners' Mind" by Suzuki-roshi, "Spiritual Materialism" by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and his own "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying." These three books in addition to the widespread publications and teachings of HH the Dalai Lama have largely shaped Buddhist identity in the minds of contemporary Americans and Europeans.


I have been fortunate enough in my life to have had some personal contact with Suzuki-roshi, Trongpa and  HHDL, but somehow I had never met up with Sogyal Rinpoche, or indeed any other teacher in the Nyingma ancient wisdom tradition. For 2.5 hours he offered nonstop what he called a "crash course in Buddhism," centering largely upon the practice of meditation. Dzogchen, which is in many ways similar to the methods and teachings of Soto Zen Buddhism, is closely associated with Nyingma-pa, the oldest of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism.


Since I am not a Buddhist teacher, I will not recapitulate his lecture, but a few thoughts remain in my mind:

• Our minds are scattered everywhere, but there doesn't seem to be anybody at home.
• Samsara and nirvana are mental products, so we have to ask what is the quality of the mind that produces the one and the other?
• Real pollution consists of useless speaking and thinking, 80% of which is useless.
• A teacher was asked about the nature of meditation. He replied that it is merely a matter of prolonging the gap between two thoughts.
  

There is a flourishing Rigpa Center in downtown San Francisco whose exact whereabouts are disclosed at http://rigpabayarea.org/.

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Hymn to the Perfection of Wisdom

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Homage to the Perfection of Wisdom, the lovely, the holy.

The Perfection of Wisdom gives light.

Unstained, the entire world cannot stain her. 

She is the source of light, and from everyone 

      in the triple world she removes darkness. 

Most excellent are her works.

She brings light so that all fear and distress may be forsaken, 

      and disperses the gloom and darkness of delusion.

She herself is an organ of vision.

She has a clear knowledge of the own-being of all dharmas,

      for she does not stray away from it.

The Perfection of Wisdom of the Buddhas sets in motion 

      the Wheel of Dharma.

Painting by Peter Adams, American Legacy Fine Arts, Pasadena.

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Zhenru Monastery -- Part one

In February 1987 I was backpacking around China for the first time and found my way to Zhenru Si (Jenru Temple) in Jiangxi Province. I learned about this place from an article by Stephen Batchelor which appeared in the Middle Way magazine in 1985, a publication of the Buddhist Society in Britain. Stephen had heard that this temple existed, and that the monks were doing zen meditation on a daily basis, but he had not yet himself visited it.

I decided to do so, and arrived in Nanchang, the capital of Jiangzi. In those days there was barely a tourist infrastructure in place in China, which had only opened to foreign visitors in 1979. As in Russia, tourists had to first report to the local Intourist office to show their papers and get assigned a hotel room. At that time I hadn’t learned any Chinese yet, and almost no one in China spoke English—unbelievable, only 20 years ago—so I hired the services of a translator and a driver, and a government cadre had to come along too to make sure I was up to nothing subversive.

We drove for two hours out into the countryside and up into the mountains and eventually arrived at our destination. Aside from the fact that no one in the West at the time really understood to what extent Buddhist practice still existed in China, there were two important reasons to visit this remote place. First, it was unknown if there were Chinese monks still doing chan (zen), since it was commonly supposed that the practice had disappeared from Buddhist temples during the period of syncretism and the disappearance of the Five Houses (chan sects) in the 14th century. The second reason was to see if the existing zen meditation practice bore any resemblance to the school of Soto Zen introduced by Dogen Zenji to Japan after he learned studied it at Cao-Dong sect’s Tiantong temple near Ningbo in the early 1200’s.

If this subject is of interest to you, please read my interview with Abbot Chen in the white box below. Be sure to click on the following pictures for a closer view.

Zhenru from a distance on a bleak February day. The temple was savaged during the Cultural Revolution and rebuilt mainly with money from Taiwan. Nevertheless, according to Abbot Chen, zen meditation has continued here without interruption for over 1000 years.

Zhenru is surrounded with rice fields. The imperial government never allowed monks to do perform ritual alms-gathering as is still done today in Southeast Asia.

Venerable T Guang, Guest Manager (l.), and Venerable Yi Chen (r.), Abbot of Zhenru monastery. Below a statue of Manjusri, the Perfect Wisdom Boddhisattva, found typically in his glass box at the entrance to a chan  meditation hall.

 

Article continues here.

Zhenru Monastery -- Part two

The meditation hall is also the dormitory, as traditionally so in Japan.

The monks sit on the benches facing outward during meditation, and sleep on the platforms up above them.

This is the altar in the center of the meditation hall, which reminds me of the news stands on the U-Bahn platforms in Berlin. The figure inside is that of Buddha's uncle, who according to the legend taught Buddha how to meditate. Note the thermos bottles to the left, and smoke marks above the niche. It seems indicative of the earthy quality of Chinese zen, compared with its highly-polished presentation in Japan.

This is the Chinese version of the kyosaku, or wake-up stick. There are two versions: one for an offense against the chan sect, the other (with different Chinese characters) for an offense against the rules of the monastery.

The traditional fish drum and meal bell, brought also to temples in Japan.

Chinese Buddhist temples commonly have a Paradise Wall in a narrow hallway behind the meditation hall, an opportunity for local people to splurge on folk art. In addition to all the Arhats and Lohans and Boddhisattvas, Guanyin is seen pouring out libations of mercy through a plastic garden hose.

Article continues here.

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Zhenru Monastery -- Part three

My interview with Abbot Yi Chen of Zhenru monastery was much briefer than I hoped, mainly because the government cadre who had been appointed to watch over us insisted that it not last longer than an hour. Another problem arose that such commonly understood Buddhist terms as Heart Sutra or Prajnaparamita in English aren't the same in Chinese, so unless the translator is knowledgeable, it takes a bit of jockeying around to discover what is meant.
Despite its brevity my article was published in several places in the U.S. and Europe, including San Francisco Zen Center's Windbell magazine. It showed perhaps for the first time that chan monasteries exist in modern China. I interviewed three more temple abbots in the early 1990's, but none of these conversations had the same effect.

Open publication - Free publishing - More china

Ten Reasons to Like Sarah Palin and the Tea Bag Party

1. She is like a character out of a 1940's cartoon strip taking on human form. Interpretations may vary: to me she seems a cross between Goofy in the old Disney films and Olive Oyl masquerading as Popeye the Sailor.

2. Her absurdist politics provide such welcome comic relief from the rest of the political establishment, whose activities succeed only in engendering one insufferable headache for virtually everybody in the entire nation.

3. Leaders of the Tea Bag party evidently like to dress up in American Revolutionary costumes. What a terrific idea. If only our Senators could be persuaded to dress up in tights and gowns and wear floral headwreaths, then Congress could become an ongoing Renaissance Faire and taxpayers could (fer chrissakes) enjoy some decent entertainment for a change.

4. For everytime you see Sarah Palin you undress her mentally and wonder how gorgeous she must have looked 20 years ago, and if she's still getting any, and if she shaves her pubic hair.

5. For she wears red a lot, apparently to attract attention. I can sympathize with that. I myself wear black all the time, so I can blend in the with shadows and hope that no one will notice me.

6. For she wears funny-looking eye-glasses, like the Germans do.

7. For she can fly and swoop down from the sky in an instant like a graceful, rubescent hawk, and terminate the life of a cowardly moose in exercise of her 2nd Amendment rights, using any one of a number of NRA-approved and endorsed weapons of destruction.

8. For she doesn't want to punish gay people, as long as they don't pull any shit and try to get married.

9. For she presents no real danger to progressive politics. Clearly she can only divide the Republican Party further, since Big Money is obviously not going to support someone as unpredictably lunatic as she is.

9. For she is incomprehensible and arrives totally unexpected, like a basket of prunes discovered in the waiting room of a dentist's office, or the scent of gunpowder at a meeting of Quakers.

10. For she walks on the same path to liberation, albeit more noisily than the rest of us, and will therefore one day achieve annutara-samyak-sam-bodhai -- unexcelled complete perfect Enlightenment. Or as Jack Kerouac put it, she is equally to be loved, equally a coming Buddha.

Out of Shanghai

I've written three posts recently relating to Shanghai, and I’ll conclude by describing my final departure in 1990 from that fabled city. (I doubt if I'll go there again, as I can't bare to think what's become of the place.)

The overnight boat to the Buddhist island of Putuoshan left its downtown dock on the Huangpu River at the Bund promptly at 8pm. It probably still does so today, since the Chinese concept of a vacation has been since time immemorial to go off for a visit to a Buddhist temple, and Putuoshan is famous as one of the “four sacred mountains” in Chinese Buddhism.

Western visitors and Lonely Planet hadn’t yet caught on to this, so I was the only waiguo-ren on board. I booked passage in the cheapest possible cabin, being afraid that by traveling in steearage I might wake up in the morning to find my gear gone, hard for any backpacker to replace while en route in any developing country.

