Byrd's Chicks

Holy Mother Goddess, Batman!

Years ago, when someone introduced me to chanting the odaimoku, I figured if I was going to chant the title of a book over and over again, that I should know what the book was like. So I bought the Watson version of the Lotus Sutra, and read it immediately. I didn't understand a lot of it, to be honest. Particularly the Dharani chapter, which seemed a bit strange.

My mystification deepened when the Houston Nichiren temple introduced me to a recording of the recitation of the dharani. One really cool place to hear this is located at here. It is well worth a listen.

Still, I had no clue as to what it meant. Well, finally I've found a tentative translation as interpreted by Keisho Tsukamoto in the book "Source Elements of the Lotus Sutra, Buddhist Integration of Religion, Thought and Culture". What was kind of cools was that the dharanis are addressed to a female deity. Here's a snippet of the dharani as given by Medicine King boddhisattva :

"Oh, she who is exceptional!
Oh she who is known, Oh she who is in all respects exceptional!
Oh she who has thought consciousness,
Oh she who doesn't have thought consciousness... "

It ends with:
"... Oh saviour difficult to understand"

So, in short reciting the dharanis is basically praying to a female deity. Smells like goddess worship to me.

Who knew?

(The book "Source Elements" can be pedantic and hard to wade through but it definitely reveals the breadth and scope of thought, religions and local culture that molded what we now know as the "Lotus Sutra". I enjoy it because it increases my appreciation and understanding of the Lotus Sutra).

Learning and teaching incantations were considered monastic offenses according to Pali Vinaya precepts , but the Mahayana world view was different, and permitted blessings, as well as beings to pray to. Just another "phantom city" to get people on the road to Buddhahood, I think.

I have some more thoughts about the whole notion of blessings and incantations but I'll save that for a later post.

Stay on the good course!
Kris

The "Go Home Zone"

When I first tried explaining some of the facets of my personal buddhist practice to a dear friend of mine, she heard the word "Gohonzon" in a different way. Her unique interpretation of the word "Gohonzon" became the "Go Home Zone". So now she asks if I am chanting to my "Go Home Zone".

I like the notion - where the focus of our practice becomes our "home", our groundedness and center. I have been reading Glenn Wallis' "The Teaching of the Buddha" and the first sutra he starts out with is the "Sakunagghi Sutta" where the Buddha is urging his disciples to stay "on their home ground". He utilizes a parable where a quail outwits a hawk by seeking safety in the quail's home territory.

Wallis then follows up with what this "home ground", this domain of safety for sentient beings is. This domain is staying solidly in the present.

This really came home to me recently. You see, my cat died; he was mauled and killed by two dogs who found their way inside a fenced in yard within a fenced in property. Now, sometimes, I like to think that I've mastered this or that facet of Buddhism... but this, this was so unexpected and painful for me. Buddhism is supposed to be a way out of suffering.

And, I was definitely feeling pain, and suffering.

Rather than pummeling myself, or applying palliative thoughts couched in cliches, I decided to try an experiment, drawn from the first part of the Mahasatipatthana Sutta (The Application of Present Moment Awareness) as translated by Wallis. Simply to be with my feelings, seeing them as such, letting them wash over and through me. I even decided to really put some of the Buddhist stuff to the test - the Tevijja Sutta suggests that "metaphysical frippery" (i.e. what happens when an animal dies? Do we go to heaven? etc.) is a nice diversion, but does not, ultimately, lead away from suffering.

So... did my little experiment work? Qualitatively, I think so, though of course I can't prove it (I love the line from an Adrienne Rich poem that says:"Quantify suffering, you could rule the world). While I still feel waves of sorrow, I find that if I don't seize hold of "How can I bear this? and chew on it (and that is what my tendency is due to my upbringing) then the pain is not so much... So, pain I feel, but I don't yoke myself to it.

Mike McCormick once likened living with disappointment and pain in life while you are practicing Buddhism as something kindred to an athlete who feels discomfort, even pain, and runs through it, because they have a worthwhile goal on the other side and know the discomfort is temporary.

Several weeks before Joey, my cat, died, I had already begun trying to experience life moment by moment, watching "feelings as feelings, thoughts as thoughts". As a consequence, I actually experienced alot more sympathetic joy (for instance, when Joey was enjoying a happy stretch and was purring) and less anger (such as when Joey would wake me up at 2 am for a snack). It helps.

Anyway, part of me wanted to fall back on the notion of "heaven out there", and reincarnation, but I guess I am more interested in the heaven right here. Joey is still alive, in the joy that I still have from my having known him, and that, for now, is enough.

Be loving, and kind.
Kris