Col. Henry Steel Olcott Boils up in the Sri Lankan Press, Again

Read the highly informative lankaweb article.

…The White Buddhist

…The Buddhists found an American who was willing to help them in their struggle. Despite the subsequent disputes Ven. M. Gunanada and the Anagarika Dharmapala had with Col. Olcott, his landing in Galle in 1880 marked a historic break in the history of humiliation of the native Sinhala Buddhist (and Tamil Hindu) people of Ceylon. He was the first white man to take the side of the Sinhala Buddhists against the white ruler and the locals who converted to Christianity for perks. Yes, there was a situation when the colonial governor wanted to make Vesak a public holiday, the representative for the Sinhala people on the Legislative Council, a Christian, protesting against it!

Anagarika Dharmapala took the counter-humiliation theory to new heights, by using it against the colonial masters as well as on the locals copying the master. Just like Gotabhaya Rajapakse, met humiliation by humiliation, Anagarika Dhramapala used humiliation to attack humiliation. He did this using a variety of methods. He called John Kotalawala, “Our John” because JK had a habit of physically assaulting white men who confronted him. He would ridicule those who wore a bended comb on their head calling them stupid bulls. He called the white man “para suddha.” This had two meanings. When a judge questioned him why he insulted white men, he said the two words meant foreign white person, not a foreign devil. But villagers received a different meaning as in “para balla.” It did not mean a foreign dog. The worst method was his preaching to have an effigy of a white man in front of the house and hit it on a daily basis. ((This reminds me of members of Meher Baba’s family, citing their history of political suppression by Muslims in Iran. The Iranian Parsees evolved exactly the same expedient; they had an effigies of their Muslim bosses that they would abuse, before going to work in the morning -xp)) …

C. Wijeyawickrema’s entire long article should be read and understood. Being Buddhist means being able to find common cause with Asians. Olcott was the first white Buddhist to do this. It does not surprise us that Olcott was a bona fide precepted American Buddhist. But we need to understand, both historically and psychologically, what was going on with this man, who was being suppressed by the Xtian majority in America, even as he helped Sinhala Buddhists beat themselves out from under British political oppression, often against the bitter opposition of some of the people he was helping. Both the admiration of and hatred and misunderstanding of Olcott continue in Sri Lanka today.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Are We a Nation of Hindus?

Read the Xtian Post Article

…The exclusivity of the Gospel is not merely a facet of the church’s message. Indeed, a Gospel that does not affirm that salvation comes through faith in Jesus Christ alone is not the Gospel of Christ, but a false gospel. As Lisa Miller correctly recites, Jesus did say, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.” [John 14:6] …

But Jesus Christ was silent on the subject of whether He, the very Son of God, could come at another time in another form. Meher Baba, however, was not silent on this. He declared himself to the be reincarnation of Jesus Christ, among other Avatars of God. Finally, the literal interpretation of the Bible fails to reveal either perceptual or intuitive truth. If Jesus Christ were the only way to God, God would be the greatest of all possible losers, because the vast majority of this planet fails to believe in Him. How could the Creator of all make such a wimped appearance in His own creation? The whole idea makes no sense at all. It is also (painfully to Xtians) obvious that if God is in fact infinite, then how could he possibly be limited to only one Son, or only one appearance of one Son? These are, on the face of them, absurd assumptions, and the more familiar you become with God, the more absurd they get. The kind of blind Xtian mindlessness underlying these assumptions, which Xtians falsely attribute to “faith,” universally makes them unable to communicate Christ’s message of love and truth.

…Another aspect of the story is this: Many Americans have such a doctrineless understanding of Christianity that they do not even know what the Gospel is — not even remotely. A greater tragedy is that so many who consider themselves Christians seem to share in this confusion.

Many observers who trace these trends see this doctrinal shift among Christians as a good development. After all, if you hold to nothing more than a functional view of religion, this might seem to promise less conflict among religious believers. But, if you believe that truth is essential to Christian faith, there is every reason to see these trends as nothing less than catastrophic. Nothing less than our witness to the Gospel of Christ is at stake.