The boat turned out to be not a modern ferry, but rather a pre-WWII south seas freighter converted into a sort-of passenger ship. My cabin on this floating turd-bucket was a small space whose every surface was composed of rusting white-washed cast iron, except for the small cot with a single worn wool blanket. The interior stank of urine, and the latch and hinges of the single, oval-shaped port-hole had rusted shut years before. The smell of urine and the incessant growling of the ship’s engines that vibrated through the walls made any hope of sleep impossible.

But I was transported mentally. Here I was, reenacting the same scene found in numberless Hollywood movies, travelling in a south seas tramp-steamer along the coast of China. I pressed my head against the dirty port-window and could make out the moon flittering across the waves of the East China Sea. I felt very happy.

The vessel released its human cargo onto the dock at Putuoshan around 5am, sufficient time to race to the Puji Temple for morning service. I put on my Soto zen rakasu and joined in with the monks.

Chinese ceremonies are huge fun, since if it’s a large temple, the monks march around the Buddha Hall in concentric circles, sort of like a Buddhist conga line, and there are wonderful Chinese percussion instruments that punctuate the chanting, sounding occasionally like Beijing Opera. (So much more congenial than the formality of morning services I attended at Ehei-ji in Japan, where kneeling motionless in seiza for 45 minutes or more left you worrying if the circulation to your legs had been cut off permanently.)

I poked around the sacred island, dedicated to Guan-Yin (aka: Avalokiteshvara), for a few hours, but found it the least interesting of the four holy mountains in China, due in part no doubt to my profound lack of sleep. Consequently I took the afternoon ferry to Ningbo, before moving on to Dogen’s temple at Tiantong.

[Picture of Puji Temple by James Johnson. More pictures of Putuoshan by James Johnson are posted here.]

Ecobuddhist prayer by the Sakya Trizin Rinpoche

When I pray one-pointedly, with fervent faith and devotion,
To the master Padmakara, to Padmapani, venerable Tara
and other deities
In whom the Three Precious Jewels are all gathered,
I beseech you to direct your enlightened intention compassionately toward us
From the invisible expanse of reality!

All aeons of time that are illustrious in lifespan and merits
are destroyed
By ill-intentioned thoughts and deeds, and by evil barbarity.
Will you not therefore direct your enlightened intention
compassionately
Toward living beings who, lacking positive opportunities,
Commit an enormous mass of degenerate actions, embodying the five degradations?

The poison of global warming due to the actions of machines in all places and times
Is causing the existing snow mountains to melt,
And the oceans will consequently bring the world within reach
of the aeon’s end.
Grant your blessings that it may be protected from these conditions!

In brief, dependent on strong desire and craving,
This world generated by ordinary past actions
Is beginning to be swiftly transformed into a desert.
Grant your blessings that the negative past actions which are responsible
Might cease, right where they are!


More at:

http://www.ecobuddhism.org/wisdom/aspiration_prayers_and_poems/sakya_trizin_rinpoche

Symposium concluded

Second day of the Symposium, today's subject being The Future of Soto Zen Buddhism in America. There being such a large number of people from SFZC there, the discussion was diverted to almost any subject imaginable except the designated topic, but it was often interesting nonetheless.
Had a quite remarkable encounter in the elevator with Huitso-roshi (Suzuki-roshi's son, now head teacher at Ehei-ji), who seemed delighted to learn that I had practiced with Sassagawa-roshi at Tenryu-ji (in Matsuoka). When I mentioned that I taught for a year at Fukui University, he bowed deeply and thanked me for coming to "help out" in Japan, a very Japanese form of courtesy.
Also had solid conversations with Mel Weitsman and Gil Fronsdal, which pleased me.

Symposium

I'm attending a two-day symposium at SF Zen Center and at UC Berkeley entitled "Zen Practice at Fifty." This morning's session was devoted to Suzuki-roshi's appearance in America 50 years ago--why he came here and how he established the first successful zen community in the U.S.
Since nobody really knows why he came here, the discussion eventually wound down with a number of old-timers sharing their personal recollections of Roshi.
How much more clever were the early Tang Chinese masters, who converted the question why Bodhidharma came from the West into the world's first and finest koan.
For the record: I too had a relationship with Suzuki-roshi, but I will never say a single word.
In the evening a pleasant reception for entering and returning graduate students at SF State History Department. Mirabile dictu, I actually met someone who's interested in early German medieval history.