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

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“Do. Not. Let. Go. The. Hand. Of. Truth.” –Meher Baba

Wikipedia on Meher Baba’s New Life

This New Life is endless, and even after my physical death it will be kept alive by those who live the life of complete renunciation of falsehood, lies, hatred, anger, greed and lust; and who, to accomplish all this, do no lustful actions, do no harm to anyone, do no backbiting, do not seek material possessions or power, who accept no homage, neither covet honor nor shun disgrace, and fear no one and nothing; by those who rely wholly and solely on God, and who love God purely for the sake of loving; who believe in the lovers of God and in the reality of Manifestation, and yet do not expect any spiritual or material reward; who do not let go the hand of Truth, and who, without being upset by calamities, bravely and wholeheartedly face all hardships with one hundred percent cheerfulness, and give no importance to caste, creed and religious ceremonies. This New Life will live by itself eternally, even if there is no one to live it. –Meher Baba

Meher Baba’s New Life phase was the Buddhadharma brought up to real time. He literally started it in Sarnath, where the Buddha taught his first sermon. He and his disciples begged for food, and wandered as homeless renunciates on the dusty roads of Bharat Mata (Mother India). They all took strict vows amounting to the Buddhist Five Precepts, and the general prohibition of any fixed attachment to anybody or anything. Emotional negativity, which Baba called “moodiness” was also verboten. So was the failure to feel or to be honest about what you were feeling. “I don’t want stones!” As usual around Baba, there was no way to win. None. One of the most difficult fixiations for His indian disciples to get over was the need to fall at their Master’s feet. That was deemed a forbidden attachment as well. Baba was not their Master anymore, he was only their Companion now. They had all signed written agreements about all this stuff beforehand, and some did fail to keep their agreements and had to be kicked out.

It all culminated in a stage called Mano-Nash (the anihilation of the mind) in the bitter semi-desert plains of NW India. In the midst of this, Baba burned effigies of the places of worship of all the major religions in a Dhuni fire, and ordered that the ashes be gathered and never be used again, saying that He was reorienting religious ritual for individual and collective needs, (and thus destroying the emphasis in the human mass mind on ritual for its own sake). Baba never recognized any spiritual attainment in any of his disciples or followers, but in my never humble enough opinion, Mano-Nash is simply Nirvana by another name, and the core group that passed through this stage with Baba was Enlightened in the Buddhist sense, at the very least. I have encountered some of them at Meher Baba’s seat in the Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra Province, India.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Meher Baba’s connection to Iran

Meher Baba in 1905

Meher Baba was the latest Avatar of God, and one of the earliest of His Incarnations that we know of was Zoroaster, who lived and worked in what is now called Iran. But even in this life, Meher Baba’s birth name was Merwan S. Irani. Irani literally means “Of Iran.” Meher Baba’s birth family was descended from members of one of several waves of immigrants who came to India from Iran to escape persecution by the Muslims who had overrun their country. These Zoroastrian immigrants from Iran to India are called Parsees, and they form a very unique and important, albeit comparatively unknown, community. Maharashtra State, where there is a great Parsee presence, has become the industrial power-house of India, and the Parsees have been key in financing this.

Meher Baba was born in Poona, to the NE of Mumbai in Maharashtra State, and not only his home of birth, which is open to pilgrims, but the entire Parsee Quarter in Poona is well worth visiting. What is it that is so, um, western, about the Parsee Quarter? Everything looks different, but somehow it feels so familiar. Indeed, you’re looking at what acts like an affluent middle-class western community. These people sit on chairs (and in fact for the most part wouldn’t be caught dead squatting on the floor, per the vast majority of Asia). They worship someone whose images would be indistinguishable from those of Jesus Christ in a Christian context, and I’ll be damned if Zoroaster doesn’t have what really looks like Christian angels around Him. And they have a full-blown service economy. They have barber shops, movie theatres, doctors, lawyers, schools, ice cream parlors, auto dealerships, the works. And what we’ve seen of Iranian women on TV recently is just as true in the Parsee Quarter of Poona, or anywhere else where there are Iranian women: They just never shut up. Ever.

For followers of Meher Baba, what we’re seeing in Iran now looks like the beginning of what Meher Baba mysteriously called “My Manifestation,” which was to come after the equally mysterious “Dark Cloud,” and “Humiliation,” during which His lovers would be “as if homeless.” The overwhelming emotional field in the mass mind which is pushing this thing is exactly what Meher Baba walked around in the middle of, and worked in and with, His whole life. Meher Baba was the Awakener. He gave no teachings, because He judged it a waste of time for us now. Rather, he wanted us to enact the teachings that He had already long since given in His previous Incarnations as Zoroaster, Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, and others, or else “hold My Daaman (the hem of His garment).”

