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Owner: amerbud@yahoo.com – Xing Ping

The site of the Buddha’s Enlightenment at Bodhgaya in northern India

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Obon Odori on You Tube

Check it out: Bon Odori Matsuri Dance

This is the first time I have noticed online videos of Obon. The one in the above link is particularly good, I think, because it shows how deceptively simple these dances are. These movements are really good for our health, because they are highly counter-intuitive in the mainstream. How often would you move your left foot forward at the same time with your left hand, and then do it again on the same side of your body, and then reverse direction, still using the same uncharacteristic gait, if left to your own devices? Admit it, never. We would never move this way without instruction, and it’s very good for our carcases, because it clears the toxic results of dead movement habits. Oh, and hey, it’s a real bliss-out when you finally get it to click as well.

The Japanese culture values beauty almost above anything, and excellent Obon instruction is usually free. In the future, I intend to get a video camera and to record Obon odori, because Hawaiian Obon is the most beautiful, both in constume, and in movement. More beautiful than the American mainland, and yes, more beautiful than Japan.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Amateratsu Rules!

Land of the Sun Goddess
By MICHAEL HOFFMAN
Special to The Japan Times

…A devout Buddhist and an earnest Confucianist, Shotoku enrolled his own relatively backward country in China’s school of civilization. The pupil-teacher relationship, rare if not unprecedented in the history of nations, would last centuries, during which Japan in effect Sinicized itself. Buddhism, Confucianism, Chinese writing, Chinese art — all were swallowed whole and, for a time, uncritically.

A century after Shotoku’s death in 622, the resplendent Nara Period (710-784) was bathed in its first luster. It was overwhelmingly Chinese, overwhelmingly Buddhist. The native Shinto kami, with Amaterasu at their head, slipped into oblivion.

When smallpox struck Nara, the capital, in 735, the Emperor Shomu’s thoughts turned not to them but to the Buddha. The course of action his piety suggested to him was to order the casting of a giant bronze image of Roshana Buddha.

But he hesitated. As Sansom explains, “To erect a great Buddha in the middle of the capital . . . was, on the face of it, a serious blow to the native divinities, unless some means could be found of reconciling (Shinto and Buddhism).”

The reconciliation was entrusted to a monk named Gyogi, who journeyed to Ise and for seven days and seven nights prayed at the threshold of the Sun Goddess’ shrine — to good effect, evidently, for in a dream “the Sun Goddess appeared to the emperor as a radiant disc,” writes Sansom, “and proclaimed that the Sun and the Buddha were the same.”

The bronze statue required years of work but was finally completed in 752. This is the enormous Great Buddha — 48.7 meters high — whose serene presence graces Nara’s Todaiji Temple to this day.

Only as Japan approached modern times did the Sun Goddess peek through and finally burst the clouds of indifference that had enveloped her. How thick those clouds were may be gauged from a passage in the 11th-century “Sarashina Diary,” written by an anonymous noblewoman. Troubled by a strange dream, she is advised “to pray to the heavenly goddess Amaterasu. I wondered where this deity might be and whether she was in fact a goddess (kami) or a Buddha,” she wrote. “It was some time before I was interested enough to ask who she actually was.” …

Amateratsu is so beautiful, and as a spirit presence, She is actually stronger in Japanese culture than Buddhism. What has happened to Buddhism in Japan is very wierd and seriously unhealthy – it has been turned into a death cult in which the heads of the largest lineages are literally the keepers of mausoleums, and “temple” is actually a secret Japanese codeword for boneyard – the bones of all of their ancestors are literally clustered around the main altar in their temples.

