Buddha is Culture

By Lary Yang, Buddhist Meditation teacher

By2012 LGBT retreat at Garrison Institute, Garrison, NY

Towards a Multicultural Buddhist Practice

The three “jewels” or the Three Refuges is one of the core elements of Buddhist spiritual practice connected to all Buddhist traditions. In this series, the Refuges of Buddha’s Teachings — the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha — are explored through the lens of culture and cultural experience. These Refuges were offered by the Buddha to create safety and sense of spiritual home so that each practitioner can be invited to relax into the present moment of one’s Life, to be able to explore what this Life is for us, and to cultivate the Life we really wish to live. Even the word “Refuge” has a connotation, a feeling, of a safe haven wherein to go. It is said that when we invoke the Refuges, as happens in the beginning of meditation retreats or practice sessions, there is always someone else in the world taking on the Refuges at exactly the same moment. Across cultures, the intentions to create peacefulness and safety in the world are that prevalent.

And the Buddha is about Culture.

The Buddha’s expression about Freedom and Awakening has always been about culture, about diversity, and about the infinite variations in human experience with all the 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows of this life. This remains a controversial issue within some Buddhist circles, including my home lineage of Buddhist practice. It may be different for other Buddhist traditions, but within communities of Vipassana or Insight Meditation, there is sometimes a predisposition to idealize the aspirations of spiritual practice, and to assume that the highest intention is to transcend the vicissitudes of this life, to somehow obviate the sorrows of this lifetime so that we only experience the pleasant, peaceful or sublime. I have heard dharma teachers bemoan conversations in diversity and culture, and say something like “Why do we dwell on our differences? The point of practice is to see our similarities.”

Rio Conference Speech by PM Dr. Bhattarai

Mr. Chairman,

Excellencies Presidents
Excellencies Prime Ministers
Mr. Secretary General of the United Nations
Distinguished Heads of the Delegation,
Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen!

It is a great pleasure and honour for me to extend the warmest greetings and best wishes on behalf of the Government and the people of the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, the land of Mt. Everest and the birthplace of the Gautam Buddha, to the Government and the people of Brazil for making this generational summit on sustainable development a success. Let me also express my gratitude to Her Excellency Madame Dilma Rousseff, President of the Federative Republic of Brazil, for the warm welcome and generous hospitality accorded to me and my delegation ever since we arrived in this beautiful and historic city of Rio as well as for the exemplary leadership in steering this Conference.

Mr. Chairman,

Twenty years after the historic Earth Summit, we are meeting here in this beautiful city, to take stock of progress that we have made and the challenges that remain to be addressed in realizing the vital goals of sustainable development. This is an opportunity to all of us for a true reflection of our past actions and commitments for future.

TALKING THE BUDDHA BIRTH PLACE : MISINFORMING PEOPLE TO GLORIFY A NATION IS WRONG

[ Below today we re-post an article with a video taken this morning of a professor of history from Bhuvaneshowr, Orissa India. The Buddha birth place controversy was brought out of Orissa in 1928. But the speaker in the video below, Professor Kailash Chandra Dash, who himself comes from Orissa, says those were forged (his)stories to glorify Orissan as well as Indian peoples. And he added that the Indian scholars and historians should have interpreted historical information or data more scientifically, rather than any ‘nationalistic zeal’. Prof. Dash says, the birth place of Buddha is present day Lumbini of Nepal, not in any part of India. For more please watch the video.- Editor (Himalayan Voice)]
By Kailash Chandra Dash
The two edicts from Paderia and Nigliva were edited by G.Buhler on the basis of the inked estampages furnished by their discoverer, Dr. A. A. Fuhrer who found the second in March 1895 and the first in December 18961. Both came from the Nepal Terai, where Nigliva was situated 38 miles north west of the Uska Bazar station of the Bengal and the North-Western Railway in the Nepalese tahsil Taulihva of the Zillah Bataul. Paderia was two miles north of the Nepalese tahsil Bhagvanpur of the same Zillah and according to Dr Fuhrer`s estimate about thirteen miles from Nigliva2. Both were incised on mutilated stone pillars and the Paderia edict which was found three feet below the surface of the ground was in a state of perfect preservation while that of Nigliva had suffered a great deal on the left side and had lost the first five letters of line three as well as the first seven of line four3.

