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July Guide
2002
Lotus Festival at Echo Park
Saturday, July
13
Every year the City of Los Angeles celebrates its Asian-Pacific
Islander
heritage by holding the Lotus Festival at Echo Park Lake. And
every year
IBMC participates by rowing in the Dragon Boat Races. We invite
you to
participate with us in this fun event by either being an oarsperson
or
coming along as a supporter of our crew.
We begin the festival on Saturday, July 13, with Ven. Shanti
and our monks
who “Open the Dragon Eyes” in order to assure the
safety of the races. Dr.
Thien-An was asked to perform the ceremony 25 years ago, when
the first
dragon boat races began, and we have carried on the tradition
every year
since then.
The festival features food booths, craft tables, such as spinning
candy
dragons, and ethnic arts tables where you can buy Asian crafts.
They also
have a flower island and birds of all kinds. This is a great
festival and we
urge you all to join us on Saturday. We will leave the center
at 10 am. If
you want to join us at the park, you should be there by 10:30,
as we perform
the ceremony at 11 am. We will row in the first race following
the ceremony.
We are looking for volunteers to come support our rowing team
of four men
and four women. Please call Doug at our office (213 384-0850)
in case you
are interested. We have newly designed tshirts to wear to mark
the day.
Monks Spring Into Action
IBMC Senior Monastics were involved in a number of activities
outside of the
Temple this spring. What follows is an incomplete description
(gleaned from
various conversa-tions and calendars.)
If this is May, it must be Vesak… On May 19, after the
conclusion of the
annual Vaishaka (Vesak) Retreat, Ven. Karuna took her students
to the Vesak
Celebration at Chua Dieu Quang in Santa Ana where they participated
in the
ceremonies and enjoyed a wonderful meal. On May 27, Ven.
Karuna led her
students in the chanting of the Heart Sutra at the Buddhist
Sangha Council’s
joint Vesak Celebration, which took place at the Rosemead Buddhist
Monastery.
Ven. Shanti joined
the Theravadan Bhikkus in leading the Pali
Chanting. Ven Shanti, together with Ven. Sumana and Ven.
Dhammasara,
participated in many Vesak services at various temples in the
area.
May also brought the second anniversary of the death of Ven.
Dr. Havanpola
Ratanasara. On May 27th, Ven. Shanti, assisted by Ven.
Sumana and Ven.
Dhammasara, led the memorial service for our beloved “Bhante.”
Many monks,
including our Ven. Karuna and Rev. Kusala, and lay people attended.
We were
especially pleased to have several of Bhante Ratanasara’s
family members and
friends from the inter-religious community present.
A number of inter-religious events were also on the calendar.
On May 4th,
Ven Karuna participated in a panel discussion,”From Birth
to Death” at
Temple B’nai Hayim. Also on the panel were a Protestant
Minister, a Catholic
priest and Rabbi Sally Olins, the Temple’s Chief Rabbi.
Ven Karuna also attended two Buddhist-Catholic Dialogue meetings
and has
been asked to serve on the local planning committee for the
International
Conference on Buddhist- Christian Studies.
Rev. Kusala was a speaker at the UCLA Hillel’s “Day
of Jewish Learning” on
May 19th. The theme of the day was “Confronting Challenges
to Faith.” He
also served as a panelist for The Ethics Project on KCET T.V.
and continues
his inter-religious dialogue in Orange County.
A little closer to home, Rev Vajra spoke on Zen Buddhist Lineage
at ZCLA,
just a few blocks away. We hope to hear that talk soon.
One Day Retreat
On July 20 Rev. Vajra will lead a one day Zen retreat, from
9:30 to 4:30 in
the Zendo. The day will consist of three kinds of meditation:
zazen
(sitting), kinhin (walking) amd samu(work), all done in quiet
Zen style. The
fee is $25 for the day and includes a delicious hot, vegetarian
lunch. Dress
comfortably in clothes that you can work in.We do have some
work
scholarships available.
eMail Rev. Vajra at MadMonk88@aol.com
if you are planning to attend.