The reason that Obon odori is so powerful is that it is structurally impossible to do it in a temple. And look at a yagura, and tell me that those powerful red and white stripes are about Buddhism. Where else do you see them but emanating from the sun on Japan’s flag? The central focus of Obon is actually Amateratsu. That’s why Obon works as a multi-cultural festival in Hawaii – basically nobody owns the Sun Goddess. Amateratsu is also still why Japanese culture works, to the extent that it works at all. And look at that word. What is the ‘ra’ in the middle of it but the ‘ra’ in (Jetsun Arya) Tara, the Ra (changed in the modern language to La) which literally means sun in Hawaiian, and the Sun God Ra of ancient Egypt? Amen, I say unto thee beloveds, Amateratsu is absolutely nobody but the Great Mother, the Sun Goddess of Central Asia and this entire planet, Whom we all worshipped in the far past time when God was a Woman.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

The Truth Will Out

Read the whole new translation

… and in 1997 Dharma Master Yi Fa (依法法师) recieved the “Whole Country’s Ten Most Illustrious Youth” award, as the nun who had recieved the most special distinctions over the years, and in August established the International Translation Center, to translate Buddhist Scripture, in order to expand the dissemination of Socially Engaged Buddhism.

((This translating center has relied too heavily on the attainments of individuals like this nun. Historically, orthodox translations have been done by committees rather than individuals. In this case, it is undoubtedly this highly bally-hooed nun who is primarily responsible for the mistranslation of 人间佛教 as “Humanistic Buddhism.” When she did that, it had already long since been correctly translated by Thic Nhat Hanh as “Engaged Buddhism.” I have discussed why “Humanistic Buddhism” is wrong at length elsewhere. It would have been better for this nun to have listened to her elder Thic, especially since the Buddha has required nuns to take direction from the male ordained Sangha. As it is, Fo Guang Shan is now behind the massive and apparently, in its case, insuperable eight ball of not being able to correct anyone in authority no matter how wrong she may be. -xp))

编辑： 薛斐
Editor: Xue Fei

((English translation completed – xp, 11 Jul 09))

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

The Mystery of Shambala

himvani.com

…The Tibetans and tourists sometimes speak about strange phenomena occurring in the Himalayan region. In the beginning of the 20th century, an article was published in one Indian newspaper (but there are many such stories) about a visit of a British mayor who camped in the Himalayas. He suddenly saw a tall strange man who watched him. The man jumped out of his hiding place and disappeared, but to the mayor’s big surprise the Tibetans with whom he camped in the mountains were not surprised in the least – they explained to him, without showing any excitement, that he saw one of the snowy men who kept guarding the entrances into the holy Earth.

A Russian scientist, Andrej Strelkov, has studied Shambala for quite a log time. He says that the existence of this legendary kingdom is really described in ancient texts and that its “inhabitants” are superior to us in their abilities. He says that all attempts to go deep into the secret of Shambala brought bad luck or failure. For example, he says that most scientists who studied Shambala tragically died. A German Orientalist Albert Gruenwedel, who lived in the first half of the 20th century, went crazy while translating some Shambala texts. In a state of temporary lunacy he threw himself out of the window and died. There are more such cases. …

I think that the legend of Shambala exists to remind us that the Earth is sacred, that She is alive, and that Her sanctity is protected. Scientists, who when all is said and done, have done more to destroy the beauty and integrity of our Earth Mother than any other class of people, are in no way, shape, or form qualified to penetrate her secrets. We are about to experience a cycle of natural disasters which will destroy the destructive materialist bent of human civilization. That is what will initiate the Golden Age.

When we raise our consciousness high enough, we can see Shambala. It is exactly our Earth Mother arrayed in all her real beauty. But then, how do you raise your consciousness? Not by polluting, not by preying on any living thing, not by playing word games with ancient texts, not by addiction to anger, greed, and stupidity, not by the will to power, and not by lust. Every single one of those motivations blinds us to Shambala, and any single one of them, taken by force of a concentrated mind into Her sacred space, can easily kill the perpetrator.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Center of Shaman and Eternal Heavenly Sophistication – Ulan Bator

The New York Times, 11 July 09

… Zorigtbaatar Banzar practices his own brand of magic in a round felt tent, or ger, that he calls the Center of Shaman and Eternal Heavenly Sophistication, which sits beside a karaoke bar at one of Ulan Bator’s busiest intersections. A potbellied, red-nosed man in his 50s, Zorigtbaatar says he first discovered his supernatural powers as a young soldier lost in the Gobi and then spent time in a mental hospital, he says, for telling others about his “gifts.”

