Tara and Karma redux

An excerpt from a prayer to Tara:

From the ripening of karma caused by delusion, grant the blessing that shields, protects and conceals.

Here is some commentary by Chagdud Khadro:

"[This] reminds us that all karma is caused by delusion. For one completely beyond delusion, remaining within the mind's natural awareness, phenomena arise and subside in and of themselves without karmic traces---as Chagdud Rinpoche sometimes says, like `writing on water.'

"A question often asked is why one should pray for the blessing that conceals one from one's own karma. Consider the fact that we have experienced countless cycles of existence, that we cannot remember them (most people cannot even clearly remember their childhood) and cannot know what kind of karma we have created until it ripens. When we begin spiritual practice and the purification of negative karma, we pray that past karma does not suddenly ripen and create massive obstacles that we cannot overcome at our level of practice.

"For example, one of the karmic results of killing is a short life. Who of us can say that in past lives we have never been a soldier caught in the violence of war, or a hunter, or a bird of prey? If the full force of the karma of such a rebirth were to intervene, we might die before our connection to spiritual practice could become well established. Death's interruption of life would then represent a lost or greatly delayed oppurtunity and much more suffering. We request protection and concealment until karmic obstacles are within the reach of our ability to purify them and can become a source of realization rather than of samsaric suffering.

"We should not make this request in th expectation that obstacles will never appear. The very nature of human rebirth is that of sickness, old age and death, and even great bodhisattvas are subject to these conditions. However, their experience of illness is very different from that of an ordinary person or even a less realized practitioner. For them obstacles arise and subside within the sphere of nondual awareness; their ability to purify obstacles benefits all living beings."

---

This passage means a lot more to me now than it did a couple of weeks ago. I think that through my Red Tara practice, I have been able to see the karma ripening in my life. Surely this karma has been ripening all the time, but I have not had the wisdom to see the karmic source in my own actions. I also think that by clearly perceiving the connection between the karmic fruit and the karmic seed, I am thereby purifying the karma. There are a couple of very specific events in my life I am thinking about, but for various reasons I won't go in to detail. However, the events coming from the ripened karma are not events that I can't handle, so I believe that Tara is helping me to purify my karma by causing it to ripen fairly quickly (which allows me on the one hand to more easily see it's source, and on the other hand to make more rapid spiritual progress), but also preventing the karmic consequences from erupting in an intense conflagration.

Some photos from yesterday's hike

Thanks to Dan for taking these photos.

Another fine hike

As regular readers of this blog may have surmised, I go hiking regularly on Tuesdays. Today I went with a Buddhist friend of mine. As we approached the trailhead there were half a dozen cars pulled over on the side with people looking up and pointing. We stopped and looked to see what the fuss was about. There were three black bears high up in the tree, probably somewhere between 20 and 30 feet. One of them had his snout braced right in a notch, looking straight down at everybody rather lazily. A little bit up the road there was a bear feeding about 10 feet from the road. I've run across bears before, but never so many at once, and I've never seen them up so high in a tree.

We chatted a lot about various things, with my explaining my reluctance to believe in the supernatural. I am going to be attending a retreat at a Buddhist monastery two weekends from now in a city where I used to live. The funny thing is that I had no idea that I was living right next to such an active Buddhist center when I was there, and it was only after moving that I found the dharma. So I mentioned to my friend that a Lama must have smiled on me when I was there, and he pointed out that this was supernatural thinking. I must admit that I do have many supernatural type thoughts, but whenever I get into an extended analysis, I tend to discount them. (By the way, when I say "supernatural" I'm referring to what is conventionally referred to that way. Things like invisible spirits, reincarnation, the power to turn someone toward the dharma through a smile.) I have had spiritual experiences, just like that strong connection with Tara that I mentioned. After having read Thich Nhat Hanh's excellent book Living Buddha, Living Christ, as I was falling asleep I heard a subtle voice tell me: "You have let yourself be suffused with the Holy Spirit. I'm proud of you." I felt such an intense peace after that. It was quite remarkable. It may be worth pointing out that Thich Nhat Hanh's main thesis was that the Holy Spirit is very akin to the idea of Buddha nature.

I guess the spiritual aspect for me disappears if I think about it too much. I used to find this type of statement offensive. My commentary would be: well that's because you're too afraid to face the truth, so you don't think things through. It's like someone wants to say complacent in their ignorance, so they purposely avoid facts which run contrary to their worldview. However, I think there's a difference, especially as I affect others. By taking the spiritual path, I am attempting to transform my negativity and unhappiness, converting it into a positive effect on the world. I hope I'm not using spirituality as an excuse to stick my head in the ground, but rather as a way to help myself and others at the same time. One of the things that really hooked me about Buddhism was the Bodhisattva vow I read in the Diamond Sutra:

"However many beings there are in whatever realms of being might exist, whether they are born from an egg or born from a womb, born from the water or born from the air, whether they have form or no form, whether they have perception or no perception or neither perception nor no perception, in whatever conceivable realm of being one might conceive of beings, in the realm of complete nirvana I shall liberate them all. And though I thus liberate countless beings, not a single being is liberated."

The spiritual foundation of Buddhism is the altruistic wish to benefit others. That's certainly not sticking your head in the ground! Also notice the little proviso at the end. This is a reference to developing wisdom or prajna, the ability to see the true nature of things. To be of maximum benefit to other beings, you need wisdom.

So, even if I'm fuzzy on the exact spiritual mechanics, I feel that my path is a good one.

Exit from samsara?

In a comment to a recent post, anonymous said that he didn't think anyone could escape from the cycle of samsara without a lot of help. That sounds true to me. In Buddhism, we go to three sources for help: the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. The Buddha and other highly realized beings that have come before us have had great compassion, and have left us with teachings and tools which we can use to transcend the cycle of samsaric suffering. Teachers alive today are precious and help to spread the dharma. They give us tools we can use, but ultimately we need to have the will to use them. I have heard many excellent things from such teachers, usually prodding me out of my self-complacent peace. In fact, we heard an excellent talk today at our center by a remarkable Buddhist nun.

One of the teachings that is propagated in Tibetan Buddhism is deity practice, like the Red Tara practice. When we were practicing today, I felt joyful and happy, as though I had an abiding connection with this female Buddha Arya Tara, who has such depth of compassion, that she vows to help all sentient beings who even mention her name. She responds to requests to help people in the bardo find a fortunate rebirth. No wonder Chagdud Rinpoche introduced this practice to Westerners, I thought. Tara really seems to be playing the role of Jesus (or Mary?) in Christian traditions.

But then there's a part of the ceremony where it says Tara's form dissolves into the natural sphere of emptiness: AH AH AH. Your mind rests in this state of natural awareness for the duration of the meditation session; then you reappear spontaneously in the form of Tara. Appearances are perceived purely as the body of the deity, sounds as the speech of the deity, and thoughts as the mind of the deity. this perception of pure phenomena is held as extensively as possible throughout the day.

This is a significant difference. Here we recognize that Tara is not ultimately real. Like all other concepts, she is a raft to be discarded once we've used it to cross a river. That's my interpretation of why we visualize her dissolving. However, as we cannot at this stage live beyond concepts all the time, at some point we bring her visualization back, as an important method of improving ourselves and guiding our behavior.

It's as if when praying to Jesus, you were to transcend the concept of Jesus, gaining access to a much wider mental space.

Two photos from a recent hike

These are from my hike this past Tuesday. I figured since I'd seen a rat snake and then a rattlesnake on two successive hikes, that bringing a camera might be a good idea. I didn't see any snakes, but I did run across this red-spotted newt, which, according to wikipedia, is one of the most common salamander species in North America.

Karma etc.

The following is a quote from Red Tara Commentary: Instructions for the Concise Practice Known as Red Tara: An Open Door to Ultimate Awareness by Chagdud Khadro (Jane Tromge)


Next, these dualistic tendencies bring about fictitious formations, both elemental and mental, of self and grosser projections of other. As the whole mind-body makeup becomes increasingly dense, beings take rebirth after rebirth in bodies that correspond to the tendencies that develop in their mindstreams. They are subject to the karmic outcomes created by these tendencies, but, lost in the patterns of dualistic confusion, they are unable to trace karmic events back to their source in the mind. In their ignorance, they attribute tragedies to blows of fate, unexpected triumphs to luck. They do not see that all aspects of their situation, including the bodies they inhabit, have been self-created over countless lifetimes.

The dualistic mind, the mind that grasps at self and gives self-interest priority over the interests of others, arises as the five poisons, which in turn leas to six types of rebirth: ignorance leading to rebirth as an animal, greed to rebirth as a hungry spirit, anger to rebirth as a hell being, jealousy combined with some virtue to rebirth as a jealous god (also known as a demigod), pride combined with virtue to rebirth as a long-lived god (deva) and great virtue combined with a mixture of all five poisons to rebirth as a human.


Well, first of all, smile! You've been born as a human. That means you have accumulated great virtue in past lives. I love the way Chagdud Khadro says that humans have accumulated "great virtue," whereas devas have accumulated only virtue, and demigods have only "some virtue." Already, as humans, our oppurtunities abound.