Avatar Meher Baba ki Jai!
Xing Ping

The Greatest Gift – 108-day Lay Precept Check-in

The Dharma is the greatest of all possible gifts. The world is full of people and institutions which are constantly giving us gifts, good and bad, and every single one of those gifts, without exception, tends to bind us further to the terrible wheel of rebirth. Dharma is the only gift that liberates us. The Buddhist Path, when actually trod the way it was spoken by the Buddha, is very simple, very straight, and very short, and anyone can tread it to Enlightenment in this very life. Anyone. The Pure Land Sutras speak of the liberation, in the current life, of people who have committed such offenses as the murder of pure renunciates. The Buddha has this power, and anyone can call on it. Anyone.

On 1 Mar 09, I received the Five Buddhist Lay Precepts at Fo Guang Shan, Honolulu. This ceremony is an empowerment. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy about results backed by the power of a lineage. It is an opportunity to coincide one’s personal will with the unlimited Will of the Buddha for our liberation, and by doing this, one can drop the beginningless ignorance that obstructs every single one of us from Enlightenment from birth. Left to our own devices, this could never happen. Without our personal dedication to it and desire for it, it could not happen. The egg-shell of Avidya must be simultaneously pecked, from the outside by the parent, and from the inside by the chick, and then Avidya (beginningless ignorance) can fall away. And what comes out in that case? Something wet, ugly, and powerless, no? NO! What comes out is the beginningless Light of the Buddha, aka Fo Guang (佛光）. It only may look, to start with, kind of like it might not belong here yet.

In Chinese, I could use three roots － 成功了 － meaning “it has succeeded,” and everyone would know what I was talking about. Some of them might not agree with it, but they would know what I was talking about. They would know the implied war, because they would have at least attempted it in their own case. In English, it becomes a huge hairball from lack of cultural context, and it was for the purpose of cutting through this hairball that I took birth in the West in this life. I have kept pure Precepts for 108 days. That is enough time to forsee that I can keep them indefinitely, and that fact constitutes a huge step forward on my Path. It is not the prized stage of non-retrogression yet; I can still screw up and fall back into another perfectly stupid birth, but it means that if I only do what I am already doing, I can be forseen to attain that stage, and even Enlightenment itself, in this very life. This is not because I am so extraordinary, please. It is because the Buddha-Way is so effective. If I can do it, anyone can do it.

The three obstructions that I personally had to cut through to keep the Lay Precepts were smoking, eating meat, and sexual thoughts. The worst of these, of course, is the latter. Even St. Francis of Assissi, who was God’s Perfect Saint, was bugged by sexual thoughts. Occasionally they still come back, typically at 3:30 AM, and I am blessed to be able to let them go by. At 4:30 AM I rise, take a cold shower, and do walking Buddha Recitation. This goes back to Meher Baba’s instructions for his intimate circle, and I doubt that it will become automatic any time soon. It is a fresh decision every single day, dreaded by every single cell in the carcase, every single day. And all of this needs to be anchored by my attendance at Temple on most Sundays. Otherwise, it would become not orthodox, and that would be dangerous. The detailed metaphysics of this are another subject for another time. Suffice it to say here that I’m not going blind in this. I know exactly what I’m doing and where it leads. And this is pretty arrogant, some of you are thinking, and that alone bodes ill for continued keeping of Precepts. NO, that’s not what this is. In my culture, at this stage, to hide my attainments would be arrogance. What I’m doing is to enact Bodhisattva vows brought forward from previous lives. If it looks arrogant, then so be it. I have no choice in this.

It should be understood that there is no compromise with respect to sexual thoughts. You either live by them implicitly, or you set your entire mind against them irrevocably, seek help in doing that, and live a life of free renunciation. I was a renunciate by previous attainment at birth, and I have returned to that birth-right. I am also 62 years old, which is to say in Hinduism, the mother-culture of Buddhism, I am of the age at which it is permitted to take renunciate vows, called Sanyas in that culture, and to spend the rest of my life in service to my own final renunciation and the teaching and transmission of Dharma to others. This is undoubtedly my choice. The lay vows are the root of the Dharma, and this is also true of Sanatana Dharma, aka Hinduism. If you can keep these, you can keep them all.