Today he and his wife, who is also a shaman, have built a successful business based on the worship of Genghis Khan, the legendary Mongolian ruler who they say was the most powerful shaman of all. During their ceremonies, Zorigtbaatar channels Genghis Khan’s spirit for the benefit of the hundreds of believers they see each week.

The work, Zorigtbaatar says, is more important than that of the average shaman.

“We are close to the end of the world,” he said, pointing to a painting of the great Khan surrounded by a divine fire. “Mongolians today have lost their energy, their power, so they are lazy. I am sent by his spirit to help the people, not heal cancer or toothaches.”

Resplendent in a beaded crown and silk caftan draped with amulets, Zorigtbaatar beat his sheepskin drum and chanted incantations before an altar decorated with a stuffed bear head, Mongolian currency and a bottle of Gordon’s gin. Two dozen believers sat nearby clutching offerings of candy and cookies.

Then Zorigtbaatar led the faithful past a large eagle chained to a post and out into the parking lot toward a mound of horse skulls.

Straining to block out the blaring car horns as they focused on his drumming, they murmured prayers for prosperity and flicked drops of vodka into the air.

The ceremony ended with many of the attendees receiving a head massage from Zorigtbaatar before being sent home with a packet of sugar cubes for good luck. …

This is exactly what Guru Rinpoche took birth to wipe out, and now it looks like someone who knows what they are doing will have to go out to Ulan Bator and clean up the disgusting mess in the spirit world that these clowns are creating, again. Genghis Kahn? Hello? A lot of my cohort actually rode with Genghis Kahn, and are still dealing with the dreadful karma left over from that life. What dreadful karma? How about mental illness? How about not being able to maintain a job or a stable relationship? How about homelessness? How about drug addiction? How about criminal behavior? How about just plain incurable dysfunctitude?

Yes, shamanism works in the sense that it gets some of the results that are sought, but it’s not worth the destruction of your karmic integrity. There is plenty of magic in orthodox Buddhism, in all branches of the Mahayana, and every single stroke of it is orders of magnitude more powerful than this filthy banality that gets going so easily anywhere in Central Asia. All of the same spirit powers have long since been submitted to the Buddhadharma, both by Guru Rinpoche and by Guan Yin directly.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xin Ping

Ground-Breaking New Chinese-English Dictionary

The new MDBG Chinese-English Dictionary is far and away the best Chinese English dictionary I have ever encountered. There’s just no comparison with anything else that I’ve seen. This one gives you a list of usages in context as soon as you dump anything into its search window, before you even ask it to search. If it can’t find a meaning for a combination, it then gives you thirty or so approximations, which usually allows you get around Chinese typos and the perpetual and gratuitous attitudinizations of the Taiwanese, who are just ABOVE writing anything canonical, particularly if it has ever been polluted by the CCP, you know what I mean? (We’ll let it pass that most of the CCP actually SPEAKS Mandarin, and that the beche mere known as Taiwan Hua is simply an abyssmal failure to get anything straight either grammatically, lexically, or phonetically. We won’t notice that about the Taiwanese; it just makes them worse when we do that).

If you think that suddenly I have attitude, please look at this: ifeng.com (5) 美国佛教之路 – American Buddhism’s Journey. This would have been impossible to translate without the improvements represented by by this dictionary, because of the turgidity of the script, which is not a dialect. It’s just Taiwanese being cute.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

The Largest Buddhasangha on Earth

Buddhism thrives as China relaxes religious policy

…”Twenty years ago, as we started recovering from the Cultural Revolution, the total number of monks here was just a few hundred,” said Yi Bo, spokesman for the Wutaishan Buddhist Association.

“Since then Buddhism has not stopped developing. More and more monks have come. The numbers hit 1,000, then 2,000, then 3,000. Three years ago we hit 5,000.”

