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Thoreau was the one who helped to bring Buddhism into America by cotranslating the Lotus Sutra from the French in 1844.
rinpoches, the “precious ones,”
Just as a white summer cloud, in harmony with heaven and earth freely floats in the blue sky from horizon to horizon following the breath of the atmosphere—in the same way the pilgrim abandons himself to the breath of the greater life that . . . leads him beyond the farthest horizons to an aim which is already present within him, though yet hidden from his sight. LAMA GOVINDA The Way of the White Clouds
Himalaya—the alaya (abode, or home) of hima (snow).
two figs of different species were planted long ago; one is a banyan, or nigrodha (Ficus indica), the other a pipal (F. religiosa), sacred to both the Hindus and the Buddhists.
In what became known as the Four Noble Truths, Sakyamuni perceived that man’s existence is inseparable from sorrow; that the cause of suffering is craving; that peace is attained by extinguishing craving; that this liberation may be brought about by following the Eight-fold Path: right attention to one’s understanding, intentions, speech, and actions; right livelihood, effort, mindfulness; right concentration, by which is meant the unification of the self through sitting yoga.
Kali signifies “black female” or “dark woman,”
Fierce Kali the Black, the female aspect of Time and Death, and the Devourer of All Things, is the consort of the Hindu god of the Himalaya, Great Shiva the Re-Creator and Destroyer; her black image, with its necklace of human skulls, is the emblem of this dark river that, rumbling down out of hidden peaks and vast clouds of unknowing, has filled the traveler with dread since the first human tried to cross and was borne away.
As Buddhists, they know that the doing matters more than the attainment or reward, that to serve in this selfless way is to be free.
Because of their belief in karma—the principle of cause and effect that permeates Buddhism and Hinduism (and Christianity, for that matter: as ye sow, so shall ye reap)—they are tolerant and unjudgmental, knowing that bad acts will receive their due without the intervention of the victim.
Thus there developed the ideal of the Bodhisattva (roughly, Buddha-Being) who has deferred his own entry into the eternal peace of nirvana, remaining here in the samsara state until all of us become enlightened; in this way Mahayana answered man’s need for a personal god and a divine savior, which early Buddhism and Hinayana lack.
Zen Buddhism (of which Bodhidharma was First Patriarch in China) infused all of Oriental art and culture with the spare clarity of its vision. In Zen thought, even attachment to the Buddha’s “golden words” may get in the way of ultimate perception; hence the Zen expression “Kill the Buddha!” The Universe itself is the scripture of Zen, for which religion is no more and no less than the apprehension of the infinite in every moment.
How strange everything seems. How strange everything is. One “I” feels like an observer of this man who lies here in this sleeping bag in Asian mountains; another “I” is thinking about Alex; a third is the tired man who tries to sleep.
Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for survival, fear of death, must separate us from the happiness of pure and uninterpreted experience, in which body, mind, and nature are the same. And this debasement of our vision, the retreat from wonder, the backing away like lobsters from free-swimming life into safe crannies, the desperate instinct that our life passes unlived, is reflected in proliferation without joy, corrosive money rot, the gross befouling of the earth and air and water from which we came.
The armor of the “I” begins to form, the construction and desperate assertion of separate identity, the loneliness: “Man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through the narrow chinks of his cavern.” 8
Kierkegaard called “the sickness of infinitude,” wandering from one path to another with no real recognition that I was embarked upon a search, and scarcely a clue as to what I might be after. I only knew that at the bottom of each breath there was a hollow place that needed to be filled.
In 1959, in the jungles of Peru, I would experiment with yajé, or ayahuasca, a hallucinogen of morbid effect used by shamans of the Amazon tribes to induce states that we call “supernatural,” not because they transcend the laws of nature but because they still elude the grasp of formal science. (Most hallucinogens are derivatives of wild plants—mushrooms, cactus, a morning glory, many others—used for sacred purposes the world over; the ancients’ soma may have been made from a poisonous mushroom of the genus Amanita.) Though frightening, the experience made clear that this family of chemicals
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One turns in all directions and sees nothing. Yet one senses that there is a source for this deep restlessness; and the path that leads there is not a path to a strange place, but the path home.
The journey is hard, for the secret place where we have always been is overgrown with thorns and thickets of “ideas,” of fears and defenses, prejudices and repressions.
Whether joyful or dark, the drug vision can be astonishing, but eventually this vision will repeat itself, until even the magic show grows boring;
Drugs can clear away the past, enhance the present; toward the inner garden, they can only point the way. Lacking the temper of ascetic discipline, the drug vision remains a sort of dream that cannot be brought over into daily life. Old mists may be banished, that is true, but the alien chemical agent forms another mist, maintaining the separation of the “I” from true experience of the One.
The mastiffs are so fierce that Tibetan travelers carry a charm portraying a savage dog fettered in chain: the chain is clasped by the mystical “thunderbolt,” or dorje, and an inscription reads, “The mouth of the blue dog is bound beforehand.”