Niglihawa pillar. Image Google

Pilgrimage to Lumbini, Nepal (2011)

Archaeological evidence of his last existence still stands strong and numerous even ~2500 years after the Lord Buddha’s demise in 483 BC!
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/666
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumbini
http://what-buddha-said.net/library/DPPN/l/lumbini.htm
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/buddhistworld/lumbini.htm

Buddhism and the Unconscious

By John Stanleyand David Loy

 “My life is a story of the self-realization of the unconscious.” –C.G. Jung

Those who see into the Unconscious have their senses cleansed of defilements, are moving toward Buddha-wisdom, are known to be with Reality, in the Middle Path, in the ultimate truth itself. Those who see into the Unconscious are furnished at once with merits as numerous as the sands of the Ganges. They are able to create all kinds of things and embrace all things within themselves. –Shen-hui (as translated by D.T. Suzuki)

At the end of his life, C.G. Jung dictated to his secretary an extraordinary autobiography, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections,” whose first sentence we cite above. Earlier he had observed how human nature resembled the twin sons of Zeus and Leda: “We are that pair of Dioscuri, one of whom is mortal and the other immortal, and who, though always together, can never be made completely one. … We should prefer to be always ‘I’ and nothing else.” Recent neurological studies into those “twin sons” have been exploring Jung’s insight, leading to discoveries that have many important implications, including how we might understand traditional Buddhist teachings today.

Neuropsychology of the Unconscious

Brain research over the last generation has confirmed the difference between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Our left cerebral hemisphere is the place where language is generated and received. It serves a linguistic consciousness with which we describe and think about the world. On the other side, our silent right brain hemisphere serves an unconscious awareness that cannot be coded in language. Non-verbal contemplative practices — such as being quietly present in the natural world, “open presence” meditation, tai chi chuan or yoga — elicit sustained awareness rooted in the unconscious. We are fully aware of what is happening, within and around us. Yet such experiences cannot be put into (or directed by) words because they are served by modules for sensory awareness in the right hemisphere. Focusing attention in the present suspends the usual executive functions of the conscious mind, so that the resources of the unconscious may unfold.

बुद्ध नेपालमा जन्मिएको प्लेकार्ड सहित जर्मनको कार्निभल भेस्टिभमा नेपाली आकर्षण

अनिल बानियाँ, बर्लिन – सधै ब्यस्त रहने जर्मनमा अध्ययनरत नेपाली बिद्यार्थीहरु पहिलो पटक कार्निभल फेस्टमा सहभागी भए। राष्ट्रिय पोसाक दौरा, सुरुवाल, गुन्यौ, चोली र विभिन्न जातीय भेष भुषामा सजिएका नेपाली बिद्यार्थीहरु अरुका लागि आकर्षणका केन्द्र थिए। १७ बर्ष देखि जर्मनमा मनाइदै आइएको फेस्टमा नेपालको तर्फबाट पहिलो पटक औपचारीक सहभागिता जनाइएको हो। जर्मनमा रहेको बिदेशीले आ-आफ्नो कला र संस्कृति प्रदर्शन गर्न यस्तो कार्यक्रम सालै पिच्छे आयोजना गरिन्छ। हातहातमा नेपाली ‘झन्डा बोकेर मादलको तालमा नाँचेका नेपाली बिद्यार्थीहरु फेस्टमा सहभागी ५० देशका प्रतिनिधि भन्दा बेग्लै देखिन्थे। त्यसैले सबैको नजर नेपाली प्रस्तुतीमा परेको थियो। बिद्यार्थीले देखाएको लाखे नाच सबैको लागि प्रिय बन्यो। ‘Buddha was born in Nepal’ लेखिएको प्लेकार्ड बोकेर फेस्टमा सहभागी बिजय पुरी भन्दै थिए ‘बुद्ध सम्बन्धी भ्रमलाई चिर्न सफल भइयो।’ यत्रो देशका प्रतिनिधिबीचमा आफ्नो देशको पहिचान गराउनपाउँदा गौरावानुभूति भएको उनले सुनाए।