Ven. Karuna in Asia
Ven. Karuna and upasika Sac’sunyata are in Taiwan from
July 4 to July 22,
attending the Sakyadhita conference, International Associ-ation
of Buddhist
women, that Ven. Karuna helped to establish in India in 1987.
From India
they will travel to Mongolia, visiting Lama Nergui who was a
college student
of Ven. Karuna’s. They will return to Los Angeles on August
8
No Soul/self and the West
Rev. Vajra Karuna (Thich Tam-Thi)
Of all the teachings in Buddhism the most difficult to intellectu-ally
understand and emotionally accept is the idea of no soul or
no self. Not
only have non-Buddhists struggled to under stand it; but Buddhists
themselves have been arguing for centuries as to the exact meaning
of this
concept. In general, Buddhists have taken one of three approaches
to the
idea of no soul/self. Some denied that the Buddha really taught
such a
concept, these were called the Pudgalists or believers in at
least a
semi-permanent or temporarily permanent self. A second group,
which has been
most Buddhists, have denied a permanent self, but then more
or less affirmed
such a self under the guise of something called rebirth consciousness.
A
third, and the smallest, group has taken the position that it
is a
metaphysical mystery that only a Buddha can truly compre-hend.
It is open to
question whether or not this last approach is an intellectual
cop-out or
not.
I believe that one of the main reasons for not understanding
the Buddhist no
soul/self teaching is due to focusing on it too much as a uniquely
Buddhist
teaching. If, instead, we focus on it in a broader Indian perspective
much
of its incompre-hensibility may dissolve.
The Buddhist no soul/self teaching is based on two other related
Buddhist
concepts, namely impermanence and the psycho-physical aggregates
(P.khandhas, S. skandhas). These together say that all conditioned
phenomena
are in a constant state of change or impermanence. This certainly
includes
all of our psycho-physical components which Buddhism analyzes
into five
parts. These are: body, feelings (vedana), perceptions (sañña),
consciousness (manas) and mental or karmic formations (sankhara).
The exact
meaning of the last term has been intensely debated. It would
seem to have a
variety of definitions. A possible modern definition could be
genetic
dispositions.
A major point of Buddhism is that to identify anything permanent
with a
self, or a self with anything permanent, only results in a false
sense of
security which guarantees us increased frustration, anxiety
and grief. This
is the case, whether that permanence is something presently
living or
something associated with some sort of eternalism after death.
Also,
Buddhism points out that one should not associate anything called
self with
real autonomy. A person cannot successfully command himself
not to become
sick, not to age, and not to die. In all of these the person
is powerless,
subject to forces other than a self. The outcome of this is
that the
personal self which is so tightly held on to, protected, and
foolishly
believed to be in absolute control, is an illusion. To believe
such an
illusion as other than illusory leads to misery (Duhkha). The
lack of
autonomy of soul/selflessness should not be confused with any
kind of
fatalism, because Buddhism has always upheld the freedom and
ability of each
person to liberate him or her practical or conventional self
in this very
life time. Nonetheless, we are denied by inner and other factors
from
absolute freedom.
It should be emphasized that nowhere does Buddhism question
that there is a
practical day-to-day self, manifested by our ordinary activities
and the
existence of others. The Buddhist view of no soul/self, at least
on the
surface, seems to be in sharp contrast to the views of some
of the other
Indian religions such as Jainism. In these non-Buddhist traditions
there is
a strong belief in a metaphysical body-soul dualism. The theory
behind this
is that the soul, which is thought to be eternal, is trapped
in a mortal
body. Through various extreme forms of asceticism it is believed
that one
can become the absolute master of one’s self or soul, and
upon being
released from its imprisoning body at death, the soul can gain
freedom from
all suffering, and dwell in an eternal state of blissful isolated
(kaivalya)
consciousness The asceticism required to gain this eternal condition
may be
carried so far as even to starving one’s self to death
(salle-khana). In
still another contrast, with the Buddhist view, or for that
matter the Jain
view is the Upanishad-Hindu belief in an eternal soul/self or
atman that is
really a part of a universal soul-self or Brahman or God. The
goal in this
Hindu view is to realize Brahman as impersonal beingness, consciousness
and
bliss. Having achieving this realization one is upon death liberated
by
being dissolved into the beingness of Brahman.