This passage is difficult for me, because I am not predisposed to accept reincarnation as literally true, nor am I predisposed to accept the existence of devas and hungry ghosts and the other classes of sentient being as literally true. (Excepting animals and humans, I suppose.) And, according to Buddhist thinking, I shouldn't accept them until I come to believe them for solid reasons. I know when Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of reincarnation, he speaks of it much more in the way we live on after we die. How our elements are recycled, and how our behavior has ramifications. In an event, it would be helpful to me to try to interpret these paragraphs more metaphorically.

The following sentence may provide some clues:

...[L]ost in the patterns of dualistic confusion, they are unable to trace karmic events back to their source in the mind. In their ignorance, they attribute tragedies to blows of fate, unexpected triumphs to luck.

Perhaps one way to think of this is that a tragedy is a tragedy only if we perceive it as a tragedy, and an unexpected triumph is only so if we perceive it to be so. If we create the impression that tragedies and unwelcome events are, in fact, cruel blows of fate, we create suffering for ourselves. On the other hand, it is possible for such events to be regarded as teachers. When something that seems bad happens, one can ask oneself, "What can I learn from this?" Similarly, with the wisdom to see through tragedies, one also sees through triumphs. For me, I tend to get to connected to the triumphs, some might even say addicted to the triumphs. Only they are triumphs as conceived by me in my ignorance. If only things were this way, I will be happy. If only I achieve this goal, life will be good. When these "triumphs" fail to come to pass, I can get bitter and resentful, all because I ignorantly invested so much of myself in an illusion. I think it's good to let life flow, not being too attached to outcomes.

Here's a fascinating sentence:

They do not see that all aspects of their situation, including the bodies they inhabit, have been self-created over countless lifetimes.

In the Buddhist philosophy of emptiness, one realizes that nothing real is self-created. There is no separately existing "me" which exists entirely of my own creation. "I" am interconnected with the entire universe, in many complicated ways. So I guess what this implies is that tragedy and triumph are not truly real. This makes sense since these really are subjective concepts. And what of the fact that our bodies are self-created? I wonder what she means here. Certainly our perception of our bodies is not completely accurate, so that the mental construct we identify with our bodies is not real. I have a feeling there's something deeper that I'm missing. In the next paragraph, she describes how various mental poisons actually give rise to rebirth in various types of bodies, so that our mental activity now affects the body we live in the future. Wow! That makes quite a bit of sense! Actually our behavior now really does affect our future body, in all manner of ways. For example, being very bitter all the time can indeed have a deleterious effect on one's health. I do know that my feeling of well-being is closely tied to my mental state.

I'll bet there's a lot more to be dug up here. Comments welcome!

Vacuous deer tick update

So I went into the doctor this past Tuesday, because I spotted a small bullseye rash at one of the tick bites. As this is characteristic of Lyme disease, I rushed to get it checked out. The place was extremely busy, and so I had to wait a while. When I showed the P.A. the rash, he said "You don't mean this little thing here?" Apparently, although it was a bullseye, and he couldn't say for sure that it wasn't Lyme disease, he was pretty sure that it wasn't. Since I had been bitten so many times, he put me on the antibiotic doxycycline and had blood drawn for tests of several tick-borne diseases. Wednesday morning I woke up with an itchy rash. At first I though this was the tick bites getting inflamed, but after getting the rash on parts of my body that had never been bitten, I figured it was an allergic reaction to the antibiotic. So I called the doctor and they had me get my butt in there. The PA wasn't a hundred percent sure whether the rash was a tick reaction or a reaction to the medicine. He ordered a fast blood test to see what my white cells were doing. My blood test came back fairly normal, and it seemed unlikely that I had a bacterial infection. We still have to wait for the blood tests that were ordered Monday to come back. So they shot me up with a dose of the antiflammatory decadron to counteract allergic shock, and gave me a few alavert samples. He's having me wait until the blood tests arrive to see whether I need to take some other antibiotic.

Killing?

In the last post someone asked about killing animals, such as the deer tick, and what types of life are considered sacred to Buddhists. This is a deep and rich topic.

Plant life is not considered bad to kill because it is not sentient. Anything with volition is sacred. This includes deer ticks, ants, mosquitos, and the like. It is impossible for us not to kill, just by our very existence. But that doesn't mean we can't try to do as little as possible. His Holiness the Dalai Lama is not a vegetarian because he gets jaundice unless he eats meat. His take is that, even if you cannot be a vegetarian, you can at least be joyful that there are those of us who can. I felt remorse at taking the lives of the deer ticks. The truth is that I didn't know what else to do, and I was so overcome with the desire to get rid of them, that the idea of somehow letting them live never took hold. This is a signal to me that I am not as advanced as I'd like to be. I did not maintain my detachment. Here's another example. A couple of weeks ago I went for a hike up in the mountains. (This is when I saw the rat snake.) I meditated in a little side valley off of the main trail. Right in the middle of my meditation, a mosquito landed on my hand. I watched as it inserted its needle-nose into my skin. I let it, figuring it was best not to kill. Unfortunately, the longer is stayed, sucking my blood, the more agitated I got. I finally brought it up to my face to look closely, and its abdomen had turned ruby red. I experienced an extreme revulsion, but I had the compassion to blow on it to signal it to fly away. So it did, but it continued to buzz around, and finally it landed on my shirt. Having lost all patience, I killed it. I really regret it now. Perhaps I can do better in the future.

We humans are lucky because we have the choice not to kill. Many animals, especially predators, are not so lucky. It is their nature to kill, and in so doing, they create negative karma, just like the negative karma created by my vengeful mosquito murder. In Buddhist mythology, there are 6 realms of samsara: the realm of humans, the realm of animals, the realm of hungry ghosts, the hell realms, the realm of jealous Gods (demigods), and the realm of Gods. Buddhas have completely transcended all of these realms. Depending on the karma you create in this and past lives, you are reborn in a different realm. The human realm is an auspicious realm because we have the capability of transforming negative karma through our spiritual practice. In other words, we can turn suffering into progress. We can use obstacles as teachers. If your karma is too negative, you are reborn as an animal, and it can take you eons to escape, because you keep creating more negative karma. Hungry ghosts and the hell realms are even more negative. The jealous Gods and Gods are more positive, but their egos get bloated, and they can't see beyond their ignorance. It is said that a God lives in extreme luxury. All his or her wants are fulfilled, and they live in extreme happiness and contentment. This is because of great virtue in previous lives. Unfortunately, they are wasting this positive karma, completely burning it off for self-centered debauchery, if you will. I think that 7 days before a God dies, they realize they are going to die, and they experience intense suffering in those last days. Having burned off their positive karma, they are reborn in a lower realm. Humans have the power to transcend the cycle of samsaric suffering by following the bodhisattva path, which means: 1)Having genuine compassion for all sentient beings, like people, including those we usually ignore or dislike, like mosquitoes, like deer ticks. 2)Having true perception of the nature of reality, that nothing exists independently from other things and from our conceptualization.

I would like to mention something Alexander Berzin, H.H. the Dalai Lama's translator has pointed out. Namely, in being kind to insects, we shouldn't neglect other human beings. It would be outrageous indeed to go to elaborate lengths to rescue an ant from drowning, but then to turn away someone at your door asking for help.

Hitchhikers

As I was meditating last night and this morning, I kept feeling itches on my legs and hips. I thought they might be some kind of bug, like fleas. However, when I looked closely, I didn't see anything. Just a few minutes ago, I happened to look down and see a very tiny critter crawling along the surface of my leg. It looked like some kind of mite. That's strange, I thought. What on earth is it? As I stared at it, eventually recognition dawned. It's a tick! A deer tick, famous for being about the size of a period at the end of a sentence. I immediately investigated the site of a particularly intense itch that I had momentarily experienced earlier. What do you know? There were about 15 of the little guys all attached, kind of like particles of pepper. I pulled as many as I could find off using tweezers. Without hyperbole I can say there were around 50 total attached mostly to my legs. (Some made there way to my torso and arms.) What an interesting price to pay for visiting such a remote trail yesterday! Seeing these little guys, I realized I could easily have been bitten countless times in the past and never noticed. Apparently most people who've been bitten by a deer tick never realize it. Unfortunately, deer ticks are the lyme disease bearers, so I'm going to go see a doctor tomorrow, in case they want to dose me up with antibiotics. I live in a low risk area, but I was bitten 50 times. Gadzooks!

Nice Hike

I went for a nice hike today. The weather was beautiful, and I got to see some grand scenery. As I was walking back to my car along a dirt road I came upon a juvenile timber rattlesnake. It didn't have any rattles yet, but its head was definitely a rattlesnake's head, and its markings were rattlesnake markings. As I got close, it puffed out the part of its body behind its head. It was small, and its body tapered pretty quickly from the width of its head to its tale, giving it the appearance of a long triangle. To tell the truth, it was pretty strange looking.

Last week I went for a hike and saw a 4-foot rat snake. I thought it wasn't aware of me, but when I did some research afterward, I realized that its body was kinked, a classic stress response in these snakes. They often do this when they see people, apparently. (Thanks to wikipedia!)

Incorrect Thinking

That person over there
Is not like me.
She doesn't understand
an extremenly subtle point.
She doesn't have
The same understanding that I have.
I could explain this point
But you wouldn't understand either.

That person over there
is not like me.
His motivation is impure.
Look how he struts about,
looking for worldy approval.
He is beneath my contempt.
I hope he gets run over.

Those people over there
are not like me.
Look how they cluster together.
They all dress alike.
They are not interested
in the world outside their sphere.
They are so shallow
and vapid.

That person over there is just like me.
Someone should put him out of his misery.

Off topic? Probably.

I just sent the movie, Primer back to Netflix, after watching it three times, and reading a Wikipedia article on it. It is a great, artful, time travel movie. However, the plot was very hard to follow the first time through, and by the second time more details fell into place. I really needed to read the Wikipedia explanation of the plot before it all came together for me. One of my favorite parts of the movie involves the two main characters Abe and Aaron traveling backward in time in two boxes they have constructed. The box allows you to ride in it backward until you get to the time when the box was originally turned on. You see Abe stumble out of his Box, and then after a few seconds Aaron stumbles out of his. Abe says to Aaron that he got out of the box too soon! Hee hee. This is the sort of detail that is missed by most time travel movies I have seen, and these things tend to get muddled in books as well.

There are two basic approaches to Time Travel, which I will whimsically refer to as the "Back to the Future" approach, and the
"Twelve Monkeys" approach. In the former, it is possible to go back and change the past. You will not read about yourself in a history book before leaving on your journey. Time travel makes changes to the time line possible. This is probably the most confusing type of time travel, and is exactly the sort of thing that happens in Primer. The "Twelve Monkeys" approach holds that you cannot change the past because it's already happened. Thus you could read about yourself appearing in a time machine in a newspaper from 5 years ago before you actually do it. There is a wonderful short story, "By His Bootstraps," by Robert Heinlein that explores this theme.

Red Tara Practice

The picture above depicts a statue of Red Tara, which I recently purchased for my shrine. I chose her because, one the one hand, I felt like some gender balance was needed, on the other hand the Khenpos suggested Tara as a good statue for our new shrines, and on the gripping hand, we perform a Red Tara sadhana at our center twice a month. Okay, I better explain what's going on in that last sentence. There's at least two science fiction novels by Larry Niven and Jerry(?) Pournelle in which an alien race with three hands exists. They have a modified phrase for "On the other hand," since they have two other hands, which allows them to make three points. For some reason, the third hand is called the "gripping hand." Hee hee. Some forms of Avalokiteshvara (Chenrezi) have one thousand hands, which could be extremely convenient for setting forth multiple contingencies.

Red Tara practice is, to my mind, somewhat complicated. I haven't received transmission of the teaching, so perhaps that's why. If the chance ever comes, I will definitely take it. In any event, I've been listening to a CD, which helps. Red Tara is said to be the embodiment of pure awareness. So praying to Tara, and performing a Red Tara sadhana, are ways to awaken our own perception of pure phenomena, of reality in its actuality. To see that nothing exists independently.

There are two beautiful mantras that are chanted in the sadhana. I wish that I could convey their tune, but I'll have to content myself to simply reproducing the english transliteration of the syllables.

Mantra 1: JE TZUN P'HAG MA DROL MA KHYED KHYEN NO GAL KYEN KUN SEL SAM DON NYUR DRUB DZOD

Mantra 2: OM TARE TAM SOHA

When chanting mantras I try to think of myself as a vibrating bell, releasing energy as I vocalize the syllables. It is especially potent when done with others.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (Wallace Stevens)

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

Mindfulness Training

I went to a secular meditation class last night, although a couple other members of my sangha also came. It was a very different experience from the meditation I'm used to. It was much more relaxed, and there was no big commitment to help all other sentient beings at the outset, although as we closed, we expanded our desire for happiness and other good things to the other members in the group. A small start, but essential.

The teacher gave basic instructions: concentrate on your breath, and whenever you notice that your attention has wandered gently bring it back to your breath. I've heard this before, and I think I unconsciously felt that at some point, when I got really good at meditation, my mind would never wander. Pema Chodron has said that your mind wanders less when you have practiced awhile. The teacher last night put a different spin on it. Namely, the more you practice returning your attention to the present moment, the better you will be at this throughout the day. If you are good at catching yourself wander while seated on the cushion, you will also improve at catching yourself in day-to-day life. This way, being truly present, you can escape from your usual habit patterns that cause so much suffering. Thus, the mind wandering is an essential part of meditation, because it needs to wander so that you can notice it wandering.

Anyway, I thought that was a fantastic way of looking at things. Most of the explanation above is my own extrapolation, by the way.

Hugging Meditation

We heard a teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh at our center today, and he described three practical meditations: telephone meditation, driving meditation, and hugging meditation. I'd like to concentrate on the third one, which I'd never heard of before.
The idea is, before hugging a loved one, to breathe in and out deeply three times. This puts you in the present moment and prepares you to experience the hug deeply. While hugging your loved one, breathe in and out three times. Breathe in: my loved one is alive in my arms. Breathe out: I am so happy. Do this three times. He said that there's no need to pat the other person when doing this, that this can be a sign of not being truly present. If you appreciate the other person's presence, she will feel it.
If you wish for a hug, breathe in and out three times, and go to your partner and bow.

There is a second, more difficult, level of practice. Instead of breathing in and out three times, you breathe in and out four times in the middle of the hug. On the first pair, you breathe in and out that you and your loved one are both alive. On the second pair, you breathe in and out that your loved one has died and that you are still alive. On the third one, you breathe in and out that your loved one is still alive and you have died. On the fourth one, you again berathe that you are both alive. By the time you reach the fourth pair of breaths, you have become more grateful and happy at the other person's presence.

Haiku concerning a ramification of drinking

The cool bathroom tile
Pressed against the side of my face
Is an oasis

Nifty Dhammapada Quote

Like the Himalayas
Good [people] shine from afar.
But bad [people] move unseen
Like arrows in the night.

Emptiness as an antidote to fear

At our Buddhist center today we heard another teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh, whom I really enjoy as a teacher. Both he and the Dalai Lama write very inspiring books. The topic today was emptiness, which is a term that can be easily misinterpreted. To say something is empty is not to say that it doesn't exist, or that it is worthless, but that it has no self-nature, no independent existence. For example, a sheet of paper does not exist by itself, but depends on many conditions and causes. The example Thich Nhat Hanh gave is that you can see a cloud in the piece of paper. Why? Because the cloud transforms to rain, which then waters trees, which are then cut down and processed into paper. The paper did not arise from nothing. Similarly, I, as a human, did not spring forth from nothingness. I carry with me the genes of my ancestors, as well as personality traits which have been passed down from generation to generation. I carry with me the effects of family tragedies going generations back. I also depend for my existence on many factors beyond my control, such as the existence of other people who built my house, who existed in the past and helped evolve language for me to write with, etc, etc. Another way to put it, he said, is that being empty of self-nature means that you are full of everything else in the universe. Now, just as I did not arise from nothing, I will not turn into nothing when I die. Just as I carry within me the past, so I will contribute to the future. That's why it's so important, as La Misma said, to be nice. The actions we perform now will have wide effects and propagate far into the future. If we pay attention to the present moment, and act positively, we can have a palpably positive effect on the future. If we act negatively, remaining imprisoned in our own habits and obscurations, we will affect the future negatively. It is so tempting to be inattentive and ignore those around you, taking them for granted. What Thich Nhat Hanh said, though, is that once we realize that ultimate interdependent nature of reality, we will want to cherish our friends and loved ones. I guess this is for a couple of reasons. On the one hand, once you realize how much you interdepend (is this a word?) on others, you will love them really as part of yourself. On the other hand, realizing that the way we live after death is through the actions we have performed while alive, we will see how important it is to help and love others.

By the way, the picture at the head of the post is a tiling of the plane by equilateral pentagons. I spent many hours today fiddling around with various pentagonal tilings. They're pretty fascinating.

A poem

I was reading La Misma's blog, ande her forays into poetry have inspired me. I like the idea of just letting it rhyme!

The days are lazy I float right through
I want to do something I don't know what to do
My thoughts start collecting like a gathering storm
Sticking together and gaining momentum

I work like a maniac scrawling my screed
Though I can't stop I do see the need
My horse is carrying me in an unknown direction
I ought to control it but the horse is too fascinating

Eventually I get frightened, nervous and saddened
The landscape around me is familiar and dreadful
I kind of felt that this time was different
Why do I have such an unruly animal?

Just Be

I go to a fantastic A.A. meeting on most evenings. I've long known that it's a great meeting, that it has a spirit I can really connect with, and that my serenity level has gone way up since attending it. I think I may have finally realized why I like the meeting so much, and why I haven't been able to hit the nail on the head up until now. The thing that really struck me tonight was how gentle and unassuming almost everyone in the group is. They are friendly, happy to be there, and have nothing to prove. It's great to be part of that, liberating even. Needing to be the head honcho and needing others to recognize my superiority :) has always been part of me, and I have tended, as is natural I suppose, to pay attention to people who act the same way. As a result I missed the other 90% of the people that were actually helping me! Intellectually, I realized that helping others without hope of reward or benefit was correct, but it's a bit jolting to realize that there are a lot of people already doing it. Of course, I say there's no hope of reward or benefit, but in actual fact everyone is helped by this common gentle attitude of openess and helpfulness. Truly amazing.