May all beings bound to the terrible wheel of rebirth be freed in this very life. And having attained again in this life, may I return again as a fully Enlightened and fully Empowered Boddhisattva, to take my birth in America in every succeeding life, until the Lion’s Roar of Buddhadharma is heard continuously from one end of my beautiful homeland to the other.

By my vow.

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

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

On the Origin of Man (Revised)

Check it out:

On the Origin of Man

I wrote this some time ago. Since there has been recent traffic to it, I took another look at it, and found a lot of minor errors. I was in a high and altered state of concentration when I wrote it, with the result that the orthography was just sloppy. Since then, my practice has become such that I no longer have to alter myself to write this kind of stuff.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Meher Baba vis a vis Taiwan Buddhism

The most hit page on this site is: Meher Baba’s Response to my Buddhist Practice.
The most used search term is: Meher Baba.

Meher Baba literally means “Compassionate Father.” Meher Baba, who dropped the body in 1969, was literally the latest Avatar of Lord Vishnu. Gautama Lord Buddha was a previous Avatar of that same Divine Person. The identity of Meher Baba with all Avatars of Vishnu including the Buddha is recognized by all followers of Meher Baba, who are an innumerable world-wide horde, which happens to include never humble enough yours truly. The identity of the Buddha with Vishnu and all His Avatars is recognized by most Vaishnavite Hindus, which is the greatest sect within Hinduism. Many Buddhists also recognize this, of which all-pervasive albeit controversial cohort thoroughly demeaned yours truly is also undoubtedly one.

Meher Baba said that Buddhism was one of the “High Roads to God.” In the New Life stage of His avataric work, He said, after burning small effigies of the houses of worship of the five major world religions including Buddhism, that He would: “Revitalize ritual for individual and collective needs.” The way I am currently using a precept robe, to publicly differentiate myself from the life-style of a population including many recovering criminals and addicts, and to gain psychic and physical space, every day in the Brahama Muhurta (the hour before dawn) in which to keep grounded and reminded of my precepts and my Buddhist practice in general, is an example of what Meher Baba meant by this.

In general, Taiwan Buddhism, with its inherent focus on Compassion and its embodiment in Guan Yin Bodhisattva, is the most direct current manifestation of Meher Baba’s avataric work with respect to Buddhism.

Namu Amida Butsu
Avatar Meher Baba ki Jai!

Xing Ping

Traffic Patterns

The most hit items on this blog are: The Geshe Michael Roach “Controversy”, (this content was unintentionally deleted and I have rewritten it from memory) and Meher Baba’s Response to my Buddhist Practice.

This is the kind of traffic I want. What these two posts have in common is other ways, besides traditional Asian ones, to derive authority in Buddhism.

Geshe is the most prominent case of an American Buddhist who practiced to fruition without being recognized by his Asian lineage, and that non-recognition is the result of the cultural and racist agendas of his lineage head. Geshe has done at least three times as much actual practice as the head of his Asian lineage, and was pretty close to Enlightenment when he started. “By their fruits shall ye know them.” At some point, we just stop listening to Asians with cultural and racist agendas. Geshe is the tip of the iceberg. In my opinion, there now exist literally thousands of non-recognized attained American Buddhists.

Meher Baba is an example of a modern-era Spiritual Master (the current Avatar of God, in fact), who pulled the basics out of the often self-contradicting mass of presenting Asian cultural assumptions about Buddhism. According to Baba, “Broad Buddhism” is one of five “highroads to God,” the particular one which “succeeds when driven to its extremes.” Baba asserted Himself to be the Incarnation of the same Person who was Gautama Lord Buddha and also Jesus Christ, among many others. All of His writings are consistent with Buddhism, as well as all the other major religions. And as a follower of Meher Baba, the only value in Buddhism is what was actually spoken by the Buddha. The innumerable changes to the actual teaching of the Buddha that were wrecked on it, mostly by well-intentioned individuals simply trying to survive in hostile Asian cultural environments, have no value to such persons, of which yours truly is an unutterably never-humble-enough example.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

The “Moving Right Along” Mantra…

… is the mahamanatra from the Heart Sutra:

GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA!*

This mantra clears obstructions on all levels.