From a dogmatic view point, a Buddhist no-(personal) soul/self
is clearly an
opposing theory to the Upanishad or Jain real, but impersonal
soul/self.
However, from a psychological perspective they may amount to
the same thing.
The three deny the personal uniqueness and importance of the
individual;
each sees the illusion of individuality as the real source of
suffering; and
all three agree that once individuality is abolished enlightenment
and
liberation is guaranteed once and for all.
Thus both the Buddhist denial of soul/self and the non-Buddhist
affirmation
of impersonal soul/self can be seen as just two sectarian or
dogmatic
explanations of a single pan-Indian attitude.
One of the things that must have been a determining factor in
this
pan-Indian concept of either an impersonal soul/self or no soul/self
is the
belief in the all prevailing unsatisfactoriness (P. dukkha S.
Duhkha) of
life. How or why such an unsatisfactoriness view of life arose
can not be
entirely known, but certainly the geographical and social conditions
of
India must be partially responsible. Tropical diseases, periodic
famines,
the often disastrous nature of the monsoons, being a prime target
for
foreign invasions, as well as intertribal warfare, and perhaps
most of all,
the extreme oppressiveness of the caste system, all could logically
account
for a pessimistic attitude towards life. Moreover, the caste
system itself
encourages a suppression of a sense of individuality, for the
sake of a
collective or caste identity.
It is almost certain that the Jain eternally isolated soul,
the Buddhist
no-soul/self, and the later Hindu (Vedanta) real self (atman)
as impersonal
God arose, not just from purely philo-sonalization of the caste
system.
Once having arisen, the concept of no-soul/self or impersonal
self severs to
weakening the attach-ment to the both self and the world which,
in turn,
alleviates some of the existential pessimism and anxiety caused
by the
belief in such life unsatisfactoriness.
Also any belief system in which human nature is seen as impure
due to karma,
as is the case in all Indian religions, is going to suggest
that the only
true solution to liberation, salvation or freedom is through
some form of
extremely humbling or denial of that impure nature. This may
take the form
of humbling the desires of one’s own body and will as in
Jain asceticism, of
humbly surrendering or losing oneself into an impersonal God
and/or of the
equally humbling denial of metaphysical selfhood altogether.
We must also note that all Indian traditions have sought liberation
through
a practice that itself encourages depersonalization. Any one
who has entered
deeply into some standard meditation practice soon experiences
a degree of
ego boundary loss. While at first this can be a frightening
experience, it
can lead to a state of considerable euphoria, if not ecstasy.
When in the
deepest meditation states an awareness of self can at least
temporarily
disappear altogether and, of course, along with it the disappearance
of
life’s dissatisfaction.This pleasurable experience contrasted
with the
disquietedness of life outside of this experience must have
given impetus to
speculation about the nature of self as either impersonal or
fundamentally
non-existent. While at the same time reinforcing the view that
individuality
or personal uniqueness was synonymous with the world’s
suffering. In fact,
the ethnographic literature on comparative religion notes that
the often
cataleptic condition experienced in the deepest of trance states
leaves the
subject with a sense of the body being emptied of soul or selfhood.
Actually, just a meditation based simply on sustained attention
to breathing
can encourage a sense of a dissolving of the self or ego. If
one focuses all
one’s attention on that which is least unique about selfhood,
in this case
the process of breathing, one begins to forget one’s own
sense of uniqueness
which is the basis of ego. The factor of isolation from others,
a standard
part of many meditation practices, as well as the monotony involved
in the
kind of forest meditation, well known in India, likewise encourages
a sense
of self-emptyingness. One must remember that our sense of self
depends on a
continuous build-up of memories. Depriving oneself of human
contact,
engaging in a endlessly repetitive regiment of meditating, interspersed
with
eating only a minimally varied diet, along with a minimum amount
of sleep,
allows for few significant new memories to arise to reinforce
one’s sense of
ego. Moreover, it is a well documented fact that sleep deprivation
alone can
weaken the ego’s attempt to hold on to itself and, in turn,
bring about an
altered state of conscious-ness. In Buddhist and Hindu monasteries,
for
example, the enlightenment breakthrough is often purposely urged
on by the
exhaustion brought on by a lack of sleep due to long enforced
meditation
periods.