The Dhammapada

Last night I was at the grocery store, and I randomly encountered a person who just began attending our Buddhist group. He's been asking me a few things, like the meanings of words, and what the three hand positions signify when doing prostrations. I haven't been a font of knowledge exactly, and he may be teaching me more than I him. I conjectured that the three hand positions refer to the Buddha, the dharma and the sangha (teacher, teachings, group of fellow practitioners), but it turns out it refers to purity of body, speech and mind. When you put your hands above your head, that signifies pure body; when you put them at your throat, it signifies pure speech, and when you put them at your heart center, it signifies pure mind.

In any event, last night he asked me about a Buddhist text which turned out to be the Dhammapada, which I didn't really recognize from his description, although after he emailed me a link, I recognized the name. Thich Nhat Hanh mentions this text in his book on the heart of Buddha's teachings.

Here is an excerpt he sent me from the first chapter:


1. Choices

We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with an impure mind
And trouble will follow you
As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.
We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with a pure mind
And happiness will follow you
As your shadow, unshakable.
"Look how he abused me and hurt me,
How he threw me down and robbed me."
Live with such thoughts and you live in hate.
"Look how he abused me and hurt me,
How he threw me down and robbed me."
Abandon such thoughts, and live in love.
In this world
Hate never yet dispelled hate.
Only love dispels hate.
This is the law,
Ancient and inexhaustible.


How true these words are.

Padmasambhava

On the left is an image of Padmasambhava (Lotus born), a legendary founder of Buddhism in Tibet. As part of my beginning practice, I'm supposed to recite 100,000 mantras dedicated to him. (Om ah hung vajra guru padma siddhi hung) I think I'm up to about 5,000. The idea is to recite 108 at a time, using a mala to keep track. (This is a necklace of 108 beads, which in my case are lotus seeds.) In any event, he is often depicted with consorts, or in yab-yum, which is the primordial union of male and female, said to be symbolic of the union of wisdom and compassion. The male aspect represents compassion, whereas the female aspect represents wisdom. (Indeed Tara, female Buddha, is said to be the mother of all Buddhas, as she is associated with prajna paramita, the perfection of wisdom.) Sexual union is decidely absent in Christian symbology, and in Western thought, it often comes attached to ideas such as shame and guilt. I think it makes sense, however, to use this imagery toward the goal of liberation and enlightenment, considering how our brains are constructed to dwell on sex to such an extent. So perhaps one can use sexual thoughts, when they arise, as reminders of how compassion needs to be united with wisdom.
After all, in the Diamond Sutra, we are told that those who wish to be Bodhisattvas should cultivate compassion (bodhichitta) for all living beings, while also clearly seeing the true nature of reality.

Medicine Buddha

I'm at my best when I remain teachable. Much of the time I have preconceived ideas of the way things are going to work, and as a result I don't pay attention when people have good ideas. Life is better when I have a truly open mind. Last night I was reminded about the antidote to resentment: pray for the well-being of the person resented. I needed to hear that, especially since I've thrown around the same advice in the past, but yet somehow had forgotten it.

It occurred to me later that I do pray for people regularly in the Medicine Buddha Sadhana that I do from time to time. I had included some names on my Medicine Buddha list originally because I wanted to be free of resentments against them, but I had forgotten that purpose. It turns out it works a lot better if you bring the right intention to the prayer, and try to feel it as deeply as you can.

Medicine buddha's aspiration is to clear away the illness (both physical and mental) of all sentient beings, and bring all beings to enlightenment. He's like Shakyamuni Buddha, only with an emphasis on healing. During the ceremony, you visualize yourself as Medicine Buddha, forming in your own mind Medicine Buddha's aspiration to heal all sentient beings. Even if you feel Medicine Buddha is metaphorical, the idea of Medicine Buddha is brought forth during the ceremony, taking residence in your own heart. By visualizing yourself as Medicine Buddha, you realize his potential to heal all beings, because you yourself can then go out into the world and effect positive changes. Thus Medicine Buddha really does help all sentient beings, acting through us. On the other hand, many people take Medicine Buddha to be an actual independent, supernatural entity. As a Buddhist, I'll keep my mind open to the possibility, but also as a Buddhist, I won't accept anything that I haven't personally discovered. That's such a wonderful aspect of Buddhist teaching: we should not take things on faith. Rather we should only accept and adopt that which we have personally verified through introspection, deep looking, mindfulness and meditation.

Shame of sex? We can help!

I don't know whether you've gotten spam with this particular subject in your mailbox, but I certainly have. I'll come back to this subject in a bit. In my last post, I described a kind of unease that I was feeling, and, actually writing about it in the post, I realized that worrying about my worry was counterproductive. By the end of the post, I was feeling much better, and I went on to take a guilt-free nap later in the day. I went to an A.A. meeting that night, and I really felt a divine presence was there, and was speaking to me, with the basic point being that I need to pray for guidance. I pray a lot to help other people, but I realized that I never pray for guidance about what to do, how to help other people. I meditated that night for longer than I usually do, visualizing God as a kind of energy field permeating the space around me, thinking "God is good." "God is love." This felt really good. Somehow the key to the whole process was to let go of my worry about my worry. When I don't live up to my expectations, I very often upbraid myself and get angry with myself. This usually exacerbates the problem, one reason being that I don't fully acknowledge the problem. It's like "I feel bad, but feeling bad is bad, stop feeling bad! Let's think about something else." This will never get to the root of the problem. It's like perpetually turning around to avoid the elephant in the room. So, without guilt or anger, I gently acknowledge the problem, and this is a first step to healing.

So what about the title of this post? Well, an aspect of myself that I dislike is my propensity to immediately perceive women through a sexual filter. I automatically form a snap judgment of many women when I first meet them based on body shape and other things. And, I've noticed, I have a tendency to immediately upbraid myself for doing so. Considering how deeply ingrained this seems to be biologically, I don't think it's possible for me, in the short run, to stop perceiving women this way. However, constantly beating myself up about it isn't helping, and I think I just need to let go. Seeing my problem clearly without harsh judgment, I can more easily be aware of it and act around it. Basically, let my mind do its thing, but being aware of it, not let it cause me to act foolishly or hurtfully. This last Sunday during meditation at our Buddhist center, I actually began to resent two young women who were there for distracting me! After a while the thought occurred to me to stop worrying and let them distract me. At that point, somewhat paradoxically, I stopped being distracted.

The common thread here is that obsessing about things I perceive as problems actually creates a big problem itself, and that letting the perceived problem be is more effective than being angry that a problem exists.

Here is a revised version of a prayer I wrote a while ago, now incorporating a request for wisdom, which is what I was reminded I needed to ask for at the A.A. meeting a couple of nights ago,


Buddhas, bodhisattvas, enlightened beings in the ten directions,
God, Buddha nature, the Holy Spirit,
I ask for willingness, strength and wisdom
To remove those defects of character whose extinction
will be of maximal benefit to all sentient beings.
I take refuge in enlightened dharma teachings.
Obhects of refuge, abide with stability in my heart.

tayata gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi soha

Another post without a catchy title

I've decided to take a break from the Gospel of Tom. Part of my motivation for studying it was an outreach effort to "anonymous," but analyzing my motivations further, I see there was an agressive component. I pretty much knew anonymous wouldn't like it. I still think it's a fascinating gospel, giving us a view into early Christianity that we wouldn't otherwise have had.

In other news, I've been feeling down for the past couple of weeks, and I don't really know the source of this feeling, although I have suspicions. What I have noticed is that my overall mood colors my perception of the world around me, and this is a basic reason that our perception of the world is not objective. Situations that before brought me joy, such as meeting with some friends, have started bringing me anxiety and an uneasy feeling of insecurity. Remarks which I formerly would have brushed off as either neutral, or a product of another person's suffering, have begun to irritate me. Whereas meditating usually brings me a sense of calm spirituality and peace, lately it has been a stark reminder that there is something wrong. Unfortunately, I cannot definitively say what it is.

I have read that meditation is not supposed to always be calming, and that it often serves to show us the state of our own mind, no matter what that state is. I also know that our emotions are things we need to treat with respect, letting them be, not ignoring them, nor feeding them. For example, it occurred to me to write a letter full of anger and bile at someone who irritated me, and then burn it. I at first thought maybe this was a way to get the hurt out, but I didn't do it because I felt it would probably water the seed of anger within me rather than the reverse.

I've read (I think Pema Chödron) that it's good to accept that things don't have a solid base. It's good to be relaxed in the middle of uncertainty. In my case, I don't really know what's going on with my current sadness, but I also don't need to know. Perhaps it will become apparent, and perhaps it won't. I don't have to come up with a plan of action to "beat it" (what harsh words); I can gently be aware of its presence. Perhaps acknowledging its existence with eyes wide open will help. At least I won't then have secondary issues arising from repression and desperate tactics that seek to get rid of the sadness, while also not fully acknowledging its existence.

Almost missed this

Prosecutors dropped terrorism charges Tuesday against two Michigan men who were arrested after buying large numbers of cell phones, saying they could not prove a terrorism link.

