Barbara's Buddhism Blog

This past Sunday an interfaith service was held in the Denver convention center, prior to the Democratic National Convention. The service opened with a reading of the Metta Sutta by University of Colorado student Kathryn Ida.

The Metta Sutta is a favorite for reading at interfaith services, partly because it is beautiful and partly because it doesn't require knowledge of Buddhist doctrines to understand.

Yesterday I emerged from the Manhattan subways in Times Square in time to see a big "Free Tibet" march on 42nd Street. There were monks, ethnic Tibetans, and native New Yorkers of all forms. My daughter took these two photos of the march with her camera phone. You can't see it in the photos, but the march stretched for several blocks.

If anyone knows specifically which group organized the march, let me know.

Americans are backing away from mixing religion and politics, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. For the first time in more than a decade, a majority of the American public thinks that religious institutions should stay out of political affairs.

Most of the shift in opinion has been among conservatives. "Four years ago, just 30% of conservatives believed that churches and other houses of worship should stay out of politics." Pew says. "Today, 50% of conservatives express this view." Conservative opinion on this matter is now much closer to liberal and moderate opinion, which has not much changed.

The biggest shift of opinion has been among social conservatives. The very people who were most keenly interested in using government to impose their values -- opposing same-sex marriage, for example -- are the same group showing the biggest shift in opinion in favor of keeping religion out of politics. Any ideas why that might be true?

Nicholas Kristof's column in the New York Times today contains a sentence about the Chinese "goddess of mercy," Guanyin (Kwan yin), that I don't think is accurate. But maybe Kristof is right and I'm wrong. Kristof writes,

When the first Westerners arrived and brought their faith in the Virgin Mary, China didn’t have an equivalent female figure to work miracles — so Guan Yin, the God of Mercy, underwent a sex change and became the Goddess of Mercy.

You may know that Guanyin is a manifestation of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. My understanding is that until the time of the early Sung Dynasty (960–1126), the bodhisattva was portrayed in art as male. From the 12th century on, however, in much of Asia, Avalokiteshvara took the form of a mother-goddess of mercy.

During this time there were Nestorian Christians living within the Mongol Empire, but I don't believe the Nestorians venerated Mary. All the reference books says the first Catholic missionary to China was John of Montecorvino (1294-1328), who arrived in China in the early 14th century, when a female Guanyin was already well established in Chinese Buddhist iconography. For this reason I don't think there was a direct connection between Guanyin and Mary.

However, it is interesting to me that during the 10th through 12th centuries, when the image of Guanyin was becoming popular, the veneration of Mary also was on the rise in Europe. Was there some cultural cross-pollination the historians don't know about? Or some other factor that made mother goddesses particularly appealing during that time?

Writing on the Washington Post's "On Faith" web site, research psychologist Dr. Paul Ekman describes his talks with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The psychologist and the monk spoke at length about emotions and compassion.

He has amazing concentration, which he maintains for hours seemingly without a moments distraction -- it was contagious, so my mind never drifted, not even for a second, which is quite unusual for me. He has keen analytic capabilities, trained as an expert debater who sees all sides of every issue, who finds the exception to every rule, and without hesitation abandons long held views when shown new information or compelling argument.

Dr. Ekman's primary expertise is in what facial expressions reveal about emotions. He says that His Holiness is "without guile; he is not only trustworthy, but also trusting almost to a fault, in the sense that a ruthless person could exploit him." Even so, Ekman concludes, His Holiness is the ideal person to to negotiate directly with China for the future of Tibet.

Last week New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof also called for top-level meetings between His Holiness and either President Hu Jintao or Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. A real solution is possible, Kristof says, but it's up to China.

There's a great white egret that fishes every morning in the neighborhood pond. When I see it I wonder how there can be egrets, because great egrets must be among the least camouflaged bird species on the planet. A big, blazing white bird in the middle of a murky pond -- fed by the ecologically challenged Bronx River -- stands out at a great distance.

In fact, by about a century ago 95 percent of North America's great white egrets had been slaughtered so that their feathers could decorate Edwardian Era ladies' hats. Concern for egrets, ospreys, and other bird species, combined with a shift in hat fashion after World War I, restored egret populations. Now their biggest threat is the reduction of wetlands.

I've noticed that Mr. or Ms. Egret's fishing methodology is to stand very still and alert until fish swim close; then comes a quick stab of a beak, and there's breakfast. What does that remind me of? Let's see -- The Mumonkan, Case 19 -- Zhaozhou (Chao chou) asked, “Shall I direct myself toward it?” Nanquan said, “If you direct yourself toward it, you’ll move away from it.”

I don't claim to fully understand Master Nanquan, but I resolve to sit great white egret zazen in the future -- very still, very alert, until fish swim close.

If you've had any exposure to Zen at all, you've probably heard this one -- The senior monk of Hong-jen's monastery wrote a poem on a wall that went like this:

Our body is the bodhi tree
And our mind a mirror bright.
Carefully we wipe them hour by hour
And let no dust alight.

I don't know if it rhymed in the original Chinese, but let's go on ... Huineng, not yet a monk, saw this verse and composed another one --

There is no bodhi tree
Nor stand of a mirror bright.
Since all is void,
Where can the dust alight?

These verses are from the A.F. Price / Wong Mou-Lam translation of the Platform Sutra. I'm working on a new feature about Huineng, which of course will include the story of how Huineng's verse earned him the title of Sixth Patriarch of Zen. There are many renderings of the two verses out there, however, and I began to look for some that sound less like greeting card poems. And what I found was confusion.

Read more...

Hungry ghost festivals traditionally are held in China on the 15th day of the 7th lunar month, which I understand (correct me if I'm wrong) falls today, August 15, this year. Hungry ghosts are insatiably hungry creatures born into a miserable existence because of their greed.

According to Chinese folklore, the unhappy dead walk among the living throughout the month and must be placated with food, incense, fake paper money, and even cars and homes, also paper and burned as offerings. In China it is also considered risky to swim during the 7th lunar month, a superstition that didn't stop Chinese swimmer Xuejuan Luo from winning a gold medal in the women's 100 meter breaststroke at the Beijing Olympics.

Photo Credit: © Ngo Thye Aun | Dreamstime.com

The forum discussion of the Diamond Sutra is about to begin. Here's the Diamond Sutra introductory post.

The Diamond Sutra is short, but steep. Discussing it makes me think of a story I heard years ago, about a man who visited an elderly aunt and inquired about her Bible study group, which was discussing Revelations.

"That's a difficult book," the man said. "How are you getting on with it?"

"Oh, we're doing fine," said the aunt. "What parts we don't understand, we explain to each other."

So, fearlessly, let us plunge ahead ...

A Wall Street Journal editorial picks up on the subject of yesterday's Buddhism blog post -- religion in China. I have a slight disagreement with the last paragraph.

China's leaders are afraid of religion because they see it as a political threat. Citizens with faith and a moral compass are harder for the Communist Party to control.

My understanding is that what they fear, beside rebellion, is outside influence. For example, in the case of Christian churches, the Chinese government wants these churches to sever ties with governing bodies outside China, such as the Vatican. Faith and moral compasses don't worry the government of China as much as disloyalty.

On the other hand, the spiritual practice of Falun Gong was banned in 1999 after 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners surrounded Communist Party Headquarters in Beijing. They staged a silent protest of the arrest and beatings of some members the day before. Elizabeth Reninger, the About.com Guide to Taoism, has more on Falun Gong.