Dalai Lama on Religion

Os Guinness on Evil

Contemporary  language to describe ethics and evil  has grown uncertain and confused.  In the public square, those who speak unabashedly of evil are dismissed as simplistic, old–fashioned, and out of tune with the realities of modern life.  However Os Guinness contends that we must come to terms with our beliefs regarding evil and ultimately join the fight against it.  But to do so, we ought to understand three underlying approaches to evil in this world.

Guinness' talk for the Veritas Forum delineates the Eastern Approach which Hinduism and Buddhism is based, a Secularist world-view on evil and a Biblical approach as embodied in Judaism and Christianity. 

Guinness avuncular lecture elucidated a couple of things which are not ordinarily appreciated.  Many know that Buddists believe in reincarnation.  But what they aspire for is Nirvana, which seems a lot less appealing  per Os Gunniness' translation as "great deathless lake of extinction." 

 One thinks less of Nirvana's grungy collection of hit music and more about Kurt Cobain's suicide. Focusing on the metaphysical side,  this "lake of extinction" paradigm  tracks Buddhism's answer to Dukkah "suffering" to have freedom from individuality.

To face unspeakable evil from a biblical perspective, one must grapple with the "trilemma":

1.  Is evil very evil?

2.  Is God all good?

3.  Is God omnipotent?

Jersey City Mandala Imparts Art Lesson Early

Three Tibetan Monks work on mandala in Jersey City, NJ City Hall [photo: Reena Rose Sibayan/The Jersey Journal]

Three Tibetan Buddhist monks from South India  worked on a sand mandala for several days at the Jersey City, NJ City Hall.  These mandalas use millions of grains of sand in various colors  arranged in an intricate Medicine Buddhist pattern.

Centerpiece of Tibetan Buddhist Medicine Mandala at Jersey City, NJ City Hall  [photo: Reena Rose Sibayan/The Jersey Journal]

Traditionally, after the work is created, it is then destroyed in a ceremony to symbolize the fleeting nature of life.

Well, this mandala went down differently.  When there was only an hours work left on the mandala, a toddler, whose mother was participating in a US naturalization ceremony with dozens of other new citizens, mistook the mandala as a play area. The boy jumped onto the mandala and significantly smudged the center portion of the center portion of the sand sculpture, thereby destroying days of painstaking work.

When the monks arrived to finish their work, the mortified mayor's aide greeted them with an ashen faced demeanor and revealed the damage.

Tibetan Monk prepares to repair smudged mandala at Jersey City, NJ City Hall  [photo: Reena Rose Sibayan/The Jersey Journal]

The monks worked on repairing what they could so as not to disappoint the sides of the mandala which only had small portions disrupted.  Unfortunately, the middle section with  an array of eight Buddhas was an unsalvageable swirl of colored sand. It took about two hours to make the mandala presentable.

Smudged mandala at Jersey City, NJ City Hall  [photo: Reena Rose Sibayan/The Jersey Journal]

Geshe Wangdu, the Buddhist monk who arranged for the three Tibitan artists to come from Sera Mey Kongpo Khangtsen for the display, brushed off the trouble.  In fact, Wangdu suggested that the child taught everyone the lesson which the mandala is support to impart. As Wangdu put it: "It's so beautiful, and then it's gone."  As former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey (D-NJ), who arranged for the peace tour to stop in Jersey City, later exuded: “This is so fitting that the hand of a child once again reminds us of life’s fleeting nature and of the need to do good while we’re present.

The official ritual mandala destruction ceremony was scheduled for later that day. The mandala was dissolved in a private ceremony.  Afterwards, the monks and a crowd of spectators marched down to the Hudson River to throw the sand in the water.

h/t: Jersey City Journal

An Uncomfortable Meditation on a Buddhist Killer

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting at the Navy Yards which killed twelve innocent NAVSEA employees and the shooter, people tried to make sense of the tragedy and instill a sense of calm.  Some chose prayer.  Others invoked the knee jerk reaction to grab guns.  It was also tempting to point to a sick society as manifest by violent video game, a societal devaluation of the worth of human life or the rash of untreated mental illness circulating throughout society.

As more details about gunman Aaron Alexis  became public, a contradictory character sketch emerged.  There were plenty of reports of the shooting having having a series of serious mental health and anger management issues.  But this mercurial mien was contrasted by the fact that Alexis allegedly also became a Buddhist.

The Washington Post published a provocative meditation on this intellectual congruity which sought to grapple with the notion of a Buddhist mass murderer.   Clark Strand, a former Buddhist monk, noted Buddhism can seem attractive to “mentally unbalanced people seeking to right the ship of their lives, to self-medicate, to curb their impulses, or to give them a firmer grip on reality.”


