Alohilani who dances with Pua Melia

I originally misidentified the image on the left as Melia. It turned out to be Alohilani, who dances with the Pua Melia group. For a few more images of this fine dancer, see my Pua Melia Album

Sorry about that, ladies.

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

O-Higan

The Higan celebration, which is associated with both equinoxes, will happen at Jodo Mission Haleiwa on 28 Sept 08, at 10:00 AM. This beautiful and friendly local Japanese temple can be found on the beach just Kona (Leeward) of Haleiwa Alii Beach Park on the island of O’ahu.

Higan is unique to Japanese Buddhism, and goes back to the legendary Prince Shotoku, an early Bodhisattva-Ruler who recieved the original transmission of the Buddhadharma to Japan from Korea. The solar-oriented date (the equinox) relates to Japan’s entire orientation to the Sun. The word Japan means “Rising Sun,” and the Sun Goddess Ameratsu is central to Japanese mythology and the self-conception of the Japanese people.* All of this is a complete departure from the Chinese norm, and harkens to the Tara cult of Central Asia, which is continuous, BTW, with the pre-Alii Hawaiian Goddess cult.

For more info. on O-Higan, check these links:

My Mother’s Haiga.

O-Higan’s relationship to the Paramitas.

A Soto Shu interpretation of O-Higan (The Soto Shu is the only Buddhist lineage presently transmitted to American lineage holders.)

*Japanese Sun-worship – the local Japanese are another story, but bona fide Japanese tourists can often be found posted on every high point on this island to observe both sunrise and sunset. They love this. They’ll rise before dawn simply to go out and observe sunrise. And full moon sunset at Lanikai is a mob scene.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

More Hula at Kapiolani Park

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See my Halau ka La Onohi Album for a few more shots of the Lopez sisters’ new Kalihi halau, which is just three years old, and just recieved their first invitation to the Merrie Monarch Festival next year. The Kumu of this Halau teach Hawaiian Studies at UH Manoa.

The goddess energy was so thick on this day (Sun 22 Jul – see my Pi’ilani Album as well) that I dragged out my Ephemerides to see what the planet Venus was up to. It was with the Sun in sidereal Gemini, and in mutual reception with Mercury in Taurus. Scorchin’! It doesn’t get better for the dance than that, and this will be true until 7 July. The Royal Hawaiian Band’s hula program runs through June, and there is one more Sunday in June, the 29th, which will no doubt be choke little scorchers as well. I wouldn’t miss it.

2:00 o’clock, Sun 29 Jun 08, Kapiolani Park Bandstand. Be there, or be, um, WRONG!

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

“Aloha Oe” by Pi’ilani

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See more superb shots of one of the best dancers on this planet right now at my Pi’ilani Album

Pi’ilani was in her glory on this occasion (Kapiolani Bandstand on Sun 23 Jun 08). Every time I hit the shutter, she was doing something beautiful. I didn’t edit out a single shot. I consider the above shot the only photograph I’ve ever taken. Everything else was only trying hard.

I need a better camera.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Hawaiian Turtle Medicine

After Halau o ke Kia’i’s big blow-out at Kuhio Beach on the last full moon day (20 Apr 08), I knew that they weren’t going to make it back the next week. No way. If I had been one of those little girls, I would have instantaneously become a brilliant expert on the subject of how to be MIA from everything and everybody, but hula practice in particular, until my elders figured out how to re-connect with their planet.

As it was, I myself spent the best part of a week jumping in salt water and consulting with honu (sea turtles) about what life on this planet would be, if any human being chose to participate in it, for a change.

But for whatever reason, perhaps because my Taiwanese temple decided that being civilized towards foreign devils might be a nice experiment, for a change, I made it back to Kuhio Beach the following Sunday, and discovered myself being looked at by this mea nani nui loa (great big beautiful thing):

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This lady’s Halau is literally named for the Eye of the Turtle (Maka Honu). I know that because she told me. The Honu is an Hawaiian Aumakua (Animal Protector Spirit), And I’ve never seen such a clear example of a human being with that Aumakua as this indivudual.

I have Native American Blood, and according to the teachings of that blood, you know that an animal has become your protector when it establishes eye contact with you, either in a dream, or in the “real world,” three times in a row. Different Honu have been looking at me for years. If I ever get depressed, all I have to do is go to the water, and Honu stick their heads up and look at me. In fact, if I’m running any kind of emotional energy at all, good or bad, they always stick their heads up and check me out. Always. Apparently the Kumu of this Halau also has had the same kind of experience, and so she named her Halau after the Eye of the Honu.

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A few more shots of this wonderful Halau can be found in my Halau Hula o na Maka Honu Album.

Namu Amida Butsu,
Xing Ping

E Aloha o ke Kumu Hula, Hea!

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The title of this post means, “I call the Aloha of the Kumu Hula.” This is the only image that I could get of this Kumu dancing alone that made sense. This is a Kumu-loa a o na kumu, and most of the other kumu that she teaches are men.

This completes the images that I choose to publish from full moon in sidereal Virgo, 20 Apr 08. There are twenty images in all, and they can be found in my 20 Apr 08 sub-Album.

Such it is, American Buddhists. Such. It. Is.

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Namu Amida Butsu,
Xing Ping

Ke Aloha

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Related photos can be found in my 20 Apr 08 sub-album.

This is literally the first woman I ever took a picture of. That first attempt was just a white blur. To finally be able to get this image, I had to spend nine months refining my eye and learning how to use a camera. I’m sure that nothing will ever look the same again.

For those who question why images of women never quite seem to get off my site, finally, whatever my site may happen to consist of at the moment, consider this: Why is it that the Ven. Xing Yun is surrounded by women?

Women help us see. There’s part of our eye that doesn’t wake up apart from women. this is equally true for women as for men. In the background of any visual artist, if you look closely enough, you will find a stage of nude art, and most of it, if you look closely enough, is not sexually exciting. It’s about why we actually tend not to see what is there, and how what is there signs something completely different in the human brain.

Cameras are brutal, because they only record what is actually there. Then, to become an artist, you have to change what is there into something human beings want to see, and/or are capable of seeing. Photographers are made in the darkroom or on the photo-editing work-station. They are made by refining the native mess of uninstructed perception into something meaningful. What you see on my photosite is the 10% that didn’t wind up on the cutting room floor, because my eye wasn’t on when I clicked the shutter.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

And the Goddess Came to the Hulapa’a