Are we becoming a nation of Hindus? Well, in this sense it appears perhaps we are. The really urgent question is whether the Church will regain its theological sanity and evangelistic courage to resist this trend. If not, being described as a nation of Hindus will be the least of our problems. (end of article) Adapted from R. Albert Mohler Jr.’s weblog at www.albertmohler.com.

A functional view of religion is a real view of religion. A religion which cannot save you is a religion which you are morally obligated to abandon. Short of that, neither you nor that religion will be able to grow.

We’re not becoming Hindu, but we are growing into a truly pluralistic culture. It’s a natural and inevitable part of our growth as a human society, individually and collectively. Extremist views, such as what unfortunately still constitutes the Xtian mainstream, are not, say again NOT helpful in this very vital and necessary evolution.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

___________________________________________________

The Swastika in the News

In Thailand, A New Party Tries to Take Back the Swastika

… Asians are rightly miffed that Adolf Hitler hijacked an ancient religious symbol of luck and peace and turned it into the unofficial logo for genocide and racial hatred. The swastika symbol is venerated in eastern religions ranging from Hinduism and Jainism to Buddhism. Even in pre-Nazi Europe, the good-luck talisman adorned everything from Celtic art to Finnish Air Force medals. A 1904 first-edition copy of Rudyard Kipling’s Traffics and Discoveries has a swastika on the cover, a sign of his kinship with India where he was born.
(See pictures of the 2008 protests in Bangkok.)

Naturally, the Führer stripped the luck from the sign in the West, and its continuing use by neo-Nazi groups — not to mention Charles Manson slicing the symbol onto his forehead — prevents its rehabilitation. But in Asia the swastika still connotes all things auspicious. I remember traveling in Japan years ago and watching the shocked faces of American tourists coming across a giant topiary swastika that adorned a hillside near a famous temple. In fact, on some Japanese maps, temples are denoted with a swastika, just as churches are symbolized by a cross. (For the record, the Japanese swastika, or manji, faces counter-clockwise, while the Nazi symbol goes clockwise.) Similarly, Tibetans, who believe the symbol represents the Buddha’s footsteps, adorn their walls or bodies with the token. …

Although I’ve never disagreed with anything in my life before (hehehe), I do not agree that “the Fuhrer stripped the luck from the sign in the West…” The Swastika was in use as a lucky symbol for thousands of years before there was anything like the modern era. Der Fuhrer’s short and violent psycho-spasm can’t wreck it. You just have to change the color and the orientation to the horizon, and ba-da-bing, ba-da boom, it snaps back to its much stronger original meaning. This is, by far, the most widely used religious symbol on earth. Hitler may have tried to kill it, but he failed in that as well as everything else he attempted.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Heather Graham’s “Tantra” — Kludged Beyond Recall

All Headline News

… Graham owns an investigative mind when it comes to Hindu spirituality and religious philosophy. Coincidentally, she played a porn star offering mind-body mystical guidance in 2002’s “The Guru.”

While promoting her upcoming bit part in “The Hangover”, Graham told U.K. newspaper The Daily Mail that she “first got into it (what she ahllucinates to be “tantra”) when I was filming The Guru in 2002 and I haven’t looked back”. She added the intense ritual “works for me”.

But it’s not just sex. Zed contends Tantrism extends way beyond the healing power of sexual energy.

The Tantric method is a divinely-sourced tradition dating back to 4th century India. It deals with metaphysical revelation and contemplative exercises that place the seeker on a conscious journey to inner peace and self-awareness.

In a recent press release, Zed furthered his argument stating, “Hindus welcomed Hollywood bigwigs to immerse in Hinduism but taking it seriously and not just flirting with its terminology and concepts and using it as a fashion statement.”

Zed added, “Graham and other Hollywood celebrities needed to have more patience and go beyond the superficial because Hinduism concepts evolved over thousands of years and needed serious study.”

It’s about time that bona fide Hindus started to go online about this kind of nonsense. Real tantra takes at least ten years of preliminary meditation, and in the western case, no less than twenty years, in every single case of a westerner.

The tantra is 99.99% meditation, and .01% sex, and you can become a full-blown tantric adept with no sex at all. Milarepa was an example of that. On the other hand, westerners who piss around casually with these ideas, without a guru, and without any accumulated cultural wisdom about how truly dreadful the tantra can be when attempted by an unqualified person, are to be deplored, criticized, and abandoned.

