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Comment by doone on March 25, 2012 at 7:39pm

Why reinvent the wheel?

Filed under: Uncategorized — David Hume @ 6:09 am

Alain de Botton and Robert Wright have a long discussion about atheism and the “need for religion” (or at least the exoteric accoutrements of religion). But the conversation seems ahistorical. Confucianism seems to address many of their “wants”; that is, a moralistic framework that makes positive claims with communitarian presuppositions which are not necessarily contingent upon supernatural agents.

Comment by doone on March 18, 2012 at 3:05pm

"The Great White Buddhist"

Stefany Anne Golberg remembers Henry Steel Olcott, an American Civil War colonel who spread Buddhism in the late 19th century. Why the religion appealed to his American roots: 

The Buddha’s writings were not a demand of faith but rather an invitation to discovery — to which everyone had equal access — through practice, reason, and meditation. ... Buddhism taught tolerance and non-violence — the vegetarian Civil War veteran was a firm believer in respect for all life. He liked the message of self-reliance in Buddhism; it felt comfortably American. He liked, too, the emphasis on morals and will. In Buddhism, Olcott saw an Eastern philosophy entirely compatible with modern liberal Western values and thinking. Here's what he had been looking for: a democratic, methodological, procedural path to the Truth.

He may well be proven right in the long, long term.

Comment by doone on March 18, 2012 at 10:49am

Festival “Loi Krathong” in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Mar. 18, 2012

Comment by doone on March 4, 2012 at 7:36pm

Zen Pathway

Feb. 20, 2012

Comment by doone on August 28, 2011 at 10:45am

Is Meditation Selfish?

by Zoë Pollock

Mark Vernon questions the merits of Buddhism as interpreted by the West:

[I]n meditation, Buddhism offers a therapy that tackles the hyper-individualism of today by stressing the instability and dissolution of the self. Only, it seems to me that is not true. Whilst it may be very hard to say what an ‘I’ is – and it is surely multiple and porous – it is foolish to rush to concluding there’s no ‘I’ at all. It is less reactionary, surely, to rest with the notion that we are something of a mystery to ourselves – a mystery deepened in meditative analysis, not dissolved in it.

As a Jew who joined the Buddhist/meditation club in college for the cute boy who chaired it and the free retreat to Cape Cod, I'm not qualified to speak to the religious aspect. But Josh Rothman, summarizing philosopher Owen Flanagan's book The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized, does a good job refuting Vernon:

 

Comment by Michael R on July 21, 2011 at 5:03pm

Have always been interested in the skeptical nature of Buddhism. Could 'American' Buddhism be an Atheist Buddhism?

Comment by doone on July 21, 2011 at 2:12pm

GOD, MUSIC AND FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Anjum Altaf in The South Asian Idea:

In a discussion of the arts, it was mentioned that middle-class families in India encouraged children to learn classical music because it was a mark of high culture; it made one special in one’s esteem and in that of others. It was then asked why classical music was not healthy in Pakistan given that much the same considerations should be applicable across the border. It is my sense that the question was less an expression of belief and more an opening for a discussion and I am going to exploit that to speculate on some topics of interest.

The one-word, and not altogether flippant, answer to the question is God. Hindu deities (Krishna and Saraswati, to mention just two) not only approve of but delight in music. Whether Allah approves or disapproves is still in doubt with no resolution in sight while the camp of disapprovers continues to add adherents.

That would be sufficient; but simple answers rarely do justice to the fascinating complexities of reality. Many conjectures beg to be addressed and many tales clamor to be told.

Ustad Jhandey Khan was the guru of Begum Akhtar and the mentor of Naushad. His story, found in a fading magazine from the 1960s, was the centerpiece of a lament about the conflicted state of music in Pakistan. Ustad Jhandey Khan loved his music and would weep all night after practicing certain ragas. Then something would happen; he would unstring his instruments and pronounce that henceforth there would be no more profanity in his house. Life would lose all meaning; after a while he would quietly go back to the music. The point of the article was that music would never flourish in Pakistan till this conflict between the yearning of the soul and the voices in the head was resolved.

More here.

Posted by Abbas Raza at 11:30 AM | Permalink |

Comment by doone on July 17, 2011 at 5:50pm

Face Of The Day

A Sri Lankan Buddhist devotee offers prayers during the public holiday Poya Day at the Kelaniya Temple in Kelaniya on July 14, 2011. The predominantly Buddhist country marks every full moon as a key religious holiday, or Poya Day. Buddhism was brought to the island nation from neighbouring India over 2,600 years ago. Over seventy percent of Sri Lanka's population practice Buddhism. By Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP/Getty Images.

Comment by doone on June 30, 2011 at 11:54am

Crouching Tiger, Thieving Monkey

“See this!” the English woman said, turning to show where the back of her shorts bore a muddy and obviously simian handprint. “We got attacked by the monkeys.”

It’s not every day that a complete stranger shows me their rear end, but reaching the summit of Emei Shan in southern China meant we had all run the gauntlet of marauding monkeys and it seemed familiarity grew from experiencing this fellowship of primate aggression.

Note that the sign omits reference to interspecies niceness to people…

At least we could take consolation in the knowledge that in grappling with the monkeys (actually Tibetan macaques) we joined a fellowship with a long and impressive history.

Pilgrims had been coming to this steep and thickly-forested mountain ever since the first temple was built on the 3,077m main summit about 2,000 years ago. That first temple was Taoist, but the affiliation changed to Buddhist after a few hundred years.

And at some point, Emei Shan’s macaques had also changed affiliation, from gathering food in the forest to realising it was easier to get it by robbing the pilgrims.

The Chinese national park authority does its best to educate hikers. “If you come across some terrible monkeys in the way for food,” one of its signs advises, “don’t scream or run away. You are suggested to hold a rock in your hand and walk away from the monkeys with other travelling companies in a group calmly.”

The modern horror stories included people who had not only lost their lunches but sometimes also their cameras, wallets and passports. Despite all this, the English woman said that as she and her friends set off on the two-day hiking route to the summit, she could not help harbouring warm and fuzzily anthropomorphic views about monkeys.

That attitude lasted for about an hour, until the moment when her pack seemed to suddenly double in weight. “This monkey jumped on my back and tried to open my pack,” she said, her voice still thick with incredulity.

Her boyfriend managed to scare it off by wielding the bamboo walking stick which the hotels at the base of the mountain provide for that purpose.

By then other monkeys had attacked the third member of their group, who had his glasses snatched from his head but was fortunate that the monkey was on a relatively accessible piece of ground when it abandoned them. They then spent the rest of their two days in the forest in a heightened state of what we dubbed monkeynoia.

Listening to their tale, it slowly dawned on me that there might be rather less randomness behind Emei Shan also being one of the spiritual homes of the martial arts known in the West as kung fu, though the Chinese prefer the term wushu.

Some pilgrims abided by the Buddhist exortation to leave behind earthly suffering by hiring sedan chairs, a form of transport I thought only existed in history books.

Was it coincidence, I wondered, that close to the start of the hiking route was the famous Crouching Tiger monastery, one of the birthplaces of the martial arts in China?

Even without the marauding macaques, hiking up Emei Shan is a strenuous undertaking. This is the tallest of the four sacred Buddhist mountains and the longest route involves nearly 3,000m of ascent, which makes it roughly equal to walking Burj Dubai four times.

My own schedule was too short to walk up, which provided a face-saving excuse to cover lack of fitness from living in pancake-flat Abu Dhabi. So, like most of those who undertake the pilgrimage to the summit, I took the bus for 90 per cent of the way and pledged to salvage some hiking credibility by walking down.