At that time the government stepped in and began restricting the number of monks who could study here, he said.

Meanwhile, 2.8 million visitors came to Wutaishan in 2008, bringing in 1.4 billion yuan (206 million dollars) in tourist revenues, according to government figures. This year more than 3.1 million visitors are expected.

“The government supports us mainly with policy, but funding for our growth mainly comes from donations from the Buddhist faithful,” said Miao Yi, a nun at the Buddhist Institute at the Pushou Temple, China’s largest convent.

More than 600 nuns are studying in the Buddhist Institute which has received generous funding from Buddhists in Hong Kong and Taiwan, she said.

Still the government remains wary over religion and monks here refused to discuss Tibetan Buddhism or its spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who once asked communist leaders if he could make a pilgrimage to Wutaishan’s 10 Lama temples.

“We must work to support patriotism and national unity. We must embrace the leaders of the Communist Party and the socialist system,” Gen Tong, a senior Buddhist leader said on the occasion of 50th anniversary of the Wutaishan Buddhist Association in late 2007. …

Three years ago there were 5,000 *monks* studying at this pilgrimage site which hosted 2.8 million visitors last year. There are many such sites in China. And unlike in any other country on earth, Chinese Buddhism is non-sectarian. The Buddhists there are one unified and cohesive Sangha, and they speak with one voice. One of the things they say is “Only orthodox Buddhism is real.” Another thing they say is “We love our country and we support its government.” This most definitely signifies that dissident lamas who foment civil disorder in Tibet will not prevail. It would be futile to fail to hear the voice of the largest Buddhasangha on earth, if we claim to be Buddhist at all.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Some Facts Leak Past the Dalai Lama’s PR Job

Living Buddha chides Dalai Lama
By Xie Yu (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-06 07:49SHANNAN, Tibet:

The Dalai Lama’s call for Tibetans to “embrace the democratic system of electing a leader” is ridiculous, said Shingtsa Tenzinchodrak, a living Buddha of Tibetan Buddhism.

“According to Tibetan Buddhism, the choosing of the Dalai Lama’s incarnation should follow historical conventions and religious ritual,” said Shingtsa Tenzinchodrak, who became the 14th living Buddha of Shingtsa Temple in Tibet’s Nagarze county in 1955 when he was five.

The 59-year-old, who is also a deputy to the National People’s Congress, the top legislature, said politics was behind the “ridiculous” suggestion, which was reported by Reuters.

“He (the Dalai Lama) is once again doing something political with a religious pretence but his argument has no market in Tibet,” Shingtsa Tenzinchodrak said.

“As a living Buddha, I understand my people. What they want is a stable society with a developing economy instead of a disrupted Tibet.”

Shingtsa Tenzinchodrak visited the US and Canada in March and said he believed there were many misconceptions in the West about Tibet, including its religion, culture and human rights.

Since 1987, the Dalai Lama has frequently spoken with the US, but not until March did any other living Buddha from Tibet make an appearance in the Western world.

“Most Western people have never been to Tibet, nor seen the real Tibet. They get their information from the Dalai Lama,” he said.

“I feel the necessity to go out more and tell the world what actually happens here,” Shingtsa Tenzinchodrak said, adding that he would take another trip this year. …

His argument, which is quite valid, is based on the fact that there is already a democratic secular government in Tibet; it’s called the Tibetan Autonomous Region. If the Dalai Lama were a religious leader, he’d be acting like one. No Asian Buddhist lineage is a democratic institution.

This is what we need to hear more of in the West; more independent indigenous voices from Tibet. Not more whiners and sectarian trogdolytes introduced by the Dalai Lama, please, but more bona fide independant voices from Tibet. Idiot compassion* by ignorant westerners from afar is NOT where it’s at.

The Dalai Lama is not a “Buddhist Pope.” There is no such authority structure in Tibetan Buddhism or the Vajrayana (Central Asian lamasic Buddhism) in general. He doesn’t speak for a centralized Buddhist hierarchy, and he certainly doesn’t speak for the people actually living in Tibet.