Thanks to Left I on the news for catching this.

The Marauding Bubbles of Vacuum

One day it was discovered that bubbles of vacuum were spontaneously arising in the Earth's atmosphere, traveling around on chaotic courses, and eventually dissipating. They tended to stay in the upper atmosphere, never got near the ground, never came close to suffocating birds or other animals. But they made air travel much less pleasant. You would be flying along, when all of a sudden, you were shooting through vacuum. Without the air pressure differential to maintain the plane's altitude, you start to plummet like a rock. Man that hits the stomach hard. Then you hit the edge of the bubble, the plane's wings grip the air, and you rise back to your course. Now, you are not allowed out of your seat during the entire duration of the flight. Can't go to the bathroom. You are required to store all loose items in overhead bins. Gone are the days when you can store some stuff under the seat in front of you. Man it sucks.

They've tried tracking these bubbles in an effort to steer aircraft around them, but, like tornadoes, the bubbles are small enough, and capricious enough, to defy prediction. Nobody really knows what causes them either. Some have suggested that our solar system is approaching a corner of our galactic neighborhood where strange physical laws begin to hold. It may be, these people say, that the constants in physical formulae are not constant at all, but actually functions of our spacetime coordinates. Perhaps the charge of an electron varies as we move around the universe. It sounds to me like the physicists have no idea what they're talking about, but rather than admit it, invent a fancy type of obfuscation. But maybe I'm just cynical. I am especially sensitive to motion sickness, and these new atmospheric phenomena have made flying an absolute miserable hell. I feel as though God has singled me out for special retribution. I realize that this is nonsense. How can I be singled out when this phenonemon is widespread, affecting millions of air travelers?

I just keep going back to my past. Retribution is surely deserved. When I killed that vacuum cleaner salesman, I wasn't in my right mind. I barely remember doing it. It's like trying to see things in a fog. I remember there was a smell of puke, of beer cans. But let's not talk about that stuff. I didn't really kill the guy. You could tell I was joking, couldn't you? But you see the connection? Vacuum cleaner salesman and now vacuum bubbles. Perhaps it's a cosmic joke.

Short Political Interjection

Two Arab men were just arrested for having 1000 legally purchased cellphones. See this link. As far as I can tell the men haven't done anything illegal, but they have been arrested because of fears of terrorism. Their wives claim that they were buying and selling the phones for profit. It seems to me that we are stepping over the line here, arresting people even when they have not demonstrably done anything illegal.

Thomas 14

14. Jesus said to them, "If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves, and if you pray, you will be condemned, and if you give to charity, you will harm your spirits.

When you go into any region and walk about in the countryside, when people take you in, eat what they serve you and heal the sick among them.

After all, what goes into your mouth will not defile you; rather, it's what comes out of your mouth that will defile you."

Thomas 13

13. Jesus said to his disciples, "Compare me to something and tell me what I am like."

Simon Peter said to him, "You are like a just messenger."

Matthew said to him, "You are like a wise philosopher."

Thomas said to him, "Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like."

Jesus said, "I am not your teacher. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended."

And he took him, and withdrew, and spoke three sayings to him. When Thomas came back to his friends they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?"

Thomas said to them, "If I tell you one of the sayings he spoke to me, you will pick up rocks and stone me, and fire will come from the rocks and devour you."

Thomas 12

12. The disciples said to Jesus, "We know that you are going to leave us. Who will be our leader?"

Jesus said to them, "No matter where you are you are to go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being."

Thomas 11

11. Jesus said, "This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away.

The dead are not alive, and the living will not die. During the days when you ate what is dead, you made it come alive. When you are in the light, what will you do? On the day when you were one, you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?"

Thomas 10

10. Jesus said, "I have cast fire upon the world, and look, I'm guarding it until it blazes."

Thomas 9

9. Jesus said, "Look, the sower went out, took a handful (of seeds), and scattered (them). Some fell on the road, and the birds came and gathered them. Others fell on rock, and they didn't take root in the soil and didn't produce heads of grain. Others fell on thorns, and they choked the seeds and worms ate them. And others fell on good soil, and it produced a good crop: it yielded sixty per measure and one hundred twenty per measure."

Thomas 8

8. And he said, "The person is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of little fish. Among them the wise fisherman discovered a fine large fish. He threw all the little fish back into the sea, and easily chose the large fish. Anyone here with two good ears had better listen!"

Thomas 7

7. Jesus said, "Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion still will become human."

Some site changes

I recently changed the design of the site a little bit, and I wanted to explain what everything means. The two graphics on the left and right of the title are the compassionate eyes of Buddha, painted on a Tibetan temple. The squiggle between the eyes is not a nose but a stylized sanskrit character for "unity." (This reflects the Buddhist idea of nondualism.) There is also a third eye of wisdom that can be made out above the squiggle. The eyes are meditating, as indicated by the droop of the eyelids. The Tibetan script below the blog title means "Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha" which is the mantra of the perfection of wisdom (prajnaparamita), and is a mantra that is close to my heart. I've mentioned translations of this a couple of times before, but again, it basically means "gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, enlightenment, so be it." The quote on the right is
number 8 in the 37 practices of a Bodhisattva. The full quote is


The suffering of lower realms, so difficult to bear,
Is the fruit of wrong deeds, so the Buddha taught.
Therefore, even at the cost of your life,
Never to commit negative actions is the practice of a Bodhisattva.


An example given to us by Lama Karma Chötso concerns whether or not it is okay to kill someone, even if that is the only way to stop them from killing you. The answer is an unequivocal NO. By intentionally killing another human being, no matter what the circumstances, you accumulate so much negative karma that you will be reborn in a hell realm and suffer for countless lifetimes. Someone asked why it's not better to prevent our attacker from killing us, because then we are selflessly saving them from future suffering. The Lama said that if that were our motivation, then this would be appropriate, but that it was very easy to deceive ourselves about our true motivations. If we kill a would-be attacker, are we really thinking "I have just resigned myself to an almost infinite amount of suffering to save this sentient being from a similar fate." I doubt that in my current spiritual condition that that's what I would be thinking.

Thomas 6

6. His disciples asked him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give to charity? What diet should we observe?"

Jesus said, "Don't lie, and don't do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven. After all, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed."

Thomas 5

Jesus said, "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you.

For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed. [And there is nothing buried that will not be raised.]"

Thomas 4

4. Jesus said, "The person old in days won't hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live.

For many of the first will be last, and will become a single one."

Thomas 3.5

When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty.

Hiatus

I'm traveling to Rome next week, so I'll not be posting. I might squeeze in a post tomorrow morning.

A song

We had a visiting teacher at our center, Lama Karma Chötso, who taught us the text The 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, which is an invaluable tool. I'll probably comment more on it later, but for now, I just wanted to pass on a song she taught us.


Like a dream
Like an illusion
Like a city of Gandharvas
That's how birth
and that's how living
That's how dying
are taught to be.


A city of Gandharvas has the property that when you approach it, it gets further away. The song is a meditation on the Buddhist concept of emptiness. Nothing is truly real. Everything is impermanent.

Thomas 3

3. Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you."

Thomas 2

2. Jesus said, "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all. [And after they have reigned they will rest.]"

Thomas 1

These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas recorded.

1. And he said, "Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death."

The Gospel of Thomas

The Gospel of Thomas is a list of sayings of Jesus that many scholars believe predate the canonical gospels. At first, Thomas was deemed a gnostic gospel, but many modern scholars find that a bit simplistic. It does have many sayings which have a gnostic feel to them, but it also has saying with a more orthodox feel. Both Luke and John contain a few gnostic-sounding sayings too. It's not clear why Thomas was not included in the New Testament Canon. As a list of sayings with no explanation and no narrative structure, perhaps it was just too difficult a text. Perhaps it didn't support the existing Church structure enough for them to want to include it. (It seems to refer to "James the Just" as Jesus's "successor" and not Peter.) Perhaps it was too gnostic. Still I think it's very neat that a list of (probably authentic) sayings of Jesus is available outside the NT. We get to hear some things the Church Fathers didn't like. So, I propose to go through Thomas saying-by-saying just for the fun of it.

I will be using the Patterson-Meyer translation. This and other translations are available here.

Deities in Buddhism?

At our center we do a Red Tara practice two times a month. Tara is a feminine deity in Buddhism, but what does that mean, exactly? The answer is complex, but this Wikipedia article is a good start. Some Buddhists think of Tara as an actual separately-existing deity, or Goddess, that can be prayed to in much the same way some Catholics pray to Mary. Indeed, Tara is known as the "Mother of all Buddhas." On the other hand, many Buddhists view Tara and other deities as emanations of ourselves. By praying to and visualizing Tara, we really are visualizing those good qualities in ourselves we wish to bring forward. At first this may seem narcissistic. Worshiping oneself seems like a bad idea, after all. However, we are not worshipping ourself in the self-absorbed narcissistic sense, we are honoring that part of ourselves which is best, and which we wish to cultivate. Also, by giving our good qualities an anthropomorphic embodiment, we can honor those same qualities in all sentient beings by praying to, and visualizing this embodiment. This reminds me of a poem I wrote once while under the influence of a mind-altering substance. (Those days are gone now.)

"Hi my names Happy. I am a traveler of time and entity."

That is, one can think of happiness as an entity which travels through time and jumps from person to person, in much the same way the body of good qualties can be thought of as a deity who manifests at different times in different people.

Russell's Paradox and Pascal's Wager

In the foundations of mathematics you have to be careful. You need to set things up to be completely self-consistent, for if a singe paradox occurs, it can be used to prove anything. (This is because "false implies true" is a true statement.) Bertrand Russell noticed that a certain way of constructing sets led to a contradiction, now known as Russell's Paradox. Let X be the set of all sets which are not elements of themselves. Now the question is whether X is an element of itself. If it is, since X is defined to consist of those elements which are not elements of themselves, then X must have this property. In other words X is not an element of itself. Oops, that's a contradiction. On the other hand if X is not an element of itself, that means that X does not satisfy the condition for inclusion in X, which is that X is not an element of itself. That means X is an element of itself, again a contradiction. So the set X leads to logical inconsistency. The way this is resolved in modern mathematics is to limit the sorts of sets that can be formed.

There is a similar question in theology: can God create a rock so heavy that She can't lift it? If She is omnipotent, then She can do anything, so She can make a rock She can't lift. But that rock demonstrates Her lack of omnipotence. This is Russell's paradox in a different guise. It really demonstrates that the concept of omnipotence is logically inconsistent. I used to think this argument conclusively demonstrated that God doesn't exist, but in actual fact it shows that human language is an imprecise tool. This argument rules out an omnipotent God in this technical sense of the word omnipotent, which is concept that is not well-defined. It doesn't rule out an extremely powerful being, force or entity.

On the other side of the coin we have Pascal's wager. What Pascal basically said was that you might as well believe in God, because of the following four possibilities:

Believe? | God exists? | Payoff
-------------------------
Yes | Yes | Infinite
Yes | No | None
No | Yes | Eternal damnation
No | No | None

So if you want to maximize your payoff, you should believe in God. (Basically you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.)

However this argument is complete hogwash. The above chart does not give a complete list of all logical possibilities, and it assumes a great deal about the properties of a God that exists. It is logically possible that God exists, but that He only rewards those who don't believe in Him. It also give no hint about the "right" religion. What if you choose the wrong one?

So the Russell-type rock paradox is not a good argument against God's existence, and Pascal's wager is not a good argument for God's existence. The glib lesson to be drawn is that it's hard to get anywhere using logic alone. Additional input is needed.

And on that ambiguous note, I bid you adieu.

Seven Reasons Not to Hate

1. Hatred hurts.
2. No-one is inherently a certain way.
3. Things we hate in others are also in us.
4. We can never be sure who is right.
5. You can't fight karma.
6. Through understanding comes compassion.
7. Hatred cannot overcome hatred. Only love can overcome hatred.

Incredulity

I just read a story on CNN.com that a special panel appointed by Bush has recommended that when Castro dies, we need to have people in Cuba to "assist" and "ease the transition to democracy." Hasn't any one learned their lesson? What right do we have to dictate how another country runs its government when we can't even take care of our own problems? This CNN article seemed to take it for granted that we have the right to mold Cuba in our own image, that everything we say about Cuba is true, and that everything Cuba says about itself is false. I think the strangest juxtaposition in the whole article was when the state department accused Cuba of "bullying tactics," in reference to a recent power outage to "U.S. interests in Havana."
(CNN takes it for granted that the power outage was intentional and targeted only U.S. interests. According to Cuba, it was simply a power outage, affecting a wide area of Havana. You won't find Cuba's side of the story in the article, though.) The next paragraph describes the draconian sanctions that have been placed against the island, which have been rendered even more draconian in the past couple of years. Who's bullying whom?

More Spiritual Materialism

My Padmasambhava statue arrived. It looks great, but for balance I need another statue. I ordered the above pictured 11-headed 1000-armed Avalokitsehvara. Avalokiteshvara was a student of Buddha Shakyamuni. The extra heads and arms are metaphorical, but they look cool.

A Buddhist Seventh Step Prayer

Here is the Seventh Step Prayer as it comes out of "the Big Book."

My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, the good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen.

I rewrote it to have a more Buddhist feel:

Buddhas, bodhisattvas, enlightened beings in the ten directions,
I ask for help, willingness and strength
To remove those defects of character whose extinction
Will be of maximum benefit to all sentient beings.
I take refuge in enlightened dharma teachings.
Objects of refuge, please abide with stability in my heart.

TAYATA GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA

The last line is the mantra of the Perfection of Wisdom (Prajnaparamita) and records the path to enlightenment. Loosely it means: beyond, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, gone utterly beyond, enlightenment, hooray!

Speaking of character defects, I realized last night, although it's not a huge surprise, that one of the biggies for me right now is judgmentalism. I really have a tendency to search for the flaws in people, and when I've finally found them, illusory or not,
I use them to justify a dismissive attitude. Of course, now that I'm a practicing Buddhist, I'm the sort of person I would have been highly dismissive of at an earlier, angrier stage of my life. Hee hee.

No Title Needed, although one has been supplied

Found this turtle wandering around in my back yard after a rain. They like to come out right after it rains because there's more food around to eat. (I think they might eat worms.)

...and this.

The store owner finally called and she's sending me the above-pictured 6-inch statue. It is one of the best Padmasambhava statues I've seen. A lot of them are painted with gold paint, and have their features painted on in a way that I personally don't find aesthetically pleasing. I like the subtle coloration of this one.

Also, my thangka is in transit. I'm watching it's progress from New Delhi via its UPS tracking number. Spiritual materialism, how exciting!

Just bought this, I hope

After agonizing for hours about which thangka to buy, I selected the one above, depicting the wheel of life mentioned in my las post. It should arrive in 5 to 7 days. I've also been trying to buy a statue of Guru Rinpoche (also known as Padmasambhava), but the first one I tried to buy turned out to have been already sold to someone else, and the second one I've tried to buy seems to be encountering an unresponsive store owner. I'm still hopeful about it. It's a beautiful statue.

A gift that grows with time

For most normal folks, drinking means conviviality, companionship and colorful imagination. It means release from care, boredom and worry. It is joyous intimacy with friends and a feeling that life is good. -A.A. Daily Reflection, June 26

When I heard these words read yesterday, I couldn't stop myself from snickering. For they describe alcohol as exactly opposite to the way I think of it. Maybe when I started out, these words applied. I did have the idea that I couldn't enjoy a party without drinking, and to some extent this was actually true. I've always been incredibly shy and afraid of human interaction, and the alcohol helped to lower my inhibitions. Now, though, when I think of alcohol, I think of anger, resentments, hangovers, puking, incredible physical discomfort, etc. It's kind of amazing to me now that I ever held on to the illusion that alcohol was a positive force in my life.

In Buddhism, we learn that all beings are trapped in samsara. As the lamas explained it, this means that we are all trapped in habit patterns which cause our suffering, and we can't see how to break out of them. The goal of the bodhisattva is to free all beings from the ocean of samsara, so that they can attain happiness. Alcoholism is an extreme example of being trapped in samsara. We alcoholics suffer, not perceiving the way out. Little did I know it when I decided to become a Buddhist, but freeing myself (with lots of help from others) from the cycle of alcoholism is wonderfully consonant with the bodhisattva path. In our center we have a thangka (painted cloth) of the wheel of life depicting sundry beings trapped in the cycle of suffering, the whole world of which is in the grips of the evil deity Mara. If you look closely, you can see a little white thread which emanates from the wheel and gradually ascends out of the picture, with various beings seen progressing along it. This is the bodhisattva path, allowing those who follow it (by helping others follow it) to transcend the cycle of samsara. There is a saying in A.A., "to keep what you have, you've got to give it away," a neat summary of the bodhisattva way.

A poem

Here's a poem I just wrote:

Three Instances of Inspiration

The rock was made of tiny crystals,
a revelation which drew my attention in a mysterious ecstasy.
The origin of the rock held me transfixed as I pondered
the patterns of the stones in the high mountain country.
Enthralled by the beauty of deep observation,
I perceived the coalescence of the stream's chatter into a subtle voice:
"Why don't you do this more often?"

Rarely, as I descend into unconsciousness,
I am able to listen to myself piecing together sentences that don't make sense.
One memorable time, I perceived this voice saying:
"You have let yourself be suffused with the Holy Spirit. I'm proud of you."
How peaceful I felt after that.

In a crowd of people outside the temple in the green wilderness,
I gave birth to the image of a blue figure bowing his head with clasped hands.
As we walked around the temple, chanting, I experienced a wonderful energizing joy.

A Spiritual Reason for Good Hygiene?

Growing up I always felt that good hygiene was beneath me. Who cares whether my hair is dirty or my room is messy? What does it matter in the grand scheme of things? It's what's inside that's important. I don't subscribe to these views quite as strongly any more, and the following paragraph says a little bit about why.

