The Taybor and the Rainbow Body

Padmasabhava

I've been rewatching Space 1999, mostly as an exercise in nostalgia and to amuse my inner child. My inner child loves her some Space 1999. It's not a terribly deep or esoteric show, particularly by the second season. But every so often it wanders into an intriguing archetype.

The other night I was watching "The Taybor." Taybor is "an inter-galactic merchant [who] arrives from hyperspace on his ship the 'Emporium.'" He is a silly character and the episode is largely quite silly but I was taken with their depiction of the hyperdrive that allowed him to move anywhere in space.

The drive itself is an oculus, aka., circumpunct, aka., stargate:

Dethroning the Hierophant

Article first published as Dethroning the Hierophant on Blogcritics.

A few years ago, I observed that the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church was hitting a critical point, as a glut of news reports was beginning to directly implicate the Vatican. I suggested then that what was happening in the Catholic Church was an indicator of the dismantling of hierarchical systems more broadly and that in the Motherpeace Tarot, such patriarchal, spiritual authority is represented by the Hierophant.

At its root, the word "hierophant" means bringer to light of sacred things. In the traditional Tarot, the Hierophant represents a priest or Pope, the paternal religious authority.... Representing a hierarchical view of religion, the Hierophant stands on a pedestal, raised up from the earth, above the common person. In the Motherpeace image, he has taken over the robes and skirt of the High Priestess, along with her breasts which symbolize her sacred power, but he has forsaken her "Sophia" or wisdom.... The authority of the Hierophant is based, in large part, on repression of women and the natural instincts that women symbolize.

The The Motherpeace Tarot Playbook explains how to read the card when it comes up in a spread.

The Hierophant represents spiritual authority. He represents ritual and ceremonial magic which manifests as organized religion in this culture. Or he represents the psychic control exercised by mostly male, authority figures in our culture, such as psychiatrists, gurus, doctors and courtroom judges. Since he is also the internalized parent or superego authority, he represents conventional morality.

The text goes on to explain how to read this card when it presents as reversed, or ill-dignified.

The reversal shows a full-scale rebellion. You can no longer tolerate external roles and conventional morality; you have begun to call on your deeper conscience for advice You are able to stop kneeling to the priest or the doctor or the father, choosing instead to take your own advice, heed your own counsel.

Unpacking the Zen Scandal

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A recent blog post on The Huffington Post lends more insight into how the Joshu Sasaki scandal unfolded within the Zen community. Adam Tebbe is the editor of Sweeping Zen, which published Eshu Martin's article and started this firestorm. Tebbe discusses what it was like being caught in the backdraft. Both he and Martin were subjected to the hostility of a Zen community bent on shooting the messengers. I suppose that anyone in a position to tell bitter truths should be prepared for that reaction.

Eshu's initial piece was an icebreaker of sorts, a shot across the bow that quickly grabbed the attention of many. Martin alleged a history of abuse and cover-ups involving his former teacher that stemmed his entire career. He received considerable backlash for his piece, accused of being nonspecific in his accusations. And, while it was partially true, readers did not know that at the time there was more information at his disposal which would and could be used if necessary. It was not released instantly because much of it needed to be said by Giko David Rubin, a priest ordained by Joshu Sasaki and his translator of many years (see: Some Reflections on Rinzai-ji). When Giko's reflections on his experiences at Rinzai-ji and of Sasaki were first published, the mood was rather somber. It remains one of the most detailed and painful articles I've ever had to publish in my work at the website.

Rubin's piece does indeed make for painful reading -- not just because of the detail it provides on Sasaki's behavior and peoples' varied reactions to it. It's an extremely honest revelation of the author's process of disillusionment over a period of years.

This passage actually made me wince.

Joshu Roshi also has the ability to sometimes know exactly what a student is experiencing without having to be told. This is quite remarkable, and I believe gives his students a feeling they are in the presence of someone with extraordinary spiritual power. As a young man I sat in zazen and felt my hand spontaneously open on my outbreath, and felt my sphere of consciousness expand with it. Then on the next in breath my hand unwillingly closed to a fist. The next time I saw Joshu Roshi, I bowed in silence as usual, and sat up. At once he looked me in the eye, open and closed his hand, and said, “Now you can be a Zen teacher.” How could I not feel this man knew me better than anyone could? I believed I could I trust him completely.

Maybe it's because I'm psychic for a living but immediately my inner cynic piped up. That's it? He knew you opened and closed your hand? Really? This was, of course, hideously unfair of me. And, sitting with that forced me to deal with why I felt tweaked. This is precisely the kind of thing that people who do this kind of work need to be extremely cautious about! What is a very basic level of intuition for someone who does psychic and healing work, can bring life-changing moments for the people receiving that insight. That makes disseminating this kind of information an awesome responsibility. Like all births and rebirths, these moments are very sensitive. Transformational expansion leaves us vulnerable as we shed one skin and await the firming of the next layer. And while these should be moments of personal empowerment, too often people discovering their own power can't seem to give it away fast enough, which looks to be what happened here. Rubin took exactly the wrong lesson in that moment. What was important was that he had been through a spiritual initiation that prepared him to teach. He made it about the teacher who gave him that insight. And Sasaki let him.

It is so important for those of us who do any kind of spiritual teaching to take our egos out of it and keep the focus on clients and students. Sasaki was very good at telling other people that they needed to break down their egos -- often by grabbing their breasts, apparently. No matter how gifted a spiritual leader you are, you are not the source of anyone else's reality. If you didn't tell someone what they needed to hear, they would source another teacher to tell them, simply because they were ready. None of us is indispensable.

Instead, it seems like a whole lot of people were catering to Sasaki's massive ego. There was a very complex architecture of deceit put in place to protect him from consequences for a vast number of sexual assaults over decades.

To keep his inner circle in line, he used blatant emotional blackmail. When confronted he would just threaten to stop teaching (abandonment). This happened on many occasions but reached a fever pitch in 2007, and the realization of how closed Sasaki really was to meaningful change, pushed Rubin to the door.

After the meeting Joshu Roshi began calling people who wanted to discuss his sexual activity his “enemies (taiteki in Japanese). It seemed he was helping to form a party line; to criticize Joshu Roshi is blasphemy. To say he has a serious sexual problem means you don’t understand his teaching. If you are working to have Joshu Roshi face his problem and change then you don’t love him and should leave. The sentiment I remember hearing the most from other Oshos was some version of, “We must weigh the good of Joshu Roshi’s teaching against the bad. The good is incredibly good. He is probably the most enlightened person alive in this world. There is no way to stop the bad, only contain it. He will never change. The good, however, far outweighs the bad. If we try to guide Joshu Roshi towards changing his behavior he will resign and stop teaching, and all the good will be lost.”

He's the "most enlightened" person in the world, but he'll never change his bad behavior. I guess I have a different idea of what enlightenment means. 

When Rubin tried to air his concerns, he was heaped with scorn by Sasaki's devoted following and by Sasaki himself.

When I “came out” and raised my concerns about Joshu Roshi’s sexual conduct some Oshos told me I had no Zen understanding and should be beaten with sticks; I was an arrogant blind fool; I had “kindergarten understanding” and obviously had never passed even one koan. Joshu Roshi told me I would never get enlightened if I thought about these things. I was told by one Osho and one senior student I would be blamed for Joshu Roshi’s death if I tried to make him change his behavior, and that I would be responsible for ruining his legacy. “You are killing him!” was shouted at me more than once. Another Osho told me that Joshu Roshi had demanded I do a special repentance ceremony if I ever wanted to practice with Joshu Roshi again. When I asked the Osho if he had argued my case to Joshu Roshi, or even asked for an explanation he said he hadn’t. I was banned from coming on the property of one Zen Center, and banned from teaching at another. Joshu Roshi began calling me “attached to honesty,” and “bakashoujiki” (meaning “stupidly honest”) to others and to me. [emphasis mine]

I have noticed, through the years, in my dealings with American Buddhists, that the ideal of "non-attachment" tends to be whipped out whenever some Buddhist doesn't want to take personal responsibility for something. It's funny how that works. If it's something you don't want to do, suddenly it's "attachment." It's a hideous distortion of a spiritual principle. But this is not just some American kid being ignorant and hypocritical. This is one of the foremost Buddhist teachers in the Western world abusing a central teaching and in a thoroughly puerile manner. What gives the obvious lie here is that Sasaki was clearly very attached to his power over his monks and to his compulsive pattern of sexually abusing women.

Rubin's article is a strong piece of writing, heartrending and sincere. I can't help noticing that throughout he still refers to Sasaki by the honorific Roshi. It is so hard when we find out that people we admire have feet of clay. Healing from that can be a very long process, especially when there's that much clay.

I just feel the need to point out that Sasaki's behavior is not some little foible. Groping and fondling people against their will is sexual assault, for which any number of his victims could have filed charges. These are sex crimes. He's a criminal, not an old man with a bad habit.

I also have to say, as I learn more about the progression of this unfolding scandal, that I think it telling that women complained for years but it took male teachers of some authority coming forward for the problem to be taken seriously. Sexism, it seems, is alive and well in the world of Zen Buddhism... as is basic, human denial. No, it ain't just a river in Egypt. So I will just close with this passage from Adam Tebbe's post because it's excellent.

I know that many Zen practitioners would like to see this coverage go away. To many, it's time to move on. I get why they want that. This whole thing appears to reflect undesirably on the Zen tradition, and many have criticized the mainstream press for having stereotyped the entirety of our Zen institutions. There's some truth to that. With that said, this isn't exactly a story that lends itself well to backslapping. And, moving on? I thought that's how we got here.

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Pigs in Zen

I've been so immersed in events erupting from the the scandal-plagued, power-abusing Vatican all week, I missed the news about scandal-plagued, power-abusing Zen teacher Joshu Sasaki. Funnily enough, the latter story broke wide with an article in the paper of record the same day Pope Benedict's resignation was announced. Of course, rumors had dogged the aging leader since the 1970s, but it was in January of this year that an announcement from senior teachers was posted on the Sasaki community website.

In early January, the senior teachers of Sasaki's community admitted in an on-line statement that the community "has struggled with our teacher Joshu Sasaki Roshi's sexual misconduct for a significant portion of his career in the United States."

In truth, to call them rumors is generous. It seems the living legend's inappropriateness was known about and actively enabled for decades. Then, in November of last year,  Zen priest Eshu Martin, who had studied under Sasaki for over ten years, threw down the gauntlet with a post on the Sweeping Zen website. The title, "Everybody Knows – Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi and Rinzai-ji," is an obvious allusion to one of Sasaki's more famous students, Leonard Cohen. This reference does more than point to the fact that Sasaki's behavior was common knowledge. Cohen's masterpiece speaks to the ubiquity of deceit and injustice in this game of life we are all participating in.

Joshu Sasaki Roshi, the founder and Abbot of Rinzai-ji is now 105 years old, and he has engaged in many forms of inappropriate sexual relationship with those who have come to him as students since his arrival here more than 50 years ago. His career of misconduct has run the gamut from frequent and repeated non-consensual groping of female students during interview, to sexually coercive after hours “tea” meetings, to affairs and sexual interference in the marriages and relationships of his students. Many individuals that have confronted Sasaki and Rinzai-ji about this behaviour have been alienated and eventually excommunicated, or have resigned in frustration when nothing changed; or worst of all, have simply fallen silent and capitulated. For decades, Joshu Roshi’s behaviour has been ignored, hushed up, downplayed, justified, and defended by the monks and students that remain loyal to him.

Everybody knows that you love me baby Everybody knows that you really do Everybody knows that you've been faithful Ah give or take a night or two Everybody knows you've been discreet But there were so many people you just had to meet Without your clothes And everybody knows ~ Leonard Cohen

As is so painfully typical in these situations, abused women who complained were shamed and shunned, while the abusive leader was venerated. From the New York Times story:

Many women whom Mr. Sasaki touched were resident monks at his centers. One woman who confronted Mr. Sasaki in the 1980s found herself an outcast afterward. The woman, who asked that her name not be used to protect her privacy, said that afterward “hardly anyone in the sangha, whom I had grown up with for 20 years, would have anything to do with us.”

. . .

Several women said that Zen can foster an atmosphere of overt sexism. Jessica Kramer, a doula in Los Angeles, was Mr. Sasaki’s personal attendant in 2002. She said that he would reach into her robe and that she always resisted his advances. Surrounded almost entirely by men, she said she got very little sympathy. “I’d talk about it with people who’d say, ‘Why not just let him touch your breasts if he wants to touch your breasts?’ ”

Almost more appalling is the blatant subversion of Buddhist teachings Sasaki used to manipulate women and justify his sexual acting out.

In the council’s report on Jan. 11, the three members wrote of “Sasaki asking women to show him their breasts, as part of ‘answering’ a koan” — a Zen riddle — “or to demonstrate ‘non-attachment.’ ”

. . .

“He would say something like, ‘True love is giving yourself to everything,’ ” she explained. At Mount Baldy, the isolation could hamper one’s judgment. “It can sound trite, but you’re in this extreme state of consciousness,” she said — living at a monastery in the mountains, sitting in silence for many hours a day — “where boundaries fall away.”

Not the first time I've heard a spiritual leader reinterpret the surrender to spirit as a surrender to himself. If you don't surrender to his ego, you're just too much in your ego. Get it? But most appalling was this gem:

One monk, whom Ms. Stubbs said she told about the touching, was unsympathetic. “He believed in Roshi’s style, that sexualizing was teaching for particular women,” Ms. Stubbs said. The monk’s theory, common in Mr. Sasaki’s circle, was that such physicality could check a woman’s overly strong ego. [all emphases mine]

Uppity bitches. Someone had to knock 'em down a peg or two. The irony here is the implicit admission that sexual abuse is not about sex. It's about power and dominance.

Grace Schireson, who was on the "witnessing council" that issued a report on the problem in January, cites the Westernization of a Japanese practice. Interviewed by the Times, she claimed that the Japanese view their teachers with a healthy dose of skepticism and are less inclined to put them on a pedestal. Personally, I find it hard to believe that the Japanese are less deferential to authority than Westerners. I think that basic problem is more a facet of human nature than culture (See Milgram). I put the question to my husband who has spent years studying martial arts, and is fairly well acquainted with Japanese teachers and customs. Leave say, he did not find that to be so. If anything, he found that Japanese teachers are more expectant of deference and that his own teachers were surprised by the "many questions" American students ask.

I have little knowledge of Japanese culture, but I do know that it is notoriously male dominated and incredibly sexist. Groping women on trains is so common in Japan that women-only cars had to be established. Such violations are fetishized, pornogrophized, and popularized in manga.

That said, the report offers a very insightful take on the dynamics that allowed this problem to go on for decades.

When ongoing questions of misuse of sexuality or power unfold in a spiritual community, it is rarely a matter of one person’s actions. Reading through the painful and heartfelt accounts documenting Joshu Sasaki’s sexual relationships with students at Rinzaiji down through the years, we see how, knowingly and unknowingly, the community was drawn into an open secret, and people’s ability to practice the dharma suffered. Despite individual and collective attempts to address boundaries, repentance, and rectification, these behaviors appear to have continued over more than four decades. We have reports that those who chose to speak out were silenced, exiled, ridiculed, or otherwise punished.

Understanding that our practice is to bear what is unbearable and not to turn away from reality, how could this be so? We suggest it has something to do with a view of spiritual authority and “enlightenment” that we in the West have created in the name of Zen. To be fair, this is not just a problem of Zen. It arises in various Buddhist communities, and more widely in other religious congregations. We are unfortunately susceptible to enthrallment, which is hardly "seeing things as they really are." There are certain problems that may arise when one sees a teacher as comprehensively enlightened and fails to deal with the certainty that he or she, like oneself, has a shadow or deluded aspect. We imagine that “enlightenment” is separate from or outside of ourselves. The community may attempt to protect the teacher, the seeming embodiment of enlightenment. If we hold such a model, it is often impossible to recognize or admit that there has been an abuse of power. We fear the loss of our enlightened teacher and thus the opportunity to become enlightened ourselves.

It is not about a single individual, but about a very toxic synergy of power dynamics that can arise in any hierarchical structure. Even a deeply pathological leader cannot maintain a grip on a community unless he is enabled by followers. And even leaders who start out with the best of intentions can be seduced and subverted by the adulation of their followers. (See Zimbardo.) The search for enlightenment is subject to any number of pitfalls if we aren't keeping track of the shadow. (See Jung.)

This scandal put me in mind of a similar one at the Kripalu Institute many years ago -- not because these things are uncommon. They aren't. But because I was a fly on the wall for some of the aftermath of the Kripalu scandal. I spent a week at the Massuchusetts ashram shortly after the whole thing went down. I was just there for some yoga, rest, and relaxation, but it ended up being quite a lesson in the dynamics of disillusionment.

I did a little googling to refresh my memory on some of the details and I came across some interesting perspectives. But first, for those unfamiliar with the particulars:

In 1994, [Amrit] Desai resigned after admitting to having sex with followers.^[2][5][7][8] Kripalu paid $2.5 million to settle a purported class action lawsuit brought by more than 100 former residents who had served as unpaid staff. Kripalu financed the payment partly by selling its adjacent Foxhollow property, which it had acquired to provide housing for its most senior members.^[5][9]

One New York Times article pointed to yet another, more recent yoga scandal. The author manages to completely miss the point.

But this is hardly the first time that yoga’s enlightened facade has been cracked by sexual scandal. Why does yoga produce so many philanderers? And why do the resulting uproars leave so many people shocked and distraught?

One factor is ignorance. Yoga teachers and how-to books seldom mention that the discipline began as a sex cult — an omission that leaves many practitioners open to libidinal surprise.

Hatha yoga — the parent of the styles now practiced around the globe — began as a branch of Tantra. In medieval India, Tantra devotees sought to fuse the male and female aspects of the cosmos into a blissful state of consciousness.

The characterization of Tantra as a "sex cult" is extremely reductive, but that's not the dumbest part of the article. The author goes on to explain that Hatha increases circulation in the pelvic area and heightens the passions, which is true. Of course the same could be said many forms of physical exercise.

Where the article really enters the realm of the absurd is in the suggestion that sex scandals like the one at Kripalu were simply the result heightened sexual appetites. The idea that this was just a bunch of sexually adventurous people doing what comes naturally is absurd. Heightened and spiritualized sexuality could just as easily enhance committed relationships and increase closeness and intimacy between partners, as is, indeed, often the case.

The problem is one of dynamics and abuse of power, not human sexuality. In the case of Kripalu and similar scandals, many women claim to have been intimidated and coerced. Victims who complain are ostracized. Many lies are told and secrets kept. This is not about consensual sexual activity, openly engaged in by willing participants.

More to the point, as the subject of this post illustrates, these scandals are hardly unique to the world of yoga.

Finally, I read some excerpts from a book that addresses the Kripalu crisis. Steven Cope's Yoga and the Quest for the True Self speaks brilliantly to the group dynamics and larger lessons learned when people are ready to take their power back.

It was not the scandal that forced the death of the old forms of yoga at Kripalu. Quite the opposite. It was the impending death of the old paradigm that required the scandal. It is clear that the fact of Amrit Desai's affairs had been in the unconscious of the community all along. It was not new information. Quite a few individuals held the secret. It was simply information that could not be brought to the light of consciousness until the community was more or less ready for it.

In 1994 when the scandal erupted, Gurudev had not suddenly changed. In fact, the sexual misconduct was by that time many years old. Amirt was who he had always been -- ambitious, brilliant, sometimes a sincere yogi, sometimes just a smooth performer, too often a teacher who was too charming for his own good. It was the community's own capacity to see and bear the truth that had changed.

The bonfire was just as much a sign of success as of failure.

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Sandy Hook and the Healing Power of Compassion

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"Compassion, or the sense of shared humanity, of our kinship with each other: This is what heals." ~ Pema Chodron

The pain, at first, felt strangely personal. Strange because these were not my children. And, yet, any one of them could have been. As a mother, I feel the loss of any child as a momentary, primal terror. It's every parent's greatest fear, lingering always at the periphery of conscious awareness.

Then it expanded outward as I thought of all those parents spending their first night in the cold grip of unutterable grief. And I sobbed. And I sobbed. And I sobbed.

As I surfed the web that afternoon, checked in with friends on Facebook, and read the unfolding coverage, I gradually became aware again that this was a shared experience. Everyone I knew was in shock... naturally. It's always something of a relief -- those moments when you realize you are not alone in your sorrow.

So I thought of Pema Chodron and of her lectures on the constructive use of suffering for personal and global healing. Some time ago, I posted her explanation of the Tibetan Buddhist practice of Tonglen. As we breathe in the sorrows of the world and exhale our love and compassion, we participate in the conscious transformation of the planet.

Through our own personal experience of pain and struggle, we find compassion for the suffering of others. And when these news-making tragedies fix our collective attention, we are reminded that we are part of the shared heart of the world. Our heart chakras are ripped open as the consciousness of our interconnectedness expands.

As news of the tragic shooting at a school in Newtown, Connecticut, rippled across the globe, Mari Lolarga found a candle in his home in the Philippines and lit it in honor of those who died.

. . .

"May Allah give courage to all families to face it bravely, may the souls of those angels rest in peace," said Ghulam Murtaza, an elementary school teacher from Pakistan.
Danbury mayor: 'A horrific day'

In Lithuania, a teacher identifying herself as Veronika commented: "I send all my love and prayers to the families. It is all I can do from so far away, but my heart is now in Newtown with all the affected people. God bless them all."

. . .

Lisa Garnier from Canada said she and her husband were so devastated by the news they both sat down and cried.

Children in Pakistan Light Candles

I read something recently about the Maya trying to end the fear-mongering about their ancient calendar and the panic about the pending 2012 end date.

[Felipe]Gomez's group issued a statement saying that the new Maya time cycle simply "means there will be big changes on the personal, family and community level, so that there is harmony and balance between mankind and nature."

It was but another reminder that the "shift of ages" holds the promise of bringing humanity into "right relationship" with the world we inhabit. So here we stand, on the eve of "the end of the world" remembering that we are all mothers... and fathers... and sisters... and brothers... and children.

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China Reconsidering Tibet Problem

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According to Newsweek, the Chinese government has realized how badly it bungled Tibet. Pouring billions of dollars into urban development has not won over the indigenous population they have mercilessly repressed. Does that ever work?

After the mass riots there in March 2008, Tibet faded once again into relative obscurity—the province of foreign-affairs wonks, adventure tourists, and a few well-organized protest groups who object to China's rule there. But during that time, Beijing has come slowly to two painful realizations. First, the restive plateau it had treated for decades as a colony is central to its national plan: development and stability are "vital to ethnic unity, social stability, and national security," President Hu Jintao recently told his Politburo. And second, a corollary realization: China's government has been mishandling the issue of Tibet all along.

. . .

Suddenly, then, the Dalai Lama is not the problem but rather a pivotal part of the solution. As Tibet expert and author Robert Thurman says, the Dalai Lama is the key to giving China legitimate sovereignty over Tibet as an autonomous region within China because he would inspire his people to stay inside China in case of a referendum on independence. His growing following within mainland China (the number of Chinese Buddhists attending the Dalai Lama's teaching sessions in Dharamsala is growing quickly) can also help calm the simmering discontent among the Chinese who have been left untouched by the benefits of China's impressive economic growth, which has created a hunger for spiritual growth.

The Dalai Lama will be 75 in July. He is revered by the Tibetans and admired around the world. Any deal with him will have the unquestioned legitimacy and support that is so vital to China's aspirations. And his absence will spell uncertainty and a lack of moral authority over Tibetans—which can only hinder China's aim of becoming a global superpower.

Rapprochement between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama? Dare we hope?

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Buddhism Meets Psychology, Confusion Ensues

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A hat tip to Shonin Justin on Ordinary Extraordinary for his point to this interview on ABC. Shonin Justin writes:

"Meet a doctor who thinks you can better understand the self by destroying it"

After the confusion about 'annihilating the self' is cleared up this is a very interesting story.

I'm not a Buddhist, but I am experiencing ego death, so I can fully relate to the healing potential of what Dr. Mark Epstein tries valiantly to get across to the interviewer. But mostly, I've been finding myself staring at lotuses more than usual, and I needed an excuse to post a pretty one.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to embed the video, so follow the link.

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Tyger! Tyger!

Via The Huffington Post, an exploration of Thailand's Tiger Temple; a refuge for the endangered species. From ABC News an exploration of the temple and tourist attraction where tigers and cubs mingle with monks and visitors.

They call it the Tiger Temple, and its story is the stuff of fairy tales. According to Abbot Pra-Acharn Phusit, a tiger cub orphaned by poachers was brought to the temple years ago.

The abbot cared for her and, as word spread, more people brought sickly and orphaned cubs to the temple's doorstep. Those cubs went on to have their own cubs, and nine years on there are now 34 tigers living here.

The Buddhists believe in reincarnation and the abbot feels that these tigers are his family. As he told ABC News, "I think they are my babies: my son, my daughter, my father, mother. If not in the present life, in the past life."

Buddhists also believe that animals, like humans, are sentient beings.

The temple has drawn controversy, as well as tourists. Many speculate that the tame tigers must be drugged. But, the monks insist that their docility is explained by the fact that they have been nurtured by human hands from the time they are three weeks old. Their ultimate aim, according to the abbot, is to find suitable land to release them safely into the wild and allow them to repopulate. In the meanwhile, they feel they are keeping them safe from the deforestation and poachers that have put this and 5 other subspecies of tigers on the endangered list. (The other three subspecies are already extinct.)

For now, the abbot is content to continue pursuing his dream of repopulating the forests of Thailand with the descendants of his tigers. As the Buddhist proverb goes, "if we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep walking."

The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forest of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And What shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

~ William Blake

The Heart Sutra

The Heart Sutra
Translation by Edward Conze

Homage to the Perfection of Wisdom, the Lovely, the Holy!

Avalokita, The Holy Lord and Bodhisattva, was moving in the deep course of the Wisdom which has gone beyond. He looked down from on high, He beheld but five heaps, and he saw that in their own-being they were empty.

Here, Sariputra, form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness; whatever is form, that is emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form, the same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness.

Here, Sariputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness; they are not produced or stopped, not defiled or immaculate, not deficient or complete.

Therefore, Sariputra, in emptiness there is no form, nor feeling, nor perception, nor impulse, nor consciousness; No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind; No forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables or objects of mind; No sight-organ element, and so forth, until we come to: No mind-consciousness element; There is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, and so forth, until we come to: there is no decay and death, no extinction of decay and death. There is no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path. There is no cognition, no attainment and non-attainment.

Therefore, Sariputra, it is because of his non-attainment that a Bodhisattva, through having relied on the Perfection of Wisdom, dwells without thought-coverings. In the absence of thought-coverings he has not been made to tremble, he has overcome what can upset, and in the end he attains to Nirvana.

All those who appear as Buddhas in the three periods of time fully awake to the utmost, right and perfect Enlightenment because they have relied on the Perfection of Wisdom.Therefore one should know the prajnaparamita as the great spell, the spell of great knowledge, the utmost spell, the unequalled spell, allayer of all suffering, in truth - for what could go wrong? By the prajnaparamita has this spell been delivered. It runs like this:

Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, O what an awakening, all-hail!

Pema Chodron: "A Beautiful World Covered in Leather"

My personal hero Stuart Smalley (aka Al Franken) put it a little more simply.

It's easier to put on slippers than to carpet the entire world.

Thoughts on Powerlessness

Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance,
complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness,
patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

So, I'm laying here, immobilized with the head-cold from hell, and it occurs to me what an ego-killer illness is. My husband refers to these episodes with cold or flu as "hitting the reset button." That sums it up well. These are massive interruptions in the momentum of our lives. You can do little but let everything come to a screaming halt, and even when you recover, you can't just pick up where you left off. Not completely. Some threads are broken. Some projects you wished to accomplish have already passed their freshness date and can't be taken up again. Even if it's a day or two, a chunk of your life is gone, never to be restored.

As I lay here, it's hard not to focus on all the things I cannot do. I need to unload and reload the dishwasher but I can't seem to stand upright for more than a few minutes and even that is torture. Shower. (See previous explanation.) Eat. My taste buds are compromised so everything sounds dreadful. It requires too much effort, anyway. Clean the house. (The standing and walking thing, again.) I'd love to do some yoga, but... the standing... oh, and the forward bends that would cause my sinus headache to reach critical mass. Or, just blog this wonderful article on yoga a friend sent me, but right now, I'm having trouble remembering what I even thought about it when I read it.


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With little to do but contemplate the great mysteries of life, I find that even this, my greatest passion, is lost to me. It's as if some giant hand has played 52 pick-up with my thoughts. They're all in a jumble. I'm not sure what I believe... about anything. Now, I'm no fan of certainty, but I usually have some idea, some running narrative in my head, about life, the universe, the myths that shape our reality... Today... I got nothin.' Things I believed a week ago now seem puerile and reductive. I am suddenly overwhelmed, not only by the unmeetable demands of my daily, material life, but by the acute awareness that "the more I learn, the less I know." It all just feels impossible.

Now, on some level, I know that my sense of awareness and capability will return; that I will find the pathways through my mind again. I will remember my sense of purpose. But for now, I'm just a heap of broken circuitry.

This is a mini ego death. I've lost my sense of self, if only for a day or two. And, it occurs to me what a beautiful thing that is. Uncomfortable. Definitely. Assaults on the ego are never pleasant, but they are absolutely necessary. A reset button, indeed. The universe is just clearing out some of the old programming and forcing me back to the beginner mind.

A little over a month ago, I faced a different sort of interruption in the streaming content of my life. My computer died, suddenly, without warning. It was a power supply issue, now resolved. I moved quickly through the five stages of grief, finding, strangely, that it was a relief having that electronic tether cut. I discharged a number of day to day responsibilities and distractions that I have accumulated in my online life. I saw that the universe was, once again, hitting a giant reset button, and forcing me to be still, contemplative, and receptive. I realized something. The internet brings a crushing weight of information. Having the world at your fingertips is as exhausting and overstimulating as it is fascinating. I thought seriously about never reconnecting to the www. But, here, as in all things, the struggle is to find that middle path that allows me to live in the material world without being consumed by it.


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The night before my new battery arrived, I dreamt of a bluejay. Bluejay's medicine is "appropriate use of power," if you don't know it. Bluejay and I have a longstanding relationship that started, to my knowledge, when I was attacked by one, as a small child. It dove straight at the top of my head and violently ruffled my hair. My mother insisted I must have gotten close to its nest, but I saw no nest, and it flew from a perch high in an old oak tree. No. Bluejay was trying, even then, to open up my crown chakra. So this night, before my battery unexpectedly arrived, I dreamt that I had a bluejay for a pet. I had saved it from some danger and it came to live in an open cage in my house, coming and going as it pleased. I expect it will take me years to sort out what, exactly, that means. And that's as it should be.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke, from "Letters to a Young Poet"

Even A Broken Clock...

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is right twice a day. And sometimes David Brooks writes a really worthwhile column. Today it's nice overview of the bridging of science and mystical thought.

Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.

This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.

. . .

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

A Meditation on Suffering

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In the most recent Energy Alert from Karen Bishop, "Surviving the Storm" -- Feb. 23, 2008, she invokes the issue of suffering. Like most of her alerts, the issue felt very timely. I know I'm feeling depleted, exhausted, frustrated, and beset by a sadness and anger that, like so many of the collective experiences that Bishop explains so well, has no nameable source. In the alert she gives her explanation of the higher purpose of suffering.

Suffering is occurring to support individuals into making a change. When we are extremely miserable, we are more inclined to be open to doing things differently, or perhaps inclined to let go of internal patterns that have continued to cause us misery for a very long time. And as most of us know, we are the ones who cause ourselves misery, and in this way, we are then empowered to make change, as changing ourselves is what creates the change on the outside as well, and then the ball is in our own court.

It can be difficult and very challenging to watch all this suffering around us. Our hearts go out to those involved. We deeply care. It can at times seem as though the world has gone mad. But we must also remember that each and every one of us is on our own unique journey, and our journeys are what create the needed changes.

In one of those delightful, little synchronicities of which life is so full, I stumbled on some very useful material, while assembling YouTube videos for my bookstore players. In these segments Pema Chodron explains the practice of tonglen; the use of suffering as a means to awakening.



In this video, from an appearance at The Omega Institute, Chodron offers a tonglen meditation on suffering in a time of war.

Massacre of Buddhist Monks in Burma

The peaceful protest led by Buddhist monks against the regime in Burma (Myanmar) has been suppressed in a violent bloodbath.

Thousands of protesters are dead and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle, a former intelligence officer for Burma's ruling junta has revealed.

The most senior official to defect so far, Hla Win, said: "Many more people have been killed in recent days than you've heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand."

Mr Win, who spoke out as a Swedish diplomat predicted that the revolt has failed, said he fled when he was ordered to take part in a massacre of holy men. He has now reached the border with Thailand.

In what has been termed the "Saffron Revolution," thousands of Buddhist monks have been leading peaceful marches against the country's military regime.

On September 23, as many as 100,000 anti-government protesters led by a phalanx of Buddhist monks and nuns marched through Yangon (Rangoon), the largest crowd to demonstrate in Myanmar since 1988. Next day, tens of thousands more monks, joined by civilians, marched peacefully through key areas of several Burmese towns. Indeed, since late August this year, monks and people around Burma have been out on the streets protesting against a sharp hike in fuel prices imposed by the dictatorship on a long suffering people, among the poorest in the world.

The protests were initially triggered by student activists, who, lacking the immunity accorded to monks, were immediately beaten up and detained. Min Ko Naing, a student leader and hero of the 1988 failed uprising against the military regime, who has already spent nearly a decade-and-half in jail, was among those arrested.

Today, reports from inside the country are declaring the uprising over and the military junta in control.

Reports from exiles along the frontier confirmed that hundreds of monks had simply "disappeared" as 20,000 troops swarmed around Rangoon yesterday to prevent further demonstrations by religious groups and civilians.

. . .

There, troops abandoned religious beliefs, propped their rifles against statues of Buddha and began cooking meals on stoves set up in shrines.

Words fail...

Legislating Reincarnation

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In its continuing effort to crush the influence of Tibetan Buddhism within its borders, China is cracking down on the reincarnation of living Buddhas.

All the reincarnations of living Buddhas of Tibetan Buddhism must get government approval, otherwise they are "illegal or invalid," China's State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) said in Beijing Friday.

The SARA has issued a set of regulations on reincarnation of Tibetan living Buddhas, which will take effect as of September 1.

"It is an important move to institutionalize management on reincarnation of living Buddhas," the SARA said in a statement issued Friday.

The regulations require that a temple which applies for reincarnation of a living Buddha must be "legally-registered venues for Tibetan Buddhism activities and are capable of fostering and offering proper means of support for the living Buddha."

I have to admit, this actually struck me funny when I first heard about it; the idea that a government bureaucracy could administrate the comings and goings of souls. But, it's deadly serious.

The 14-part regulation issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs is aimed at limiting the influence of Tibet’s exiled god-king, the Dalai Lama, and at preventing the re-incarnation of the 72-year-old monk without approval from Beijing.

It is the latest in a series of measures by the Communist authorities to tighten their grip over Tibet. Reincarnate lamas, known as tulkus, often lead religious communities and oversee the training of monks, giving them enormous influence over religious life in the Himalayan region. Anyone outside China is banned from taking part in the process of seeking and recognising a living Buddha, effectively excluding the Dalai Lama, who traditionally can play an important role in giving recognition to candidate reincarnates.

For the first time China has given the Government the power to ensure that no new living Buddha can be identified, sounding a possible death knell to a mystical system that dates back at least as far as the 12th century.

This continues and expands Chinese policies to wrest control of the Tibetan spiritual practices that largely define the occupied people. Having already decreed that only the government can authorize the appointment of its two most important spiritual leaders, the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama. His holiness the Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile in India since 1959, selected the reincarnate of the Panchen Lama in 1995. But, Chinese authorities held their own selection ceremony and the boy chosen by the Dalai Lama has since disappeared.

Last week hundreds of Tibetans were taken into custody for protesting the detention of another Tibetan protester, who seized the microphone at an official Chinese event and called for the return of the Dalai Lama.

The reports said the crowd of hundreds responded with a roaring yes when Runggye Adak asked whether the Dalai Lama should return.

"If we cannot invite the Dalai Lama home, we will not have freedom of religion and happiness in Tibet," Radio Free Asia quoted him as saying in a report filed from neighboring Nepal. Many Tibetans go through Nepal to reach the seat of the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India.