There are only a tiny minority of people on this planet who truly need the tantra and/or are even capable of it in the first place. The truly blessed amongst us are simply not burdened by the need to involve themselves in this abyssmally dangerous and extremist path.

Sex is great. Get married and have children. If you were destined to be a tantric adept, you would have taken birth in an Asian society in which that lifestyle is respected and supported.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

On Transcending the Economic Crisis

Read the whole page.

…In each of our minds, there is a fountain of wisdom constantly flowing. When we connect with it, we stop doing the kinds of things that have led to our current economic situation. And how do we connect with that fountain of wisdom? I’ll come back to that later. Right here I want to deal with the presented pain more directly. When we connect with the constantly-springing, infinitely creative, and unique spring of wisdom that lies within each of our minds, we are able to see through lies and have the courage to expose them, rather than to be the passive tools of corrupt leaders. When we are so connected within ourselves, we have the courage to stand against the collective force of a mass of inherently weak and directionless people going along with lies simply because they are too lazy to investigate, and/or too eager to reap the benefit of going along with those in power, even when those in power happen to be corrupt.

But beyond all that, when we locate our own wisdom, which is unique, and which is something that no one else but each of us can give individually, we can start to see the way forward from the dreadful economic reality to which our collective action as a nation has brought us. …

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Real Monks Don’t Fight

Pagoda honours plight of fighting monks
20:10′ 06/09/2008 (GMT+7)

VietNamNet Bridge – When the country stood up against the French, a group of monks left the monastery to take up arms. …

– and accomplished absolutely nothing. Although laymen must sometimes fight, monks never should. It is simply a precept violation for them. Rather, their correct role in a conflict is to practice even harder than in peacetime, and to transfer merit to their protectors who are engaged in battle, or to the military castes of their own society who oppress them.

There is no greater disaster on this planet than a fighting monk.

BYW, I am still accumulating 200 repetitions of the Heart Sutra per day, with the intention of transferring the merit to South Asian temples who have military troops stationed in their compounds.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Wikipedia on Buddhism in Taiwan

Wikipedia on Buddhism in Taiwan

Buddhism is a major religion in Taiwan. More than 90 percent of Taiwan’s people practice the Chinese folk religion which integrates Buddhist elements alongside a basically Taoist base (with a role for religious specialists from both traditions during special occasions such as funerals). Of these, a smaller number identify more specifically with Chinese Buddhist teachings and institutions, without necessarily divorcing themselves from the folk practices. One study proposes that 7 to 15 percent of Taiwanese are Buddhist in the strict sense. [1] Vegetarianism is an important practice which distinguishes this “pure” form of Buddhism.

Government statistics insist on distinguishing Buddhism and Taoism, resulting in almost equal numbers for both (in 2005, 8 million and 7.6 million, respectively, out of a total population of 23 million). However, many of the self-declared “Buddhists” turn out to be merely applying the name “Buddhism” to the folk religion. Buddhism may also be confused with local syncretic faiths such as I-kuan Tao, since these tend to emphasize Buddhist figures like Guanyin or Maitreya, and also practice vegetarianism.

Four local Buddhist teachers, whose institutions are especially significant, are popularly likened to the “Guardians of the Four Directions.” They are:

North (Jinshan, Taipei): Master Sheng-yen (聖嚴) of Dharma Drum Mountain (法鼓山)
South (Dashu, Kaohsiung): Master Hsing Yun (星雲) of Fo Guang Shan (佛光山)
East (Hualien): Master Cheng Yen (證嚴) of the Tzu Chi Foundation (慈濟基金會)
West (Nantou): Master Wei Chueh (惟覺) of Chung Tai Shan (中台山)

Several of these have been influenced by the Humanistic Buddhism (人間佛教) of Master Yin Shun (印順), a theological approach which has come to distinguish Taiwanese Buddhism. (Yin Shun was inspired by Taixu 太虛, who is less often remembered in Taiwan.) These institutions have branches all over the world and, in a reversal of the traditional relationship, have begun supporting the revival of Buddhism in China.

