Master Cheng Yen on Swine Flu

Earthtimes

Taipei – A Taiwan Buddhist master said Thursday that swine flu is “the earth’s warning” to human beings to stop destroying the environment. Master Cheng Yen, 72, nicknamed Taiwan’s Mother Teresa for her charity work, gave the warning in her daily speech to her disciples around the world.

Choked with tears, Cheng Yen said it is not a coincidence that it was exactly this time six years ago that severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, broke out.

She said people need not panic, but should see swine flu as a warning to tell them that human beings have caused too much destruction to the earth’s ecology.

“This is the cycle of cause and effect. Human beings should return to the simple lifestyle, stop killing animals and go vegetarian. When everyone performs kindness, spreads kindness and lets the earth take a rest, there will be peace and harmony in the world,” she said on a programme broadcast by her Tzu Chi Foundation…

It’s true. I’ve only been vegetarian since 1 Mar 09 when I took five precepts, but it’s SO much nicer than being toxified by the vibes of beings like pigs who lived in stupid suffering and died in terror.

However, I think there’s another lesson in this for the planetary mainstream, which is not going to become vegetarian any time soon, and that is that the only way we’re going to have a planet that is safe to live on anymore is to start using the genetic code for good, instead of letting it be used constantly against us by these dumb little bugs. We need to design biochemistry that simply lyses these damnable little trouble-makers, right in their deviant and predatory genomes, in all of their present forms and everything they can turn into, in all of their constant and ongoing mutations. This is also legitimate and compassionate work for a Bodhisattva.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

For those who do not yet believe that this blog gets admin traffic from Asia

The Formosa Times on my last post

I guarantee you that Buddhist admins are that fast, but they hide the evidence, because they don’t want to give me a fat head.

Hey, whatever makes them happy, you know what I mean? They finally can’t hide from me, and they know that.

Namu Amida Butsu

Recent Tzu Chi Disaster Aid in Hawaii

Debit Cards Help Out Flood victims

Debit cards help out flood victims -
A Buddhist foundation hands out cards each worth at least $100

By Rob Shikina

POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Jan 05, 2009

A Buddhist group gave out more than a hundred debit cards yesterday to help families affected by the flooding in last month’s storm.

Tzu Chi Foundation, based in Taiwan, gave out the cash cards at the Waialua District Park Gym with the help of the state Civil Defense and the Hawaii National Guard.

Phone Quang left with a gray blanket and a debit card worth $300 that she will use to buy clothes and shoes for her twin 16-year-old boys.

“I so happy they help like this,” she said. “My boys, they need new clothes, new shoes.”

The family of three lost everything in the flood in Waialua. Quang, who grew cucumbers on the farm before the storm, has to wait about three to five months before the fields will be ready to plant again.

She was denied food stamps because she has $2,000 a savings account for her boys when they graduate.

“I no more house. I live inside the field, just make shack,” she said.

Most of the families receiving help were called from a list of about 400 compiled by the state Civil Defense and the Red Cross, said Danny Tengan, the Civil Defense coordinator for the project.

Army National Guard members verified the damage sustained by families not on the list that walked into the center, he said. The Civil Defense and Tzu Chi will make more home visits today to find people on the list who could not be reached by phone.

“These people are so good,” Tengan said. “I’ve bowed so many times. They’re good people. They’re hugging people.”

After receiving help, Lisa Barr, 37, hugged the Tzu Chi volunteer helping her. She lost her entire house in the storm.

“I am so grateful for these people,” she said. “I have nothing. I lost it all.”

She said she is now living in a pickup truck that was given to her.

“We have no place to go,” she said.

A friend told her about Tzu Chi’s disaster relief. When she showed up, they gave her a $500 card. “I didn’t even know about this,” she said. “It lifts my spirits up.”

Jerome Fan, executive director of the Taiwan Tzu Chi Foundation in Hawaii, said about 65 volunteers helped hand out 117 cards yesterday.

Group volunteers, dressed in blue shirts with white collars, gave out cards with $500, $300 or $100 for damage ranging from major to minimal.

Fan said about 50 families were given $500 cards.

Tzu Chi has $80,000 set aside for this disaster. “In doing this, we increase our wisdom, open our minds,” Fan said.

Tzu Chi has helped with disasters around the world, but this was the first time that the group held a large disaster-relief effort in Hawaii.

“I think after today a lot of local people who didn’t even know who Tzu Chi is, their hearts have been opened up,” said downtown resident and group member Wendy Loh.

Disaster relief is one mission of the group, which collects monthly donations from members.

Tzu Chi volunteers also gave each household that came a gray blanket made from 100 percent plastic bottles, collected by members too poor to donate money.

“We hope that the people … they will have touch of the love through Tzu Chi,” Fan said.

A Buddhist group gave out more than a hundred debit cards yesterday to help families affected by the flooding in last month’s storm.

Tzu Chi Foundation, based in Taiwan, gave out the cash cards at the Waialua District Park Gym with the help of the state Civil Defense and the Hawaii National Guard.

Phone Quang left with a gray blanket and a debit card worth $300 that she will use to buy clothes and shoes for her twin 16-year-old boys.

“I so happy they help like this,” she said. “My boys, they need new clothes, new shoes.”

The family of three lost everything in the flood in Waialua. Quang, who grew cucumbers on the farm before the storm, has to wait about three to five months before the fields will be ready to plant again.

She was denied food stamps because she has $2,000 a savings account for her boys when they graduate.

“I no more house. I live inside the field, just make shack,” she said.

Most of the families receiving help were called from a list of about 400 compiled by the state Civil Defense and the Red Cross, said Danny Tengan, the Civil Defense coordinator for the project. …

This is typical of Tzu Chi aid. They make sure they have found actual bona fide disaster victims, and then they give cash, no strings attached, often with further aid in kind, including medical help.

This is superior to the typical American aid approach, which ALWAYS has institutional strings attached. Such strings cost mega-bucks to administer, and often the only result of them is to make “aid” unusable, or else totally unavailable, to the people who would actually benefit from it. It’s symptomatic of the general malaise of our government, and our social institutions at large, that somebody from the “third word” is better at helping our unfortunates than our own public and private institutions know how to be.

And what about the local (Japanese) Buddhists on the North Shore of Oahu? Hey, I’ve been there. They’re affluent, they’re all into their own families, and they have forgotten what it feels like to be in want, although the emperor Meiji literally sold their ancestors into ruinous service contracts with American sugar planters. Now, they just don’t care about anything but sending their ministers to Japan to further their “Buddhist careers.” If they were surrounded by starving and disease-ridden people, which they literally are, they wouldn’t even notice it. So real Buddhists have to come from Taiwan to pick up after them. Go figure.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

慈濟 – Tzu Chi

Check these websites:

Tzu Chi’s Chinese language website

Tzu Chi’s English language website

Master Cheng Yan’s Morning Abstracts in English

Besides Fo Guang Shan, this is another example of what I’ve been styling “new social-activist Mahayana Buddhism from Taiwan.”

Master Cheng Yan is like a cross between Mother Theresa of Calcutta and Sri Prabupad, the founder of the Hari Krishna movement, and she is arguably the most effective and influential Bodhisattva in the modern era. Her exposition of Buddhadharma is crystal clear and unencumbered by ideology. She should be read, understood, and emulated by every living Mahayana Buddhist.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

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.

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