On Sun Jun 29, Fo Guang Shan burned my tally sheets for 1500 repetitions of the entire Heart Sutra and its mantra, dedicating the merit to the victims of the Sichuan earthquake disaster. The following Thursday, 3 Jul, at WEI TOH DAN at Kwan Yin temple, I burned 600 repetitions, primarily for my own obstructions. Currently, I have accumulated 1300 more reps, chanting at the rate of 200 reps/day. I will continute to do this until Kuan Yin Dan on Mon 21 Jul at Kwan Yin temple, and burn all those for the removal of Fo Guang Shan’s obstructions. Subsequent to that, I will continue to chant until YU LAN FAT HUI on 15 Aug, and burn all those at Kwan Yin Temple for all sentient beings.

During this period, I do not intend to attend Fo Guang Shan. I will dance Obon with the Japanese Sanga on the north shore of Oahu.

Please practice precious Buddhadharma. All else is suffering.

* “GATE” is pronounced gah-tay, and it still is the verb meaning “to go” as it was at the time of the Buddha. Meher Baba’s devotees have a song “Gate Chelo,” which means “let us go singing” in Sanscrit-derived Marathi. PARAGATE then means “to go beyond” using the same root for beyond that we know in all Indo-European languages. And PARASAMGATE then means to go utterly beyond, with a convention not seen outside of Sanscritic. So, therefore:

GONE, GONE, GONE BEYOND, UTTERLY GONE, ENLIGHTENMENT, SUCH IT IS.

But please do not chant this in English. That would be tantamount to changing scripture, which is the root of all deviations from orthodox Dharma. It’s nice to know the meaning. That helps us be patient. But mantras do not work through meaning. They work through sound and intention.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Meher Baba’s Response to my Buddhist Practice

Late on the night of 28 June, after I was up until nearly midnight finishing 1,500 repetitions of the Heart Sutra for the benefit of the victims of Sichuan’s earthquake disaster, Meher Baba appeared to me in a dream. This is the only dream I have ever had from Meher Baba, who dropped the body in 1969, and who I consider the final authority on everything including Buddhism. Baba had said that “Broad Buddhism” is one of the highroads to God, and that one could approach Him either by following one of the highroads, or directly without any religion. Since I have a lot of Buddhist karma, my way of following Him is Buddhism, and until that communication, he had had no response to that decision on my part.

The dream was very ordinary, as Baba usually was in person. I was sitting at a desk before a computer, in a scene that I believe to belong to the future, and Baba leaned over the partition from the corridor, and handed me a small colorful book, about the size of a small fat Chinese dictionary, and just in the proportions of my cell phone, although slightly larger. How did I know it was really Baba? Well, if you don’t have a spiritual master, I can’t tell you that, and if you do have one, I don’t have to tell you that.

The book was actually an account of Meher Baba’s life and work that I had never seen before, and the implicit message was Baba’s most frequent message: “Remember Me!” Baba said nothing, because he was silent for most of His life, but he gave me one of His beautiful smiles. I also felt, very immediately, that the resemblance to my cell phone was significant, since my cell phone has been my recent way of going online with my own fast hook-up, and that cheered me up, because I interpreted it as being able to afford that again.

And clearly, this could not have been anything but a response to the scripture chanting that I had been systematically obsessing on for a week. Baba had said of Buddhism, “This is a path that succeeds when driven to its extremes.” And the point of it was, in retrospect, so that I would not go into the temple the next day loaded with some need for recognition.

What happened in the temple the next day? I will write a general bilingual report, and post it here later this week. Suffice it to say here that it had nothing to do with Meher Baba, and little to do with anything spoken by the Buddha.

Since Meher Baba was pleased by my practice, I have decided to continue chanting the Heart Sutra, at the rate of 200 reps/day until Yu Lan Jie (Chinese Obon) which will be celebrated on the traditional lunar date, which falls on 15 Aug. this year, at Kuan Yin Temple. I will use the fire pit at Kuan Yin Temple to send the tally-sheets to the spirit world, transferring the merit to the removal of the obstructions of beings, beginning with myself, and then of the Honolulu Fo Guang Sangha which I love SO MUCH, including its troublesome jet-setting nun, and then of all sentient beings without exception.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

((editing on 8 Sep 08 – After completing the above, I have continued to accumulate 200 reps of the Heart Sutra per day, beginning at 3:00 AM, and have dedicated the merit to South Asian Buddhist temples that have military troops stationed in their compounds, at lunar angle ceremonies at Kwan Yin Temple in Honolulu. I will continue to do this until I percieve something more disasterous for this planet in general than this condition. -xp))