The Establishment of the Buddhist Research Center is Deeply Felt

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Lin Mingya is the only East Asian I have ever read who has a healthy sense of his birth culture’s fallibility. Apart from him, how would we know something like:

…after the financial crisis of 1997, scholars started to criticize the economic structure of East Asian society, and criticized such East Asian values as nepotism, sentimentality, and bureaucratic mentality, which by mutually influencing each other brought about the corrupt “pettycoat capitalism,” and it was just this which led to the economic crisis.”

Anyone who has had to deal with the poisonous post-millennium East Asian cultural arrogance first hand really wants to know this, i.e., that the arrogance is an artifact of the East-West cultural interface, and does not pervade the society, and in particular, their academia.

Those who do not yet understand the threat that Neoconfucianism represents to human civilization in general, and the Buddhist world together with the transmission of the Buddhadharma to the West should most definitely read:
To Seal the Door Where Evil Dwells – Maxine Hong Kingston.

The terminal failure of traditional Chinese society, which took an entire century of systemaic corruption, civil disorder and unbelievable human suffering to play out, was exactly, specifically, and nothing but the failure of its official ideology, Confucianism. Yes, the Chinese in general, and the Taiwanese in particular, can play decadent games with this failed ideology, but finally, those games are destined to accomplish exactly nothing. As Buddhists in general, and American Buddhists in particular, we just don’t have time for this perfectly futile cultural side-track.

On another issue, I do not agree that Protestantism is defunct in America. Protestantism is inextricably

Translator’s Notes and Reflections on Guan Yin’s Universal Gate

REFERENCES:

The complete text of Guan Yin’s Universal Gate in Chinese

My current translation of the prose section of Guan Yin’s
Universal Gate

My current translation of the gatha in Guan Yin’s Universal Gate

This translation is (3 Jan 09) basically complete for my purposes now. There is a lot that could be noodled about the mythological forms from three divergent cultures that figure in this translation, but I consider that beside the point. The Chinese routinely go on and on and on, until all of their eyes are blinked out like Little Orphan Annie, in unbounded repertoires of perfectly endless attempts to pin down exact meanings for these terms, and to me, that is just not the point of the scripture. The point is that Guan Yin Bodhisattva will adopt any form at all for the purpose of crossing someone over to Reality.

Some of the forms in queston are literally demonic, that is, they routinely get angry, kill beings, and eat meat, including human flesh. In the West, we don’t have to have a Chinese problem about the fact that a demon can be a Bodhisattva, because we just don’t have the
Confucianist cultural taboos that make it a problem. The demonic penchant for rapine, chaos, slaughter, and death, when driven to its extremes, undoubtedly results in some of the demons taking Refuge and becoming Bodhisattvas. The majority of our Dharma Protectors, in actual fact, are demons. And who would do that to them? Well, shucks, folks! Who but dear Guan Yin Pusa? And how? Would you believe an incredibly attractive demoness, among other forms?

I do not feel, as I did after working on the Xuecheng Da Heshang material, that “I will not return to perfect this.” This is scripture. The Chinese text is undoubtedly the meaning of the Buddha, rendered into transparent classical language by Bodhisattvas. We can undoubtedly rely on it as pure Dharma. For me personally, this 25th chapter of the Lotus Sutra has become the most significant thing I have ever given attention to, in any language. It has changed my mind. I will undoubtedly return to this for the rest of my life, and I am undoubtedly destined to write commentary on it.

Love unspoken is love denied. For a writer like me, love unwritten is love betrayed. Guan Yin is all love. She is the source of the Great Love which is the motive force of the new Mahayana Revolution which is sweeping East Asia today, including such Taiwanese groups as Fo Guang Shan and Tzu Chi. To give attention to Guan Yin is to be flooded with her love. To belong to her is to be a point source of her Great Love. Great Love is also called Equal Love, because it is too great to be given to one individual, one family, one lineage, or one culture. It necessarily spreads itself to everyone we know, without exception.

May we all be teminally infected with Guan Yin’s Great Love!

By my vow;

GATE, GATE, PARAGATE, PARASAMGATE, BODHI, SVAHA!

Xing Ping, 3 Jan 09.

Oh, and hey, next item on the agenda: long-neglected Lin Mingya material.

My Current Translation Project

Can’t Buddhism be separated from military power?” (Chinese language, currently in translation)

Lin Mingya’s Mandarin is elegant, and his scholarship is excellent. His thesis in this article is that unlike Christianity and Islam, Buddhism has never been propagated by military might. His argument takes us through scenarios in the history of Central Asia that are relatively unknown in the West. It will take time to research, and I think it is worth doing that.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Lin Mingya’s Curriculum Vitae

Check it out:

Lin Mingya’s Curriculum Vitae

Clearly this is a work in progress.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Comment Breakthrough

I’ve added the “Comment Widget” to the bottom of the side panel, because of this comment from what appears to be Lin Mingya’s sister Meifeng:

Lin Mei Feng on Lin Mingya’s CV

What a great comment! It makes me feel like I found a missing part of my Sangha!

I’m going to translate this Curriculum Vitae. It could take a while.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

The New Emergent Conceptual Basis of East Asian Mahayana

If you look at the pages listed in the sidebar, you will find original translations by yours truly from three prominent East Asian Buddhists: Xuecheng Fashi, Lin Mingya, and Li Shandan. The first is on the Chinese mainland, the second is in Singapore, and the third is in Taiwan. But all of their writings demonstrate the emergence of a new modern-era set of universal assumptions about Mahayana Buddhism. The most important of these are:

1. Stringent orthodoxy, including:

a). The unassailable primacy of the Buddha’s actual word.

b). The re-instatment of the value of the discriminative intellect in Buddhism (as opposed to the absolute taboo against criticism in the interests of “Right Speech” which has been, in general, the first priority of the Asian Buddhists who have arrived in America).

c). The primary value of actual perception.

d). The primary value of actual practice, as opposed to thought, talk, and political activity.

2. The absolute insistence on both structural and functional differentiations between Buddhist institutions and governments. (as opposed to the traditional Asian confusion thereof, which has been the biggest engine of Dharmic corruption ever invented).

3. The rejection of blind ritualism, and in particular, the Chinese repentance cult, which assumes mideveal psychology, i.e., the non-differention of egos, and rigid group responsibility for individual activity.

4. The acceptance of a modern-era scientific and pragmatic world-view, which, if one cares to check it, is thoroughly consistent with the Buddha’s attitude towards everthing.

The value of this in the American context is that it is our own native American Buddhist conceptual milieu, but asserted by those in authority in the mainstream of their respective cultures.

When we, the American Buddhists, have asserted exactly these same points of view, while standing on our own homeland, we have been systematically attacked, by the Asian Buddhists in our midst*, for “Changing the teaching,” and this has marginalized us everywhere. American Buddhists are one cohort with the Asian Mahayana Buddhist mainstream. We think the same way, and we have the same values, i.e., the values of the Asian Mahayana mainstream are thoroughly consistent with those of the American Founding Fathers. Therefore, the language difference between here and the Asian mainland is culturally trivial, and all of the writings of every single authority that I cite here should be translated into English instanter.

*I’m the most expensive Buddhist in America. More money has been spent trying to crash me than most MDs make in their lifetimes. Therefore, all of you should know that what I write is important, and that you should read me and understand me.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping