A Wonderful Interview with Pema Chodron

A recent Google news search brought up this interview with Pema Chodron. The link is from Beliefnet.com, but the article originally appeared in The Sun magazine. The interview is really wonderful. I won't even attempt to gloss it. Better just to read it. One paragraph sticks with me especially:

.... I realized what a source of happiness turning toward pain actually is. Our avoidance of pain keeps us locked in a cycle of suffering. The Buddha said that what we take to be solid isn't really solid. It's fluid. It's dynamic energy. And not only do we take our opponents and obstacles to be solid; we also believe ourselves to be solid or permanent. In the West, we add the belief that the self is bad. That night I spent meditating, I discovered that there is no solid, bad me. It's all just ineffable experience.

I'm adding Comfortable With Uncertainty to my reading list...

Would you be my....

The Dharma has come to the West, and US Commerce has come to the East.

A Times of India editorial notes how the popularity of Valentine's Day has begun to overshadow Makha Bucha -- the holiest day of the calendar, which celebrates the Buddha's birth, enlightenment, and death -- in Thailand. (Here's a quick primer on Makha Bucha...) The Thai authorities aren't taking this lying down.

They're planning to break new musical ground by borrowing western hip hop rhythms to promote traditional values and persuade an increasingly westernised generation back to its roots.

Yup: "Dharma Rap."

I could say, If you can't beat them join them... but that would be too easy. Just as long as I don't have to get a tattoo.

Claude Anshin Thomas

Buddhist monk Claude Anshin Thomas is the author of At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey From War to Peace. I've mentioned the title once or twice, and, seeing a piece in the the Ann Arbor News about his speaking engagements in Ann Arbor, MI, gives me a good excuse to mention him again. As the war continues, as we experience the unspoken fear in the body politic, as anger chases us further into our corners, his memoir of war (on the battlefield, in the home, within ourselves ...) is well worth reading. If you're in Ann Arbor, he'll be at Shaman Drum Bookshop on Tuesday. (Such a great store.....)

Green Mountain Buddhists....

A few years ago, I wondered what cultural line might be crossed when there were more Buddhists in the U.S. than Episcopalians. I realize definitions are slippery things, and will return to this question another day, but...

Yesterday, the Boston Globe ran a piece under the headline, "Green Mountains, Good Karma." It noted that Vermont has what surveys suggest is the hightest concentration of Caucasian Buddhists.

"The number of Buddhist followers in Vermont is far above 'what's normal for New England or the United States,' said Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University who has analyzed the numbers.

In Caledonia County, 15.5 percent of the residents "who practice religion describe themselves as adherents of an Eastern religion and that Buddhism is the dominant religion practiced within that subset," according to the Globe. Barnet, located in Caledonia County, is the home of Karmê Chöling, the oldest of six year-round retreat centers founded by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, so, perhaps, that accounts for a bit of an uptick. But Prothero says in the Globe piece that Vermont is far above "what's normal for New England or the United States."

It seems Vermont has long been fertile ground for alternative thought.

"'Of all the states in the Northeast, Vermont has been the most accommodating of people who want to do their own thing,' said Garrison Nelson, a politics professor at the University of Vermont. ''There is less orthodoxy.'

Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was born in Vermont; the state constitution was the first to abolish slavery; the legislature the the first to approve civil unions for gays and lesbians. And Vermont has sent Bernie Sanders -- a Socialist -- to D.C. as its representative.

And, just for the record, Vermont is among the top 10 U.S. states with the highest proportion of Episcopalians (affiliated) in the population, as of 1990. That would be 1.71 percent of the state's population.

Some Serious Sitting...

Well, I just finished a week-end sesshin and was feeling inordinately full of myself, that is, until I read about those who have just ended an intensive three-month retreat in Korea at Kumdangsonwon Monastery in Hadong. No reading, no TV, no e-mail, no speaking. Lots of sitting, as each sought,

the answer to a single question given by a teacher. Far from secular distractions, each spent the winter contemplating such questions as ``What is nothingness?'' ``Where do I come from?'' and, perhaps the most elusive of all, ``What is it?''

Rev. Kosan, the abbot of the monastery, was quoted in a piece The Korea Times as observing that "During Tongango, clerics face two obstacles. One is sleepiness and the other is daydreaming." I can identify with that!...

A Sign of the Times...

By my count, there have been over 200 gazillion words written since last November about the iPod. But the media coverage that stopped me in my tracks came in a 1/31/05 issue of USA Today (sorry for the delay in posting!..) Paul Saffo, research director for the The Institute for the Future, a think tank in Palo Alto, California (wouldn't that look so cool on your business card!..) begins his take on the iPod predictably enough, saying, "This is all part of the shift from mass media to personalized media," BUT THEN...

"With the iPod, the Buddha is in the details. The finish and feel are such that you want to caress it. And when you do, wonderful things happen."

The Buddha is in the details??!! I have absolutely NO IDEA what this literally means, but how weirdly wonderful to see it, and in USA Today of all places. I'm now on the look out for more headlines from them..