In recent decades, Tibetan Buddhism has greatly increased in popularity, with many Tibetan lamas visiting Taiwan on a regular basis.

I was stationed in Taiwan as a member of the U. S. Navy in the Vietnam era. It’s true that Taiwanese temples are syncretic, including both Buddhist and Taoist deities. What we see in the US, however, are cleaned-up versions, such as Fo Guang Shan, that proclaim themselves as purely Buddhist.

Interestingly, Kwan Yin Temple in Honolulu, which has nothing to do with Taiwan, also includes Taoist dieties, but they have their own special place outside the main Buddha hall, which is dominated by a huge gold image of Kwan Yin. There is also a minor Confucianist shrine. what is practiced at Kwan Yin Temple is squeaky-clean Mahayana Buddhism. There isn’t a spoken, chanted, or written word of anything else present in that temple. There’s nothing wrong with having other aspects of Chinese culture present in the temple, as long as it’s kept in proportion. The Buddha must own His own temple. Buddhadharma cannot be a compromise with any other teaching.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Practice Comes First

Those with some life experience will recognize that my recent posts about court proceedings represent a dynamic that could eat my practice and this blog. However, I recognized that going in, so I determined to continue with my current practice of repeating the Heart Sutra 200 times/day no matter what. It takes four hours to do that. The only practical way to accomplish that is to start at 3:00 AM, and to chant right through the Brahmamurhurta (the two hours before dawn). So I have done this on every day since I started without exception, chanting from 3:00 to 6:00 AM, and making up the rest whenever.

In addition to previous 600 reps burned for myself and 1600 for Fo Guang Shan (at Kuan Yin Temple), I burned an additional 4,000 reps for Fo Guang Shan on Wei To Dan (3 Jul 08), and an initial 2,000 reps for all sentient beings on Friday, 1 Aug 08, which was a solar eclipse and the first day of the 8th lunar month. I will continue this for all sentient beings until 15 Aug 08, the full moon of the eighth lunar month and Yu Lan Jie (the official scriptural date of the Obon festival). At that point I will cease practicing this way, and I expect the court activity to have come to an end as well.

Oh, and hey, yes, you can sometimes flaunt your practice in the Chinese Mahayana, because it gives good example to others.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Asia’s angry monk syndrome

By Megawati Wijaya

Read the whole article.

SINGAPORE – From Sri Lanka to South Korea, from Tibet to Myanmar, Asia’s Buddhist clergy are in unprecedented numbers exerting their moral authority onto politics, abandoning their detachment from worldly events and giving rise to what at least one academic has referred to as a region-wide “angry monk syndrome”.

Agitated ascetics made global headlines last year during Myanmar’s “Saffron Revolution”, where in their thousands they took to the streets to protest against the military government’s policies and perceived mistreatment of clergy members. At the height of the unrest, monks dropped the symbolic gauntlet by overturning their alms bowls and refused to accept donations from government officials and their family members.

This year, over 300 Tibetan monks marched in protest in Lhasa in commemoration of the 49th anniversary of an uprising against Chinese rule and to air more modern complaints and grievances, including calls for the release of monks detained last year after the Dalai Lama was awarded a congressional medal of honor by the United States, for the withdrawal of all troops and security personnel from their monasteries and the re-instatement of monks expelled from monasteries for their failure of “patriotic education” exams that required them to denounce the Dalai Lama. ……

This will simply destroy what little may be left of Asian Buddhism. For the laity, practice comes first. But for monks, practice is the only justification for their existence.

MONKS AND POLITICS DO. NOT. MIX!

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

American Buddhists Believe in God

Check it out:

(American) Buddhists do believe in God

It turns out that a huge majority of American Buddhists believe in God!

It’s come a long way from the early Buddhism/Taoism BB’s when every single day was a war with Nihilist webheads trying to tell you that the Buddha was an athiest and that Buddhism forbids God.

In fact, the Buddha had no interest in God, so he refused to discuss it. Ditto war, sex and politics. But are we not supposed to believe in all that stuff, or participate in it, simply because the Buddha insisted on discussing nothing, but NOTHING, but the cessation of suffering?

Meher Baba said that Broad Buddhism is one of the “highroads to God.” End of discussion.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping