** Bryce Harper of The Washington Nationals won an All-Star starting berth, making him the youngest All-Star since Ken Griffey,Jr.
**The Dalai Lama celebrates his 78th birthday today.For a great read about the 14th Dalai Lama, I can't recommend Pico Iyer's "The Open Road" enough.
**Veteran guitarist Michael Mattice released his first solo album this past month. Mike of the famous Virginia band "Shapes Not Sounds" goes acoustic in "Comin' Home", which is available on Amazon's MP3 store. Check out his Youtube videos to see Mike the magical shredding in his electric incarnations. Congratulations, Mike.
**The Drummer for "Shapes Not Sounds" released his first solo album of experimental percussion. Ian G. McColm cut "Virgin Skins" for Pidgin Records out of Frenchtown, New Jersey. Ian has another album coming out next month whose production was funded by Kickstarter and recorded on Sly Stone's old soundboard in Michigan. I first heard Ian G. McColm's experimental compositions as the soundtrack for Man Ray's surrealistic film "Starfish". Now we need a "Shapes Not Sounds" reunion CD.
++Contrary to the negative press and reviews, Johnny Depp is back with a terrific performance as Tonto in the Lone Ranger. It is a Lone Ranger for somewhat grown ups. I saw it with only three other people in the audience.
++Pope Francis paved the way for John Paul II and John Paul XXIII becoming saints. But he muffed it with a treatise co-authored by Pope Benedict against same sex marriage.
++Andrew Sullivan celebrated July 4th by reproducing the best national anthems. My picks are Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, Marvin Gaye at the 1984 Lakers Playoff game, and Lady Gaga at the recent Gay Pride Day in New York.
++KGB agent Ann Chapman proposed marriage to Edward Snowden who is still sequestered at the Moscow airport. Venezuela, Bolivia,and Nicaragua have offered asylum and Iceland's parliament rejected an offer of citizenship.
++The economy saw 195,000 jobs created last month. Although everyone saw this exceeding expectations,many pundits proclaimed that it meant trouble for Obama, Obamacare and the Democrats. If you added the 5,000 government jobs lost, it would have been 200,000--about as good as it gets.
Showing posts with label Dalai Lama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dalai Lama. Show all posts
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Monday, March 8, 2010
Confession of a Buddhist Atheist
I picked up this book by Stephen Batchelor for the sole purpose of reading his account of how and why the Buddha was murdered. Some may recognize Batchelor for his work in the Buddhist quarterly Tricycle and his book Buddhism without Beliefs. Batchelor was one of the first Westerners during the 1970s to make the journey to the East and study Buddhism with the Dalai Lama. After years of study he became a monk and then a teacher. The title of his latest comes from his status now as a married man, no longer a monk, who claims to practice Buddhist beliefs in conformity to secularism and modernity. This is the story of his journey from his first days as a believer to today's position as a lecturer, historian and something of a skeptic. This is also a parallel journey back to rediscover the historical Buddha and his original teachers.
What he discovers is a world of intense political intrigue and warfare. He believes the Buddha before his great awakening had journeyed to the end of the Persian empire and learned about Zoroasterianism. From this experience, Batchelor notes the emergence in Buddhist literature of the concept of the Devil, Mara, which did not exist in India at the time.
Buddha's teaching themselves created formidable enemies in India. Batchelor discovers that the founder of the Jains had been assassinated in the same place as Buddha finally is poisoned. Rival principalities warred against each other based on the religious teachers of their leaders. The Buddha had made enemies and came to meet his end at the house of man called Cunda the Smith. Here he was served tenderized pork and sensing something was wrong, he insisted the rest of his disciples be served the remaining food. He then told Cunda to bury all remaining pork in a pit, got violently ill and called for his devoted companion Ananda to take him to Kusinara, about ten miles away where he died under the canopy of sal leaves.
This story and how Batchelor reconstructs it from ancient Buddhist texts was why I was interested. But the real surpise of the book concerns his writings about the fierce struggles inside modern Tibetan Buddhism and the resistance, sometimes armed, against the Dalai Lama. In the 1980s, I talked with the Dalai Lama about his efforts to modernize his religion. At that point he had started his annual seminars of scientists teaching Tibetan Buddhists the latest findings in neuroscience, astrophysics and the like. "If we see something that contradicts our religion,then we'll change it," he rather cavalierly said.
But apparently, it was not so easy and the Dalai Lama has far more enemies inside his own camp than I ever realized. The Tibetan lamas did not want to abandon some of their medieval practices and beliefs. Only a few years ago some of the dissident monks sent assassins to kill the Dalai Lama's senior aides. This doesn't even include what the Chinese government was up to.
Batchelor details the fragmented state of Tibetan Buddhism along with accounts of known dissident lamas who maintain their distance from both the Dalai Lama and his most heated enemies. Throughout the book Batchelor paints the intimate landscape he encounters throughout the Buddhist world.
For those seeking to practice the Four Noble Truths, one will surpised how bloody the path is.
What he discovers is a world of intense political intrigue and warfare. He believes the Buddha before his great awakening had journeyed to the end of the Persian empire and learned about Zoroasterianism. From this experience, Batchelor notes the emergence in Buddhist literature of the concept of the Devil, Mara, which did not exist in India at the time.
Buddha's teaching themselves created formidable enemies in India. Batchelor discovers that the founder of the Jains had been assassinated in the same place as Buddha finally is poisoned. Rival principalities warred against each other based on the religious teachers of their leaders. The Buddha had made enemies and came to meet his end at the house of man called Cunda the Smith. Here he was served tenderized pork and sensing something was wrong, he insisted the rest of his disciples be served the remaining food. He then told Cunda to bury all remaining pork in a pit, got violently ill and called for his devoted companion Ananda to take him to Kusinara, about ten miles away where he died under the canopy of sal leaves.
This story and how Batchelor reconstructs it from ancient Buddhist texts was why I was interested. But the real surpise of the book concerns his writings about the fierce struggles inside modern Tibetan Buddhism and the resistance, sometimes armed, against the Dalai Lama. In the 1980s, I talked with the Dalai Lama about his efforts to modernize his religion. At that point he had started his annual seminars of scientists teaching Tibetan Buddhists the latest findings in neuroscience, astrophysics and the like. "If we see something that contradicts our religion,then we'll change it," he rather cavalierly said.
But apparently, it was not so easy and the Dalai Lama has far more enemies inside his own camp than I ever realized. The Tibetan lamas did not want to abandon some of their medieval practices and beliefs. Only a few years ago some of the dissident monks sent assassins to kill the Dalai Lama's senior aides. This doesn't even include what the Chinese government was up to.
Batchelor details the fragmented state of Tibetan Buddhism along with accounts of known dissident lamas who maintain their distance from both the Dalai Lama and his most heated enemies. Throughout the book Batchelor paints the intimate landscape he encounters throughout the Buddhist world.
For those seeking to practice the Four Noble Truths, one will surpised how bloody the path is.
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