One can speculate that the nascent gunman turned to Buddhism for coping meditation techniques but did not delve deeper into the spirituality.   The Daily Beast reports that Alexis was into Buddhism for the Thai women.    Alexis was reportedly dumped by a Thai crush when he traveled to Thailand in April 2013 and asked for a woman's hand in marriage. 

Obviously, killing contravenes the Eightfold Path, but the acquaintances from the Buddhist Meditation Center in Fort, Worth, Texas noted that  Navy Yard killer also had issues with theft, drinking and having too much sex.  It would be safe to say that Alexis was a bad Buddhist. But short of seeing a manifesto from the shooter, we will never know the depths of his Buddhist religious journey. 

Buddhist Ethicist Julian Whitacker postulated that   the meditation opened up a deeper level of pain which had been effectively repressed. This state seems to mirror  the desolation phase of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. 

In the Catholic tradition, Jesuits have the Spiritual Exercises which traditionally involved a thirty  day silent retreat which one meditates by placing oneself with scriptural reflections and discerning what God is telling you.  These meditations are punctuated with daily meetings with a spiritual director.  It took a cannonball injury for St. Ignatius of Loyola to develop this form of meditation, which stemmed from his prolonged convalescence from wounds on the battlefield.  

After Vatican II, the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) heeded the call to rediscover their roots and shared the Spiritual Exercises more with the laity on Annotation 19 Retreats in Daily Life, which can occur over a week or over the course of a year.  St. Ignatius structured the Spiritual Exercises somewhat like a boot camp, so the first “week” breaks a spiritual solider down and really reminds them of their sinfulness.  This is why meditation along with a spiritual director in this tradition is key. Eventually, a retreatant learns to discern what gives desolation (takes one away from God) and consolation (what draws one towards God).   Many have proclaimed that these meditations transform their lives as they realize the depths of the Lord’s love for them and how they can put their revitalized faith into practice.

An anonymous member of the Wat Busaya Dhammavanaram Buddhist congregation in Fort Worth said in regards to Alexis after his killing spree: 

Wat Busaya Dhammavanarm congregation in Fort Worth Texas (photo: Tim Sharp/Reuters)

If it’s a person we knew and we loved, we pray. I have a sadness for what happened. But he wasn’t open enough. If he had talked more about [his problems], we could’ve helped him. The monks could have helped him.

The spokesperson from the Wat Busaya Dhammavanarm Buddhist Center underlines the point that making one's spiritual journey in conjunction with others, particularly when it is filled with suffering and agony, can help.

It will take time to discern the causes of the Navy Yard shooting and what courses of corrective action ought to be taken. The Washington Post meditation on a Buddhist killer is an interesting data point.  It is a reminder that religion is important touchstone for spirits in the material world, but it is not a panacea for mental illness.  Religion can lift spirits and help a soul to think beyond oneself, but it should not be a total substitute for mental health treatments.  

h/t: The Washington Post
  The Daily Beast 

Now and Zen

Sometimes we try too hard to imitate intimate essence of nature in a dry landscape garden.

h/t: Bizarrocomics

Tulku--Divine Great Expectations?

Tulkus are highly revered spiritual leaders in Buddhism.  In the 1970s, a phenomena occurred where Buddhist believe that some of the great spiritual leaders had been reincarnated and reborn in the West.  The challenge is that many of these reborn tulkus do not immediately head off to Tibetan  monastaries to wear saffron robes and never be heard from again.

Ashoka Mukpo is one of the Western tulkus.  Ashoka Mukpo was enthroned in Tibet, which was an experience that he found intense and somewhat uncomfortable But this “double life” is was blessed with as a tulku proved to be disconcerting to reconcile with living in America.  Mukpo observed:

When you're 15, you can't say, 'Dude, I'm a reincarnated spiritual master from the hills of Tibet…without people thinking you're weird as fuck. Now it's just a pain in the ass.

[L] Ashoka Mukpo with [R] half brother Gesar Mukpo. Both are considered Tulkus

The karma that Ashoka Mukpo is following is not to be a teacher but to serve humanity by working for the American branch of Human Rights Watch.  While Mukpo did not adopt the life of a Buddhist monk living secularly in the West, he does have a thangka wall portrait of his previous incarnation, Khamyon Rinpoche

.Considering the great reverence which Tibetan Buddhism places on the wisdom stemming from tulkus, it is remarkable that their faith is unshaken by the reincarnation of the great spirits in Western boys who do not unconditionally embrace this karma.  The 2009 documentary Tulku by Geskar Mukpo, who himself is considered a Tulku, looks to be an interesting chronicle of the divine great expectations and how that clashes with coming to age in a different world.