We heard ten or twenty minutes of teachings by the Dalai Lama at our center today, seeking to explain how karma works. Part of it was quite similar to Thich Nhat Hanh's closing paragraphs in a previous post. Namely, we should avoid actions that are likely to produce suffering for ourselves or others in the future. An interesting example regards hygiene. Killing another being produces bad karma, and this includes killing insects. So if you are faced with an insect infestation you incur quite a bit of negative karma by killing them. If you are faced with such a situation, you may be forced to kill the insects, despite the karmic consequences. For example, if they pose a health and happiness issue for yourself or others. The best way to avoid the karmic issue is to maintain good hygiene in the first place to stop the infestation from happening. Thus good hygiene becomes a spiritual principle whereby we avoid killing living creatures. Also, as humans with the divine spark, we need to be proud of ourselves, and making our surroundings more beautiful is part of that. It is paying homage to our wonderful nature and the blessings of our remarkable human birth.

Something else the Dalai Lama said really stuck out to me. He said we should never talk negatively about another person. That's pretty wild. I do know that in my case negative talk about others is usually an outward sign of my inner negativity, and doesn't have much to do with the object of criticism. Pondering it now, though, it seems like when there is gross injustice, or even minor injustice, for that matter, talking negatively about the perpetrators may be necessary in order to stop the injustice. Probably he means that we should never talk about others with malice-borne motives. Describing the negative situation in an effort to help others, sounds to me like a different kettle of fish, or however the saying goes.

A neat image

Speaking of connections between Christianity and Buddhism, I found the above neat image on the web. I love the setting in the high mountain country. I've found such places to be quite spiritual.

Real Love Never Ends (Thich Nhat Hanh)

In Judaism, we are encouraged to enjoy the world as long as we are aware that it is God himself. But there are limits, and the Ten Commandments, which God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai, express this. The Ten Commandments are a precious jewel of the Judeo-Christian heritage, helping us to know what to do and what not to do in order to cherish God throughout our daily life.

All precepts and commandments are about love and understanding. Jesus gave his disciples the commandment to love God with all their being and to love their neighbors as themselves. In First Corinthians, it says, "Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious, arrogant, or rude. It does not rejoice in wrong. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth." This is very close to the teachings of love and compassion in Buddhism.

"Love bears all things, believes all things, endures all things." Love has no limits. Love never ends. Love is reborn and reborn and reborn. The love and care of the Christ is reborn in each of us, as is the love of the Buddha. If we invoke the name if Buddha or pray to Christ but do not practice love and understanding ourselves, something is wrong. If we love someone, we have to be patient. We can only help a person transform his or her negative seeds is we are patient and kind.

To take good care of yourself and to take good care of living beings and of the environment is the best way to love God. This love is possible when there is the understanding that you are not separate from other beings or the environment. This understanding cannot be merely intellectual. It must be experiential, the insight gained by deep touching and deep looking in a daily life of prayer, contemplation and meditation.

"Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing." Love instructs us not to act in ways that will cause suffering now or in the future. We can discern when something that seems to be joyful has the capacity to destroy future happiness, so we do not abuse alcohol, ingest unhealthy foods, or hurt others by our words. Real love never ends. It will be reborn and reborn.

A Righteous Thrashing

Recently, while playing Scrabble (natch), my opponent said she was giving me a righteous thrashing (and she was). But this juicy phrase also calls to mind some of my internal struggles with Buddhist philosophy. (I can hear Shunryu Suzuki right now, telling me that the struggle is not the point. That figuring out the philosophy is not the point. Just sit. Just be now. Even this is part of the feedback loop.)

See, in Christianity, and, as far as I know, in Islam as well, there is such a thing as righteous anger. I'm not sure the phrase would make much sense to a Buddhist. I know of no tale of a Buddha clearing the counting tables in the temple, no Zen armies unleashed upon the enemies of God. Part of me likes this. But part of me doesn't want to let go of a not-so-little coal of burning rage. At the past. At injustice. At the oppressors. The argument is that the rage I feel is earned. The recipients are deserving. Their sins unforgivable. Frankly, it feels good to be mad sometimes.

Now, I can see some of the delusion inherent in this anger. After all, everyone who feels angry, at that moment, feels his target deserves it, though instead the real target may be oneself or person involved in a past interaction. Anger is misleading and opportunistic. Furthermore, delivering of righteous thrashings serves to perpetuate angry hurts. As we thrash the Iraqis, more and more Iraqis begin to nurse fantasies of thrashing us. (Forgetting, for a moment, that national identities are also delusions.)

I know that letting a feeling be and repressing it are two different things, but I am a little wary of doing the latter. I've spent many years with a chasm between brain and body and I am loathe to do anything to endanger the bridge. Indeed I hope the teachings of Buddhism can be a bridge.

And if they are not, they are not.

As is so often the case with tumultuous feeling, I have circled the thing here, without really nailing it down. I am unable to be more organized in this matter because I am just teasing these thoughts out here for the first time. So thank you for your patience, and I apologize for the mess.

My old method would be to deliver to myself a searing and righteous mental thrashing for being so unfocused. But maybe I can leave it unresolved, and allow these seemingly conflicting feelings to coexist until they reconcile. (Like two cats meeting each other for the first time.)

Banana Pudding

I am a big fan of bananas. Must be my primate heritage. In any event, someone gave me a bunch of ripe bananas today, and it occurred to me that I could make banana pudding. I need to go out and buy most of the ingredients, though. 'Tis a quandary. Should I make it, or should I not?

Discrimination and Ignorance

I'm not the first person to have this thought, but those people who feel that gay couples are an abomination seem to have their priorities in the wrong place. How can love be wrong? Two people who love each other and are devoted to each other share a sacred thing. Hatred is an abomination and righteous hatred is even worse.

Speaking of discrimination, I was down the hall from a class today which seemed to be aimed at helping poor black kids break out of the cycle of poverty and insecurity which so many blacks are currently trapped in. What I mean by that is that black kids often grow up feeling inferior, and such internalized inferiority makes it very difficult to break out of the cycle. What's worse is that the racism in this country has morphed into a very difficult-to-combat form. Many people hide their racism even from themselves. Yet it is there. Powerful and deadly. In any event, the teacher was relating how she had been called "nigger" at a few times in her life and how terrible it made her feel. She seemed determined to try to muffle the effects that it might have on her students when they encountered human behavior at its most repugnant. Her advice was basically that it's okay to be angry, but you've got to realize that the person doing the name-calling is ignorant. I am glad that some people are reaching out to these kids, and I hope it has some effect.

May all beings be free of suffering and the causes of suffering . May all beings have happiness and the root of happiness. Even the hatemongers. For if such a person were to become truly happy, they would stop behaving the way they do. They would stop causing so much suffering. (Thanks to the Khenpos for explaining this.)

May any merit achieved here be dedicated for the benefit of all sentient beings.

The Wonders of Modern Technology

My partner just bought our household a wireless router and my laptop a wireless card. Oh frabjous day! Much frustration has been eliminated which had stemmed from two people wishing to check their email simultaneously. I can also connect to the internet from the comfort of the front porch or the living room. It's really good stuff. Of course the flip side of this is that most of the time I spend online is completely wasted. Ack.

A clarification

It occurs to me that one of the photos in the previous post could be mistaken for a barbecue. Actually, it's a picture of the fire puja ceremony.

I'm back

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *



Well, I'm back from the retreat. What a wonderful experience! The focus of the retreat was Medicine Buddha, which was good for me to experience. Medicine Buddha is the embodiment of all the healing power of all the buddhas. He is a brilliant blue, the color of lapis-lazuli, which to me suggests soothing. The color is also related to the pure buddha mind we all share, which is like the sky. In any event, to cure sickness, one can take standard medicines and medical treatment to cure the physical part, and do the Medicine Buddha ceremony, and/or chant the Medicine Buddha mantra to cure the spiritual part. Here is the medicine buddha mantra:

tayata om bhekandze bhekandze maha bhekandze radza samungate soha (medium length version)

om bhekandze soha (short version)

"Tayata" means thus. "om" means a million different things. The lamas translated it for us as meaining "auspiciousness, longevitty, prosperity, supreme good things." "bhekandze" means healer or rejuvenator and refers to medicine buddha.
"maha" means "great". "radza samungate" means something like "king within that state." "Soha" is another difficult to translate word, but it ends almost every mantra. It's comparable, I think to "amen" in this sense. The lamas translated it as "established."

By the way, this reminds me, I also took refuge vows at the retreat. This is comparable to baptism is protestant churches. As the lamas explained it, it's not anything I haven't already done in my heart, just an official recognition that I have become a Buddhist, specifically in the Ngingma tradition. I received a dharma name, which is Pema Dharje. The family name "Pema" means Lotus, and everyone taking refuge received that name. "Dharje" means "prosperity", so you might translate my name as Lotus of Prosperity, which I think is an aupicious name.

I'll post some more a bit later.

I'm off for the weekend

Well, today, I'm leaving for the Buddhist retreat led by the Khenpo brothers. Nobody responded to my last post! Y'all must have heeded the warning at the beginning.