More of Us on Sesshin in USA...

Buddhists Making More Use of Free Time and Hobbies...

Travel Tips for Getting Out of Samsara....

Watch this space...

East is East and West is West...

Here's a press release from the University of California's new Center for Buddhist Studies at Berkeley. Asking the question, "do popular notions of Buddhism conform to what scholars know about the religion as it has been practiced in Asia?" Robert Sharf, the director of the center says, no.

In American pop culture, he said, Buddhism is indistinguishable from modern New Age spirituality that promises meditative insight, happiness and self-fulfillment, yet demands nothing in return such as attendance at church, participation in ritual, moral restraint or study.

Well, I'm just back from a weekend sesshin, and I felt it was demanding, but... well, that's another story. It's a long'ish, and provocative press release actually. I wish I had a deeper grasp of Buddhist history. Perhaps someone who does will post here. Most intriguing to me is the contention that the Japanese teachers who brought Zen to the U.S.:

[P]ackaged Zen for export in a manner that rendered it appealing to Western intellectuals interested in religion but alienated from the church. As a result, many of the ideas that Americans consider central to Zen -- the centrality of spiritual experience for example -- are actually lifted from Western thinkers such as the philosopher William James. Sharf concludes that Buddhism was made to order for a Western audience hungry for "spirituality" but wanting little to do with rituals, moral precepts or institutions.

And as far as rectifying what he sees as misunderstandings, Sharf said, "Most (Buddhist studies) academics don't even try to reach a lay audience because they feel the gap between the scholarly and the popular understandings of Buddhism is simply too great."

I find this particularly interesting in light of a post from some weeks back on the Tricycle.com blog about "Measuring Buddhist Influence in America." A piece in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion entitled "Buddhists and Buddhism in the United States: The Scope of Influence" attempts, in the words of the blogger, "[to] assess the level of influence that Buddhism has exerted on religious Americans, rather than the more conventional numbers game of trying to determine exactly how many Buddhists there are in the country."

Based on their survey conducted in 2002-2003, they found that one out of every seven Americans has had at least a fair level of contact with Buddhism, and that one out of eight Americans reported that Buddhism had influenced their religious life. Those are staggeringly high numbers. To put it in perspective, there are about four million Americans who actively identify as Buddhists. But if we ask how many Americans include Buddhist elements—a little or a lot—in their personal spiritual lives, the number appears to be about 12.5% of the population: that’s 26,125,000 adults. The number who say the Buddhist influence has been significant is almost the same: at 12%, that’s 25,080,000.

I find that a very hopeful figure, but would Robert Sharf say that all these "nightstand Buddhists" (a term that historian of American religions Thomas Tweed coined to describe those who read a Buddhist book before bed or, perhaps, meditate in the morning or evening) are merely deluting the Dharma?

What if I Don't Hold the Key?...

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, a Zen teacher and Head of Operations at Zen Mountain Monastery states it quite simply: "Zen doesn't save you. The teachings are fundamentally difficult, and you have to work at it." And what if you were one of the over 2 million prisoners held in federal or state prisons or in local jails at the end of 2002 -- what would a call to practice entail behind bars?

In a recent piece in Chronogram, an inmate who is a member of the National Buddhist Prison Sangha (NBPS) writes:

"I would like to take this time to tell you a little about myself. I am 24 years old. I have spent my entire life trying to escape from reality and obtain some type of acceptance...my biggest fear came true when I was sent to prison...It wasn't long before I started taking my own self-hatred out on others and was placed in solitary confinement. I was in a cell 24 hours a day, seven days a week. All day I lashed out more by breaking and burning everything I could...

"This happened six different times during that eight-month period. The last time I was covered in pepper-mace with no way to wash it off. I've heard it said that it is darkest before the dawn. I believe that because that last trip to the hole broke me down to nothing. I didn't want to live and I didn't have the courage to die. All I can remember thinking is that there has to be a better way to live."

Is there a danger is glossing over the magnitude of many inmates crimes? Yes, very certainly. But isn't there also a temptation to ignore the realities of a society that incarcerates an estimated 12 per cent of black men in their 20s and early 30s and only 1.6 per cent of white males in the same age group? Can New York State offer its over 70,000 inmates rehabilitation in addition to punishment that includes the "loaf" diet -- consisting of bread served in a bag, raw cabbage, and water?

The NBPS began in 1984 and offers training and support to Buddhists and those who wish to study meditation and who don't identify themselves as Buddhists.

"NBPS has developed a series of training manuals which explain the basic teachings of Zen, instructions of zazen (meditation), liturgy, and how to work with the moral and ethical teachings of Buddhism, all directed toward those practicing in prison. Volunteers also make regular visits to local prisons for zazen, Buddhist holidays, and retreats."

Better to hear what practice means to a prisoner. For words from practitioners, go to a wonderful online newsletter, Prairie Wind, published by the Nebraska Zen Center.