Tukten has elf’s ears and a thin neck, a yellow face, and the wild wise eyes of a naljorpa, or Tibetan yogi. He radiates that inner quiet which is often associated with spiritual attainment, but perhaps his attainment is a dark one. The other Sherpas are uneasy with him; they mutter that he drinks too much, uses foul language, is not to be trusted. Apparently he has demeaned himself by taking this job as a porter. Yet they defer to him as if he possessed some sort of magic, and sometimes I think I feel his power, too.
More often than I like, I feel that gaze of his, as if he were here to watch over me, as if it were he who had made me cut that stick: the gaze is open, calm, benign, without judgment of any kind, and yet, confronted with it, as with a mirror, I am aware of all that is hollow in myself, all that is greedy, angry, and unwise.
Finally, I remove my watch, as the time it tells is losing all significance.
Asian traditions refer to a hidden kingdom—Shambala, the Center—in an unknown part of Inner Asia.
And it is “void” that underlies the Eastern teachings—not emptiness or absence, but the Uncreated that preceded all creation, the beginningless potential of all things. Before heaven and earth There was something nebulous silent isolated unchanging and alone eternal the Mother of All Things I do not know its name I call it Tao 22
Today most scientists would agree with the ancient Hindus that nothing exists or is destroyed, things merely change shape or form; that matter is insubstantial in origin, a temporary aggregate of the pervasive energy that animates the electron.
O, how incomprehensible everything was, and actually sad, although it was also beautiful. One knew nothing. One lived and ran about the earth and rode through forests, and certain things looked so challenging and promising and nostalgic: a star in the evening, a blue harebell, a reed-green pond, the eye of a person or a cow. And sometimes it seemed that something never seen yet long desired was about to happen, that a veil would drop from it all; but then it passed, nothing happened, the riddle remained unsolved, the secret spell unbroken, and in the end one grew old and looked
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Monk: What happens when the leaves are falling, and the trees are bare? Unmon: The golden wind, revealed! Hegikan Roku (The Blue Cliff Records)
It is hard going in this mush: the summit never comes.
“She has no mud on her soul.”
Wife - Deborah Love
One feels they are afraid of him—not of his violence, though they say he fights when drunk, but of his power. Whatever this man is—wanderer or evil monk, or saint or sorcerer—he seems touched by what Tibetans call the “crazy wisdom”: he is free.
Tukten
Tibetans say that obstacles in a hard journey, such as hailstones, wind, and unrelenting rains, are the work of demons, anxious to test the sincerity of the pilgrims and eliminate the fainthearted among them.
These dreams do not seem to evaporate—can I be dead? It is as if I had entered what Tibetans call the Bardo—literally, between-two-existences—a dreamlike hallucination that precedes reincarnation, not necessarily in human form;
instructions for passage through the Bardo are contained in the Tibetan “Book of the Dead” which I carry with me—a guide for the living, actually, since it teaches that a man’s last thoughts will determine the quality of his reincarnation.
in Zen, one seeks to empty out the mind, to return it to the clear, pure stillness of a seashell or a flower petal.
Meditation
In this “void,” this dynamic state of rest, without impediments, lies ultimate reality, and here one’s own true nature is reborn, in a return from what Buddhists speak of as “great death.” This is the Truth of which Milarepa speaks.
man’s world, man’s dreams are both dream-states
embrace all that he most fears or finds repugnant, the better to realize that everything in the Universe, being inseparably related, is therefore holy.
When one pays attention to the present, there is great pleasure in awareness of small things;
chivvy
Tell someone repeatedly to do something
Pronounced in Tibet Aum—Ma-ni—Pay-may—Hung, this mantra may be translated: Om! The Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus! Hum! The deep, resonant Om is all sound and silence throughout time, the roar of eternity and also the great stillness of pure being; when intoned with the prescribed vibrations, it invokes the All that is otherwise inexpressible. The mani is the “adamantine diamond” of the Void—the primordial, pure, and indestructible essence of existence beyond all matter or even antimatter, all phenomena, all change, and all becoming. Padme—in the lotus—is the world of phenomena, samsara,
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The langur is sacred to all Hindus as the manifestation of the monkey god Hanuman,
Einstein’s remark that the only real time is that of the observer, who carries with him his own time and space.
“Expect nothing.” Walking along, I remind myself of that advice; I must go lightly on my way, with no thought of attainment.
“Do not be heavy,” Soen Roshi says. “Be light, light, light—full of light!”
There is also a custom called “air burial,” in which the body of the deceased is set out on a wild crag such as this one, to be rended and devoured by the wild beasts; when only the bones are left, these are broken and ground down to powder, then mixed into lumps of dough, to be set out again for passing birds. Thus all is returned into the elements, death into life.
The same fear—of loss of control, of “insanity,” far worse than the fear of death—can occur with the hallucinogenic drugs: familiar things, losing the form assigned to them, begin to spin, and the center does not hold, because we search for it outside instead of in.
If the snow leopard should manifest itself, then I am ready to see the snow leopard. If not, then somehow (and I don’t understand this instinct, even now) I am not ready to perceive it, in the same way that I am not ready to resolve my koan; and in the not-seeing, I am content.