It should not be surprising that the Jain kaivalya, the Buddhist
nirvana,
the Hindu moksha or turiya and, perhaps even the fana experience
of some
Indian Sufis (Muslims), can all be equally described as a loss
of the sense
of selfness or even individualness; and ignoring sectarian or
dogmatic
arguments, it can just as easily be interpreted as being isolated
from all
others or absorbed into a universal self, as it can of having
no self at
all. One thing that is clearly noticed is that all of these
Indian
depersonalizing traditions are in great contrast to the Western
religious
attitude of the existential and moral importance of each individual
as a
unique creation of God. Although, in Western religion there
is the goal of
trying to escape from our existential self-alienation through
a loving
relationship with God, this is a relationship between two ever
separate,
ever uniquely personal and valuable selves or beings. In other
words, it is
an I and Thou relationship. This Western religious attitude
has had a
profound influence on the rest of Western society. For example,
our modern
concept of democracy, of human rights, of women’s liberation,
Gay
liberation, and to some degree even animal rights, are all a
by-product of
the Judeo-Christian emphasis on the impor-tance of the individual.
This
being the case we must seriously ask the question “does
the Eastern
de-emphasis on individuality help account for the long history
of ‘oriental
indifference’ to social reformation or even the well documented
willingness
for the Buddhist and Hindu establishments to support even the
most despotic
government regimes? In other words, is the Indo-Buddhist concept
of no
soul/self universally valid, or is it simply a socially debilitating
dogma?
Or, on the other hand, “is the Western view of individualism,
Human Rights,
and democracy simply a socio-political ego-trip, as the Buddhist
depersonalization of individuality may imply?”
At the risk of being accused of Western ethnocentricity, I will
point out
that many prominent Asian Buddhists seem to have accepted to
some degree
that Buddhism must come to acknowledge the value of individualism
and the
unique value of selfhood, over no selfhood. This has led to
the obviously
Western influenced movement called Engaged Buddhism. There can
be no doubt
that this new Buddhism has little connection to most forms of
Buddhism prior
to the 20th century, and prior to having to responding to Western
criticism
of a largely historical Buddhist indifference towards social
justice. The
very fact that the earliest version of a sort of engaged Buddhism
was
through the activities of western converts to Buddhism, such
as Henry
Olcott, demonstrates just how non-Indo-Buddhist such socially
conscious
Buddhism has been. Thich Nhat Hanh, the official namer of this
new trend in
Buddhism, and other Asian Buddhists have clearly seen the need
for some
degree of reforming, if not radicalizing Buddhism along Western
lines.
What does all this mean in the future, at least in the West,
for the concept
of no self, which has been so much a part of fundamental Buddhist
thought?
Can Buddhism be Buddhism if the concept is seen as something
more culturally
relative than as an absolute truth. Or can Buddhism still be
Buddhism even
if no self is compromised with Western selfhood?
Buddhism
and God
A talk given by Rev. Kusala at a high school in Los Angeles.
Why is it. . . The Buddha never talked about the One God of
the desert? The
Judeo-Christian God. Does this mean that all Buddhists are atheists
and
don’t believe in God? Did the Buddha believe in God?
These are some of the questions I would like to try and answer
today.
The Buddha was born 500 years before Christ in India. His dad
was a king and
his mom was a queen and his dad wanted him to take over the
family business
(the kingdom) when he got older. The kind of world the Buddha
was born into
was magical. Everything seemed to be alive. The trees, mountains,
lakes, and
sky were living and breathing and various gods were in charge.
If you needed
rain you asked one god, if you needed it to stop raining you
asked another.
The priests of India would do all the religious work for the
people and get
paid for it.
In India at the time of the Buddha, you became a priest if you
were born
into the right family and not because of the school you went
to or the
grades you got. There were other kinds of religious people at
the time of
the Buddha as well. These were men who left their family, friends,
and jobs
to find the answers of life. They would practice meditation
and
renunciation. They were called mendicants, something like a
religious
beggar.
There are many kinds of meditation in which you think about
just one thing,
like looking at a candle or saying a word over and over again.
When your
mind becomes one pointed, you experience the essence of happiness.
Even if
you are sitting in the rain on a cold day, you are still content.
The
essence of happiness is always within you.
Renunciation is when you give up the things that make your life
comfortable.
Sometimes you buy things to make yourself happy and comfortable,
thinking
that happiness is dependent on the stuff you own.
In the Buddha’s time there were a lot of people who gave
up their stuff and
became mendicants. They wanted to be uncomfortable so they could
understand
suffering. And when they could see their own discomfort clearly,
they
understood happiness was not dependent on the things they owned,
but the
life they lived.
Even all the gods in India could not end the suffering of one
human being.
At the age of 29 the Buddha stopped praying to the gods to end
his suffering
and the suffering of others. He left his family and friends,
went to the
edge of the forest, took off all his clothes and jewelry, cut
off his hair
and started to meditate and practice renunciation. He became
a mendicant and
It took him six years of hard work and much suffering but in
the end he was
able to stop his suffering forever (Nirvana) and help other
people stop
their suffering too.
Did the Buddha believe in God, the One God of the desert, the
God of the
Christians, Jews and Muslims?
Well... No... He didn’t... Monotheism was a foreign concept
to the Buddha,
his world was filled with many gods not just one.
At the time of the Buddha, the only people who believed in the
religion of
the One God of the desert were the Jews. Remember it was still
500 years
before Christ came into the world and the Buddha never left
India. The
Buddha walked from village to village or sometimes took an ox
cart, but in
his entire life he never went any further than 200 miles from
his
birthplace.
The Buddha never met a Jew... And because of this, he never
said anything
about the One God of the desert. There is also nothing in the
teachings of
the Buddha that suggest how to find God or worship the gods
of India, even
though the Buddha himself was a theist. The Buddha was more
concerned with
the end of Suffering.
July Events
Sunday Talks
7/7 11 am... Buddhist Meditation x 2
Rev. Kusala Ratna Karuna
7/14 11 am... Zen Gleanings
Rev. Jñana Vajra
7/21 11 am... Nothing Special
Bro. Ksanti Karuna
7/28 11 am... Emperor Asoka and His Buddhist Activities
Ven. Havanpola Shanti
Classes at IBMC
Wednesdays... 7 pm... Meditation and Discussion...
Rev. Kusala
Fridays... 7:30 pm... Meditation... Rev. Kusala
Special Events
Every Sunday... at 10 am... The monastic students take
turns leading the 108 Bows ceremony.
7/13... Lotus Festival at Echo Park
7/14... Kwan Yin Bodhisattva Day... 11 am... Led by Rev.
Jñana Karuna Vajra
7/20... 9:30-4:30... One Day Zen Retreat... led by Rev.
Vajra Karuna
Meditation Times
Tuesday and Thursday... mornings 6:30-7:00 am
Wed evening... 7-9 pm, led by Rev. Kusala
Friday... 7:30-9 pm, led by Rev. Kusala
IBMC web page is found at: IIBMC.info
IBMC’s email:Karunadh@earthlink.net
Ven. Karuna’s email: Karunadh@earthlink.net
Ven.Karuna’s web page: www.karunadharma.org
Ven. Shanti’s email: Hshanti@earthlink.net
Rev. Kusala’s email: Kusala@kusala.org
Rev. Kusala’s web pages: www.kusala.org
www.Urbandharma.org
Rev. Vajra’s email: Madmonk88@aol.com
Rev. Jñana’s email: Lsipe@usc.ed
Rev. Maitridasi’s email:Miratwetil@aol.com
Bro. Sunya’s email: Heartlandzen@Yahoo.com
Bro. Ksanti and Bro.Sraddha’s email: VictorTom@aol.com
Sr. Hanasi’s email: Hasanakaruna@aol.com
Bro. Sangha Mitra’s email: Djhollen@ix.netcom.com
College of Buddhist Studies: Kusala.org/ratanasara/college.html
CBS email:Hshanti@earthlink.org
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