Anyway, just wanted to pass on a bit that I've learned since my last post. It turns out that many of the ideas that I was espousing are very similar to gnostic christianity of the first few centuries. In fact, many scholars have posited that gnosticism was influenced by Buddhism, possibly via Buddhist missionaries in Alexandria. Apparently the early church was widely diverse and had many different sects. However, at some point, the orthodoxy came to political power and used its power to wipe out the heretics, as it saw them. Apparently, one of the hallmarks of the orthodox viewpoint is that knowledge of Christ is not gotten through inward reflection (which is gnosis) but by reading approved scriptures and listening to clergymen who are in a direct line of succession from apostles. Contrariwise, many gnostic sects believed that discovering new spiritual truths is a sign of spiritual maturity, and teachers encouraged their students to come up with such truths. This is strongly reminiscent of the way Zen students are encouraged to compose koans as a sign of their understanding. I strongly believe that the route to spirituality is within, that we all have inherent Buddha nature, and that to contact God, the universal spirit, or the tathagata, we need to look inward. I also strongly believe that spirituality is a living thing, and that I need to interact with it in order to make true progress. I cannot just listen, accept and mimic.

Was Jesus a Buddha?

Warning: This post meanders. If you like uninterrupted narrative, then this may not be the post for you.

I've been reading the Lotus Flower Sutra of the Wonderful Law, which, I believe, might also be translated as the Lotus Flower Sutra of the Wonderful Dharma recently. I've been trying to read some of it just before going to bed. The reason for this is that I used to watch TV right before falling asleep. I recently heard a study that found that kids who watch TV right before sleeping have various issues, which, to tell the truth, I don't actually remember. However, I've noticed during my morning meditation that my mind often wanders to the plot of the TV episode I'd seen the previous night. What may in fact be the case is that the damn TV is percolating through my head throughout the gulldurn night. (Spellcheck just informed me that gulldurn is not a word.) Why should I let it? My goal is more spirituality, so it seems like a good idea to give my mind something spiritual to chew on as I sleep. You know, it's funny, as I'm writing this, more and more things are coming to mind. For instance, I have solved several math problems, or at least made a lot of conceptual progress on them, by falling asleep right after thinking hard about a problem. Evidently, my mind has kept working at it after I lose consciousness. So, again, it seems tremendously important to feed it something good. The other line of evidence I know is that I've heard several people in the fellowship of alcoholics anonymous mention that in their morning meditation, or prayer, or what have you, they are continuing where they left off the previous night. So, with all that said, I've been reading this sutra.

This sutra is the longest Buddhist sutra I've ever encountered. The Heart Sutra is a couple of pages long. The Diamond Cutter Sutra is 32 chapters of a couple of paragraphs each. The Sutra of Innumerable Meanings, and the Meditation Sutra on the Bodhisattva Universal Virtue are each a few pages long. Yet the Lotus Flower Sutra of the Wonderful Law is, if memory serves, more than 150 pages long. It's interesting because it alternates prose and poetry, with the poetry paraphrasing and amplifying the preceding prose. One of the key points this sutra makes is that the Buddha teaches through expedient means. In other words, he says what is needed to lead a particular person or class of person closer to enlightenment, even if what he says is not literally true. For example, many people are turned off by the promise of future Buddha-hood, and so when the Buddha started out, he didn't mention this. Only when his disciples had progressed enough did he reveal their destiny. There are several cool parables that explains this idea. One is called the parable of the Magic City, and it goes like this. Suppose you are leading a group of people across a desert, away from a place of great pain and suffering, and toward a place of happiness. Part way through the journey, the travelers start to complain about the arduousness of the journey and their current travails, and decide to turn back. Seeing this, in order to keep them moving in the right direction, you produce a magic city for them to inhabit, and once their urge to turn back has been quelled, you make the city disappear, and continue to lead them toward the real city on the other side of the desert. Even though you have produced an illusory city, you didn't really lie to them. It was just a way to keep them moving in the right direction.

I think Jesus may have been a Buddha. If I recall correctly, when people would ask him if he were the Messiah, if he were the Son of God, he started out by denying it. Only later in his ministry did he actually admit to it. Perhaps what is left unsaid here is that we are all children of God, as anonymous pointed out earlier. Sure Jesus is the Son of God, as are we all. This is a different language than the language of Buddhism, but Jesus needed to teach through expedient means. As a Jew preaching to Jews, he needed to speak their language. In the same way, much of Buddha's teachings are influenced by Hinduism. You need to give people a place to start. I think of Jesus as my root guru, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

In the Lotus Flower Sutra, the Buddha says that as soon as he became enlightened under the Bodhi tree, he always was the Tathagata. (This reminds me of an image I had when I was a child. I imagined that the universe began at some point, whereupon it started growing forwards and backwards in time. I liked to encapsulate this by the phrase "As soon as the Universe was created, it always was.") So, in some ways, the Tathagata has Godlike attributes. (You know, the word "Godlike" has lots of negative connotations. When people talk about being like Gods, it is often implied that they relish the feeling of power and superiority. Yet enjoying having another's fate in your hands is distinctly un-Godlike. God is not superior. He is not way up there with all of us way down here. We are all part of the God-consciousness. We are all part of the Tathagata. But ... we are not all awake, and so we are not all Buddhas.) I'm going to a Buddhist retreat this weekend, and I hope I can ask one of the monks there about this conception of the Tathagata. In any event, what I wanted to say was that in the same way that Shakyamuni Buddha is a specific instantiation of the Tathagata, so too is Jesus a specific awakened son of God.

Now What

I have not meditated in maybe a month. Though tough times are particularly good times for meditation, I have trouble bringing myself to sit. Just sit, and it's strangely too much for me. I awake, tell myself I'll do it soon, or not even think of it, or, as has largely been the case, tell myself I'm too busy for that ten minutes. Strange.

My response to stress and pressure is often to become somewhat manic. (Feel driven, unable to stop working, unable to get whatever the stressor might be out of my mind.) This can be a very useful attribute. I get a lot done. But it has a down side. For instance, it can be very stressful for those around me. And my quality of life suffers as well.

I would like, then, to rededicate myself to meditation. I wonder if it will feel like starting over...

In other news, I went to a Catholic service over Memorial Dat weekend. I normally would have avoided it, but I though a little spiritualiy could be good, whether or not I agreed with the dogma. Well, it was a real shame what I encountered. I got sort of a demonstration of the worst of the religion. The priest was bored, seemed to be going through the motions, reduced all the theater of the ritual to a dumb show without content. Worse still, the content of his sermon was hateful. The message was 1. The church will tell yo what to do. Do not try to figure it out yourself. He used as an example that it took him years in seminary to discover why contraception was, in fact wrong. Therefore, just take our word for it. 2. Gays should not be allowed to marry, and homosexuality is an abomination. 3. The DaVinci Code is not true.

The last point was not especially hateful, just a bit silly.

A good movie

I just saw Gandhi, and it was an incredibly moving movie. I can't say how well it reflects Gandhi's actual life, and the political situation at the time, but as a movie, it really touched my heart. I plan on reading more about him. Here is one of the scenes that stayed with me. After the U.K. granted Indian independence, the Indian government voted to make Pakistan a separate (Muslim) country in order to stave of civil war. In the ensuing chaos, where Muslims and Hindus became fearful and mistrustful of each other, massive violence broke out. A disheartened Gandhi began a fast which was to end either when he died or when the sectarian violence was ended. In the movie, a delegation of people came to tell Gandhi that they had agreed to stop fighting, that in mosques and hindu temples around the country people had vowed to stop. Gandhi is so weak from fasting he can barely talk:

Nahari: I'm going to Hell! I killed a child! I smashed his head against a wall.
Gandhi: Why?
Nahari: Because they killed my son! The Muslims killed my son!
[indicates boy's height]
Gandhi: I know a way out of Hell. Find a child, a child whose mother and father were killed and raise him as your own.
[indicates same height]
Gandhi: Only be sure that he is a muslim and that you raise him as one.

Egotism?

Have no further doubts;
Rejoice greatly in your hearts,
Knowing that you will become buddhas. -Shakyamuni Buddha, from The Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law

Nowadays, I try to curb my criticism. So often my criticism in the past has been a manifestation of inner negativity that really had nothing to do with the thing being criticized. It was a way to bolster my ego, although it was rather ineffective. As a resilt, I don't have a firm idea of where to draw the line. Take the Christian doctrine of original sin. It has taken me some time, and I am still working at it, to get the idea out of my bones that I am fundamentally unworthy. I don't want to be unneccesarily critical of Christanity, but some viewpoints are erroneous, and I think this is one of them. In Buddhism we learn that all beings have the same underlying Buddha nature. I am not any different than Shakyamuni Buddha, deep down, and I can be a Buddha in this lifetime. So can you. Now from the viewpoint of my Western, Christian upbringing, this smacks of egotism and hubris. Who do I think I am, anyway? And even if I do admit a small theoretical possibility that I could be a Buddha, I better not act like it! Aspiring to help other beings is not bad, and being a genuine Buddha is infinitely good. Believing in my self-worth is fundamental and neccesary to genuinely help others. Otherwise, I will probably delude myself into believing I am helping others, when in actual fact I will be attempting to prop up a failing ego. Believing deep down to my core that I have self-worth and that I can be a Buddha (even as I write this, my mental editor says "someday") is NOT egotistical. It is the only way to be selfless. It is the only way to ensure that my stake in the game is not greed but compassion.