I soon discovered that taking the bus did little to diminish the prospect of starring in a personal performance of Crouching Tiger, Thieving Monkey because macaques had worked out that the final part of the ascent after the end of the road provided the easiest source of food on the mountain.

They even seemed to know what time was the peak hour for pilgrims and tourists.

At first, my impressions were of the much cooler temperature than at the base of the mountain and of the atmospheric way the mist swirled through the lush green forests of pine and broadleaf trees.

But then as I walked along the wide stone pathway towards the summit, I encountered a crowd of people oohing and aahing at the sight of the first macaque, a young male. One woman threw it a peanut and immediately after the oohs and aahs turned to screams when the macaque that had been offered the desultory single nut suddenly charged her, prompting her to dump her bag of peanuts and flee.

Another shriek followed as a man who had been watching this spectacle suddenly had the water bottle ripped from his hand by a monkey who snuck up from behind. Within seconds, it had unscrewed the cap and downed the contents.

With the terrible monkeys two-nil up, I headed on towards the Golden Summit temple. This was actually a network of newly-renovated temples and monastery buildings built in the traditional Chinese style with sweeping rooflines and intricate ornamentation, centred around a massive all-seeing ten-faced golden Buddha.

 
Ideally I would have soaked up the two millennia of history here but as soon as I arrived, I encountered the Englishwoman.

Soon I had not only heard about her macaque encounter but had been shown the muddy simian handprint she proffered as evidence, leaving me suffering from a heightened state of contagious monkeynoia when I set off down the mountain.

As I retraced my steps past the scene of the peanut robbery, it was with constant vigilance for predatory primates instead of enjoying the beautiful mountainous terrain and dripping temperate forests. But as soon as I left the road behind and began the mood of the mountain seemed to change.

In reality, of course, it was the same mountain but without the static caused by the throngs of tourists. And because few people choose to walk up or down the mountain, there were correspondingly fewer monkeys around. Scaling back the level of caution allowed me to spend more time looking around at what was some of the finest mountain scenery had I seen in a long time.

 
The rainy season had left the dense forest a lush shade of green and the waterfalls were in full flow as the trail threaded a route along ridgelines, below lines of cliffs and along steep-sided mountain gorges.

 
The trail itself was one of the most impressive I’d seen, comprised of thousands of blocks of stone hauled into place to create a giant staircase. To anyone coming up the mountain, it must have been like being on the StairMaster of death, albeit one set amid impressive alpine scenery.

Even going down was arduous. Such thoughts, however, were put in proper context by the stoic locals who passed me by on their way up; the women often in heels and some seemingly of considerable age.

Every 10 or 15 minutes, a small shelter would appear where an enterprising local was selling anything the hiker might require, from cold water or a bowl of steaming noodles.

Every couple of hours, I’d encounter a serene moss-covered monastery in the mist, offering basic accommodation.

 
The only monkeys I encountered were around these little centres of population but they proved to be relatively easy to dissuade. A few times I would catch sight of one following me but they preferred to attack from behind without warning and if I turned around the stared them down, they would back off.

Seven hours after leaving the summit of Emei Shan, I emerged from the forest with my knees screaming in pain and my quads and calves having turned to jelly, but feeling strangely proud at not having been mugged by a macaque.

 

Comment by Hope on June 15, 2011 at 7:58am

"Short Story"

When U look at me, what do U see

A fable from the East tells of an emperor and a zen monk who came face to face for the first time.

The emperor ruled over a kingdom that practiced Buddhism and the monk was eager to meet with him, looking forward to sharing tales of enlightenment.

But when they met, the emperor decided to test the monk by saying to him:
When you look at me, what do you see?

I see a Buddha, answered the monk. And what do you see when you look at me?

I see a pig! countered the emperor. Waiting to see the monk's reaction, he said no more.

The monk pondered for a moment, then said:

A Buddha sees a Buddha; a pig sees a pig!

"Treat Others the way You want to be treated"

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