*Idiot compassion – Chogyam Trungpa’s term. This is mostly a western obstruction, because westerners tend to get all warm and fuzzy inside about all the wrong stuff, and the Dalai Lama’s PR job about Tibet in the western media is a first-class case in point.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Sarah Palin in the Year of the Earth Ox

Sarah Palin, having come under the criticism of the dirty old men who continue to attempt to run what is left of the Republican Party, just resigned as the Governor of Alaska, effective July 26.

I like Governor Palin a lot, and I think she is better presidential material than Hillary. True, I love Hillary. Who could not love her, and still claim to be a human being? But she’s just a little bit too subjective for the top job in government, and I think it’s fixed karma. Palin on the other hand has just massive personal integrity, and I think that she is wasted in the Republican Party. It’s just not worth reforming. That would be like trying to reform the Catholic Church.

As I wrote back in the heat of last year’s presidential race when she originally appeared, we need another Party on our right which would be analogous to Taiwan’s Green Party – i.e., a bunch of die-hard localists and protectionists, and Palin is the archetype of someone who could start such a Party, because she’s SO into energy independence, on every level. I think if she left her current party and started another Party, by whatever name, she would take the best part of the Republican base with her, and pick up many conservative Democrats.

I think that Gov. Palin’s resignation at this time is just like Barak Obama’s original refusal to agree to a pre-emptive war in Iraq. It’s the right strategic move at a time when all of the other players are locked into existing dynamics, much of which will boil down to the cannibalization of the Republican Party into something that works. The Republican Party is corrupt, and we’re just seeing opening moves in the proof of that fact. It is corrupt beyond recall, and nobody of her calibre, and in her early stage of her political career, should be involved with it. It’s simply time to do something different.

So Happy 4th, Sarah! Illegitimate non carborundum and damn the torpedoes. With my blessing.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Purify Mind’s Amazing American Buddhist Screed

Buddhism in America

This is the most complete rundown of the critical parameters of Buddhism’s arrival in America that I have ever seen, and the only one that is better than what’s written in Chinese. It’s a pity that it’s one continuous undifferentiated screed. I’m seriously thinking of ripping it, organizing it into paragraphs, and linking it to the exant organizations. I think some people call that kind of thing “editing.” Here is an example of an historical epitome which might take years of constant interaction to milk out of the members of the Sangha under discussion if you tried to get it by talking to them:

…Robert Aitken is another important American member of Sanbo Kyodan. He was first introduced to Zen as a prisoner in Japan during the Second World War. After returning to the United States, he began studying with Nyogen Senzaki in Los Angeles in the early 1950s. In 1959, while still a Zen student himself, he founded the Diamond Sangha, a zendo in Honolulu, Hawaii. Three years later, the Diamond Sangha hosted the first U.S. visit by Yasutani Hakuun, who would visit various locations in the U.S. six more times before 1969. Aitken travelled frequently to Japan and became a disciple of Yamada Koun, Yasutanis successor as head of the Sanbo Kyodan. Aitken became a dharma heir of Yamadas, authored more than ten books, and developed the Diamond Sangha into an international network with temples in the United States, Argentina, Germany, and Australia. In 1995, he and his organization split with Sanbo Kyodan in response to reorganization of the latter following Yamadas death.

The interior of the dojo at Diamond Sangha, Palolo Valley, O’ahu, Hawaii

I’ve visited and practiced briefly with the Diamond Sangha. It’s not that they’re secretive or that they don’t know their history. It’s that there’s a certain cognitive style involved in this kind of group; they just have a real problem saying three or more declarative sentences in a row on purpose. It just isn’t Zen to them. It’s different if someone gets fed up with the pregnant silence and the cryptic utterances, and starts venting, gushing, etc. That can happen. True, it’s deplored, but it happens. But the orderly discussion of a large body of complex information? Sorry, it just isn’t Zen.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping