|
May
Guide 2003
108 Bows Ceremony
The 108 Bows ceremony will be led by Rev. S’raddha on May
4, where we chant
the Veneration of the 88 Buddhas and do prostrations, commemorating
the 88
known Buddhas of the past aeons. The ceremony is from 10:00 to
10:30, a good
prelude to Sunday service.
Travels of our monks
Rev. Chitta and Ven. Karuna in Mongolia,
as Ven. Shanti and Rev. Kusala return home
At the time of printing (April 10), Ven. Karuna and Rev. Chitta
were
planning to go to Mongolia from May 14 - June 6 for a well deserved
vacation. Ven. Shanti will return home May 6 from Sri Lanka where
he was
tending his temple at Iriyawetiya. Rev. Kusala is now co-chairing
a week
long conference in Indiana Christian/Buddhist Benedictine Experience
with
Sr. Mary Margaret Funk, from April 28 - May 4. Rev. Vajra and
Rev. Jñana
just returned from a 3 week vacation in Hawaii.
Rev. Vajra to lead an all-day Seminar on May 10.
On Saturday, May 10, Rev. Vajra will lead an all day seminar from
9:30 to 5
on the topic of An Overview of the History of Japanese Buddhism.
The fee is
by donation. You will go to a Thai restaurant for lunch. If you
are
interested in attending, it is essential that you email Rev. Vajra
at
MadMonk88@AOL.com or call him at 323 461-5042. The fee is by donation
(suggested $25) plus the meal.
In this newsletter we are happy to bring talks from 3 non-IBMC
people on
Buddhist topics.
We thank Rev. Maitri
Dasi for the talk by Robert Thurman, Rev. Kusala for the talks
by Michael Moore and Lama Yeshe Rimpoche.
A Buddhist Perspective on Forgiveness by Lama Yeshe Losal Rimpoche,
reprinted from Urban Dharma Newsletter, March 11, 2003. Go to
Rev. Kusala’s
web site and sign up to have Urban Dharma Newsletter emailed to
you every week.
Lama Yeshe Losal is the Abbot and Retreat Master of Samye Ling,
Director of
the Holy Island Project and Chairman of Rokpa Trust. Since completing
12
years of retreat, much of it in solitude, Lama Yeshe has been
the guiding
force behind the development of Samye Ling, which was the first
and is the
largest Tibetan Buddhist centre in Europe. He is responsible for
the
spiritual development of over 40 resident monks and nuns as well
as the lay
community. Lama Yeshe is also the only person in the Western World
to have
twice completed the 49 day "Dark" or Bardo retreat.
It is his profound
experience as a meditator, together with his direct, good humoured
way of
communicating, that make him in demand as a teacher around the
world. As
Director of the Holy Island Project, his vision of the island
as a focus for
world peace through inner peace is the guiding principle of its
development.
A personal account of Lama Yeshe's presentation
Lama Yeshe is a Buddhist monk who left Chinese-occupied Tibet
in 1959 for
exile in the West,where he is a leading teacher of Tibetan meditation
techniques.Currently involved in the Polio Project, he is the
director of
Samye Ling, a Buddhist retreat centre situated in northern Scotland
not far
from Findhorn, where he is a frequent visitor.
‘Forgiveness? For me,this forgiveness is a very big subject!’
began Lama
Yeshe, his viewpoint informed by his dedicated practice of Tibetan
Buddhism.
From where does the need for forgiveness originate? Who creates
the
conditions in the first place that necessitate acts of forgiveness?
For the
Buddhist the root of the problem lies deep in our own minds; it
stems from
‘not seeing properly’. People from all different ages
and backgrounds are
not learning to let go of the various life-experiences that have
caused them
suffering, instead allowing their attachment to pain to take them
over. Lama
Yeshe’s message is clear: we cannot begin to help others
until we have
helped ourselves. ’Don’t try to help the weak if you
are not yet strong; it
will only bring you down’.We talk of forgiveness from a place
of ignorance -
there can be no peace established on the planet whilst there is
fighting in
our hearts and homes. ’Start within yourself. If I’m
unable to free myself
from the cause and condition of suffering I’ll never be able
to help others
do the same’.
Every life-form wants happiness and peace. This state of awareness,
which
can invest our life with meaning in the present, can only be achieved
by
cultivating non-attachment. The West tends to interpret this concept
literally in terms of giving up material objects because its cultural
identity is defined by financial investment and property development
- but
this is a typically crude approach. Non-attachment in the context
of
Buddhism is located not so much on the physical plane of existence
but in
the sphere of the mind. Mental clinging is ‘the big glue’
that pulls us in
no matter how well we think we know how to relinquish our attachments.
We
need to commit ourselves,Yeshe emphasised, to the ‘liberation
of the
glue-free mind’, the implication being that in the pursuit
of true freedom
via meditation the need for forgiveness will simply fall away.
Yeshe invited his audience to create the time for proper meditation”
“true meditation aids the process of letting go.” He
pointed out that we in the West use the modern day preoccupation
with time and money to avoid taking space for contemplation, when
this should be our priority,ethod of self-inquiry helps facilitate
forgiveness at a grass-roots level by allowing us the breathing
space to ‘fully and completely’ release the past (which
is anyway ‘gone, over, finished’) as well as preventing
us from projecting into the future.The mind in meditation should
be ‘calm and
settled in the present moment’; it is from this place that
change can be
initiated. The pause from the chaos and business of our daily
lives provides
us with the opportunity to note those habits that hold us back
from full
self-realisation. Through self-discovery and the contingent willingness
to
recognise where we need to change we can motivate ourselves to
modify and
control these weak spots, to strengthen ourselves for the good
of the whole.
When we are no longer expending energy on worry and anxiety we
are freely
available to serve others.’You have to believe in your own
ability to change
and grow’. If you follow the spiritual path you need to have
enough ‘dharma
ego’ to believe that you can achieve self-growth.You need
a certain amount
of pride, otherwise you feel incapable of real change. ’If
you want to
change for the better you have to believe you can do it as no-one
else can
do it for you’. Self-forgiveness is therefore of paramount
importance: how
can we find peace and wisdom if we keep attacking and blaming
ourselves? As
we become wiser, kinder and more forgiving the people around us
will begin
to take note and will be inspired to initiate their own inner
change.Global
healing happens incrementally in this undramatic but powerful
way, in our
immediate environment.
A direct relationship we can all work on is the primary one that
we have
with our parents. ‘So many people blame their parents’.
If we were ‘really
wise’ we would acknowledge that ‘deep-down of course
nobody wants to cause
their children suffering’. According to the Buddhist teachings
outlined by
Lama Yeshe, it is the outworking of ‘bad lineage’: our
parents did not have
positive role-models either, so how can we hold them responsible
for not
being equipped to give us what we in turn needed? ’We must
see their need
for compassion, not blame’.
We should do everything in our power to find ways and means toorgive
as this
will lead to freedom and release. We can never achieve this without
the
purification of meditation.Yeshe recommends that we commit to
meditating
both morning and evening to gradually increase our innate capacity
for
greater happiness and inner stability.A common resistance he encounters
to
this approach - particularly prevalent in alternative/new age
communities
such as this one - arises from the thought-form ‘If I’m
not happy, I don’t
want to make myself happy as that would be to deny my own truth’.But
Yeshe
remains adamant that we must use every method available to us
to engender a
sense of peace with the self. To locate our well-being in our
friendships/relationship creates false security; in the eventuality
of
death, when we cannot take our loved ones with us, ’only
our state of mind
remains’ making it of paramount importance to start building
a peaceful
relationship with the self right now.
Lama Yeshe himself spent 12 years in silent retreat. He brings
what he has
learnt through meditation into his everyday life. He wakes daily
giving
thanks for all he has (‘What a lucky Lama Yeshe I am!’).
Time spent in
silence, he reminds us, results in ‘true speech’ effortlessly:
’I recommend
that we all become very very wise before we say anything to anybody.
Think
very carefully before you speak’. Such mindfulness, he suggests,
will
contribute to a state where forgiveness is no longer a key issue
because it
promotes harmlessness. Wise communication utilises language to
befriend
people, ’to bring people together, to help people get along
with one
another.’
Moving from the personal to the political, when asked about his
attitude
towards the Chinese oppression of Tibet, Lama Yeshe concluded
that he has
never condoned the use of violent means.’ What is freedom?
The Chinese could
never take away my freedom...I only want to approach them with
compassion,
to teach them how to love. We will succeed in this.
semester is the idea of relativity.
I have to convince them that nothing is absolutely still and nothing
is
absolutely in motion. Everything must be compared with something
else. You
are still in your seats relative to me, but relative to someone
on the moon,
you are moving. The earth revolves around its axis. It also travels
around
the sun. The sun is part of the Milky Way Galaxy and moves within
it. The
whole galaxy is moving, too. There are about a hundred billion
stars in our
galaxy and we are aware of about a hundred billion galaxies, all
in motion.
Einstein said that the faster we move the slower time becomes.
The cosmic
speed limit is about 186,000 miles per second-the speed of light.
He said
that the closer we move to the speed of light, the slower times
becomes. If
we reach the speed of light, time becomes zero. Isn't this hard
to perceive?
Einstein was right. The Apollo astronauts were traveling faster
than we are
on the earth when they traveled to the moon. When they came back,
their
atomic clocks (which were synchronized with Houston) were about
20 minutes,
I believe, slower than the clocks in Houston. They were 20 minutes
younger
than the people on earth!!
Nothing is absolute. We are not absolute creatures. We all have
the
possibility of being good and bad. We are all capable of doing
wonderful
things or ending up in jail.
I learned something about Buddhism a few years ago. I learned
that there is
no such thing as forgiveness in Buddhism. I was shocked to hear
that from a
minister until he explained his position further. He said that
to forgive
means that the person doing the forgiving has to come from a higher
plane
than the one being forgiven. In Buddhism, we are all equal. This
is one of
the greatest contributions of Buddhism--we are all equal. In other
words, we
all have the same capacity to do good things or bad things. The
person
forgiving is no better or worse potentially than the person being
forgiven.
Instead of forgiveness, we Buddhists offer our compassion and
support for
each other. We realize (hopefully) that under the same conditions,
we may
very well have behaved the same way as the one that has done wrong.
Perceptions and points of view must be examined from all angles
to get a
clear understanding of the situation. This refers to the first
statement of
the Eightfold Noble Path-right view. If we can do that, we can
understand
the condition of life. I know I'll never be fully aware of my
shortcomings,
but I hope I'll always strive toward that awareness. In the meantime,
I have
a greater understanding of the phrase "perception is reality."
meditation” “true meditation aids the process of letting
go.” He pointed out
that we in the West use the modern day preoccupation with time
and money to
avoid taking space for contemplation, when this should be our
priority,ethod
of self-inquiry helps facilitate forgiveness at a grass-roots
level by
allowing us the breathing space to ‘fully and completely’
release the past
(which is anyway ‘gone, over, finished’) as well as
preventing us from
projecting into the future.The mind in meditation should be ‘calm
and
settled in the present moment’; it is from this place that
change can be
initiated. The pause from the chaos and business of our daily
lives provides
us with the opportunity to note those habits that hold us back
from full
self-realisation. Through self-discovery and the contingent willingness
to
recognise where we need to change we can motivate ourselves to
modify and
control these weak spots, to strengthen ourselves for the good
of the whole.
When we are no longer expending energy on worry and anxiety we
are freely
available to serve others.’You have to believe in your own
ability to change
and grow’. If you follow the spiritual path you need to have
enough ‘dharma
ego’ to believe that you can achieve self-growth.You need
a certain amount
of pride, otherwise you feel incapable of real change. ’If
you want to
change for the better you have to believe you can do it as no-one
else can
do it for you’. Self-forgiveness is therefore of paramount
importance: how
can we find peace and wisdom if we keep attacking and blaming
ourselves? As
we become wiser, kinder and more forgiving the people around us
will begin
to take note and will be inspired to initiate their own inner
change.Global
healing happens incrementally in this undramatic but powerful
way, in our
immediate environment.
A direct relationship we can all work on is the primary one that
we have
with our parents. ‘So many people blame their parents’.
If we were ‘really
wise’ we would acknowledge that ‘deep-down of course
nobody wants to cause
their children suffering’. According to the Buddhist teachings
outlined by
Lama Yeshe, it is the outworking of ‘bad lineage’: our
parents did not have
positive role-models either, so how can we hold them responsible
for not
being equipped to give us what we in turn needed? ’We must
see their need
for compassion, not blame’.
We should do everything in our power to find ways and means toorgive
as this
will lead to freedom and release. We can never achieve this without
the
purification of meditation.Yeshe recommends that we commit to
meditating
both morning and evening to gradually increase our innate capacity
for
greater happiness and inner stability.A common resistance he encounters
to
this approach - particularly prevalent in alternative/new age
communities
such as this one - arises from the thought-form ‘If I’m
not happy, I don’t
want to make myself happy as that would be to deny my own truth’.But
Yeshe
remains adamant that we must use every method available to us
to engender a
sense of peace with the self. To locate our well-being in our
friendships/relationship creates false security; in the eventuality
of
death, when we cannot take our loved ones with us, ’only
our state of mind
remains’ making it of paramount importance to start building
a peaceful
relationship with the self right now.
Lama Yeshe himself spent 12 years in silent retreat. He brings
what he has
learnt through meditation into his everyday life. He wakes daily
giving
thanks for all he has (‘What a lucky Lama Yeshe I am!’).
Time spent in
silence, he reminds us, results in ‘true speech’ effortlessly:
’I recommend
that we all become very very wise before we say anything to anybody.
Think
very carefully before you speak’. Such mindfulness, he suggests,
will
contribute to a state where forgiveness is no longer a key issue
because it
promotes harmlessness. Wise communication utilises language to
befriend
people, ’to bring people together, to help people get along
with one
another.’
Moving from the personal to the political, when asked about his
attitude
towards the Chinese oppression of Tibet, Lama Yeshe concluded
that he has
never condoned the use of violent means.’ What is freedom?
The Chinese could
never take away my freedom...I only want to approach them with
compassion,
to teach them how to love. We will succeed in this.
semester is the idea of relativity.
I have to convince them that nothing is absolutely still and nothing
is
absolutely in motion. Everything must be compared with something
else. You
are still in your seats relative to me, but relative to someone
on the moon,
you are moving. The earth revolves around its axis. It also travels
around
the sun. The sun is part of the Milky Way Galaxy and moves within
it. The
whole galaxy is moving, too. There are about a hundred billion
stars in our
galaxy and we are aware of about a hundred billion galaxies, all
in motion.
Einstein said that the faster we move the slower time becomes.
The cosmic
speed limit is about 186,000 miles per second-the speed of light.
He said
that the closer we move to the speed of light, the slower times
becomes. If
we reach the speed of light, time becomes zero. Isn't this hard
to perceive?
Einstein was right. The Apollo astronauts were traveling faster
than we are
on the earth when they traveled to the moon. When they came back,
their
atomic clocks (which were synchronized with Houston) were about
20 minutes,
I believe, slower than the clocks in Houston. They were 20 minutes
younger
than the people on earth!!
Nothing is absolute. We are not absolute creatures. We all have
the
possibility of being good and bad. We are all capable of doing
wonderful
things or ending up in jail.
I learned something about Buddhism a few years ago. I learned
that there is
no such thing as forgiveness in Buddhism. I was shocked to hear
that from a
minister until he explained his position further. He said that
to forgive
means that the person doing the forgiving has to come from a higher
plane
than the one being forgiven. In Buddhism, we are all equal. This
is one of
the greatest contributions of Buddhism-we are all equal. In other
words, we
all have the same capacity to do good things or bad things. The
person
forgiving is no better or worse potentially than the person being
forgiven.
Instead of forgiveness, we Buddhists offer our compassion and
support for
each other. We realize (hopefully) that under the same conditions,
we may
very well have behaved the same way as the one that has done wrong.
Perceptions and points of view must be examined from all angles
to get a
clear understanding of the situation. This refers to the first
statement of
the Eightfold Noble Path-right view. If we can do that, we can
understand
the condition of life. I know I'll never be fully aware of my
shortcomings,
but I hope I'll always strive toward that awareness. In the meantime,
I have
a greater understanding of the phrase "perception is reality."
Cool Heroism
By Robert Thurman
To deal with feelings of anger and fear and frustration, we can
start by
finding relationality. As the Lakota Indians say, Mita-kuye oyasin:
"All
beings are my relatives." When I'm particularly mad at George
Bush and
company for war mongering, I remember that in another lifetime
he was my
mother, and that even the most evil people were at some point
my errant
siblings. That immediately takes a certain edge off the anger.
The second step is to realize that we too have the potential to
be demonic.
Given certain conditions and confusions and insecurities and fears,
any of
us could do bad things. It might start with an imperceptible change;
we
wouldn't think we were being bad - just a little naughty here
and there.
Pretty soon we would take it too far and be really bad. People
can become
deluded like that.
Third, we develop real sympathy for the people who are doing harm,
because
if they bomb people, if they pollute, if they poison the food
chain, they
will have the bad karma of having banned so many people.
By taking these three steps - finding one's relation to all beings,
acknowledging the evil potential in one-self, feeling sympathy
for the evil
person - one gets the strength and energy to be an activist and
to try, by
voting and organizing, to stop harm caused by others. This is
cool heroism:
developing a tolerant, deliberate, and wise energy.
People are afraid that if they let go of their anger and righteousness
and
wrath, and look at their own feelings - and even see the good
in a bad
person - they're going to lose the energy they need to do something
about
the problem. But actually you get more strength and energy by
operating from
a place of love and concern. You can be just as tough, but more
effectively
tough. It's like a martial art.
My wife once met Morihei Ueshiba, the man who founded aikido.
After he did a
demonstration where he left about seventeen big bruisers on the
ground, she
asked what his secret was for disarming his attackers without
harming them.
He giggled and told her, "A long time ago, I realized that
every person was
just my sister, my brother, my cousin. All those guys lying
on the floor
are my brothers, you are my little sister! Everybody is just one
family."
That's cool heroism.
To conquer hate, you have to find unshakeable tolerance. The seventh-century
Buddhist saint Shantideva was the great master of that.
The sixth chapter
of his Guide to Bodhisattva's Way of life (Bodhicharyavatara)
is considered
to be a special magical precept from Manjushri, the Bodhisattva
of Wisdom,
for replacing anger with tolerance. The essence is: Why get upset
if you can
do something about something? And if you can't do something about
it, then
why get upset? Anger, the text says, comes from feeling
uncomfortable
because something you don't want to happen is happening, or something
you
want to happen is not happening. Then you lose your good cheer
- your
joyousness in just being - and start operating from a place of
misery and
anger.
When you understand interconnectedness, it makes you more afraid
of hating
than of dying. But people will not be more afraid of hating than
dying as
long as they hold the worldview that death is the final conclusion
of the
self, of all chains of causation and consequence that they could
be
connected to. That's the problem for spiritual nihilists, or materialists.
You don't have to believe in future lives to be a Buddhist since
Buddhism
isn't merely a belief system. But in the mind-reform practice,
if you're
going to deal with your own explosive and obsessive impulses at
a really
deep level, then the sense of being locked into a potentially
endless
continuity of consequence - what I call "infinite consequentiality"
- gives
you the power in the moment to find a deeper resource to use against
those
seemingly uncontrollable impulses. If you take the view that you're
an
infinite prisoner of those forces - that if you don't deal with
them now,
you'll have to in future lifetimes - then you will not make the
excuse "I
can't do it." You're going to have to do it. It's what
Milarepa said: He
was grateful he had the awareness of hell - of infinite negativity.
He had
killed many people with black magic in his youth, before he turned
to the
dharma, but understanding the dangers of hell gave him the power
to become a
Buddha and escape these consequences.
We all have the potential to be killers; realizing that is the
key. Years
ago some academics and I did a study of religious violence. We
found that
the people who are the most violent are those who are incapable
of embracing
their own potential for evil. By projecting their shadow, their
evil, onto
the other, they justify their violence. They think they're emphasizing
their
purity, or restoring their purity, by destroying someone else.
If there were a really bad person who was about to launch nuclear
weapons or
engage in germ warfare, the most compassionate thing would be
to have
somebody take him out without hurting innocent people. In the
Theravada
ethic, you say, "We don't know the real story here. I don't
know whose karma
is what, so I can't get involved." But in the bodhisattva
ethic, if you see
someone about to kill a bunch of people, you have to stop him
or you're an
accomplice. If you don't stop him, not only are you letting others
lose
their lives, but you're also harming the killer because he's going
to have
very bad karmic effects. You try to stop him without killing,
but if you
have to kill, you do. You get bad karma, too, but because
you are acting
out of compassion, not hatred, the good karma will outweigh the
bad.
Surgical violence - killing the one to save the many - is part
of the
bodhisattva ethic. The problem with American-style warfare since
World War
ll is that we've relied on carpet bombing - civilian bombing.
Civilian
bombing is a kind of terrorism in itself, and there's nothing
surgical about
it. It's just blanket annihilative violence. And that produces
this terrible
blowback of terrorism and people filled with revenge and hatred.
It incites
more violence, whereas surgical violence had better be surgical
- aiming to
heal.
So our outer work is to resist and protest and try to maintain
clarity and
speak out forcefully against the kind of violence that kills so
many
innocent people. Our speaking out forcefully will be more effective
because
we won't really be angry, we'll be fierce. We'll realize that
we can get
greater energy out of love and joy than out of hatred.Hatred is
so off
balance. You can blow your adrenals in one minute, then you're
shaky and
weak. But if you're joyful, you'll get an endless source of energy.
-----------------------------------------
Robert A. F. Thurman,
PhD., named as one of Time Magazine's 25 Most
Influential People of 1997, has been a college professor and writer
for 30
years, and holds the first endowed chair in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist
Studies in
America (Jey Tsong Khapa Chair, Columbia University). He is the
co-founder
and president of the non-profit organization, Tibet House New
York. He was
the first Western Tibetan monk, a student for over 35 years and
a friend of
His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He is the author of several books,
including
Inner Revolution and Essential Tibetan Buddhism and is acknowledged
as a key
figure in American Buddhism. Thurman lives in New York City with
his wife,
Nena, who is managing director of Tibet House New York. Thurman
also is the
father of five children including actress Uma Thurman. His special
interest
is the exploration of the Indo-Tibetan philosophical and psychological
traditions, with a view to their relevance to parallel currents
of
contemporary thought and science.
* *
* *
The Prophets Oxford
in association with The Club of Budapest is bringing us
an unprecedented gathering of today’s brilliant and inspired
explorers of
spiritual and scientific avenues to lend guidance for a deep-seated
transformation of our planet and ourselves. The profound and practical
spirituality of Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan and Robert Thurman shows
us how to
image a future in an enlightened way. Serge Kahili King brings
us indigenous
solutions for creating planetary harmony, while Michio Kaku and
Peter
Russell remove the conflict between science and the mystical and
invite us
into a healing worldview. Ross Heaven takes the ancient shamanic
into
everyday solutions, as David Hawkins and Tony Parsons shows us
the simple
and profound present. James Redfield and Salle Merrill Redfield
tell us of
an exciting newimageof human life, and positive vision of how
we will save
this planet, its creatures, and its beauty. Paul Devereux and
Karen Ralls
bring us the ancient Celtic places and knowledge. Deva Premal
and Miten
musically raises amd inspires us to connect our heart .Bringing
this
altogether is Ervin Laszlo who calls us to be “co-creative
participants in
making the transition t o a ne w culture and consciousness.”
In this newsletter we are happy to bring talks from 3 non-IBMC
people on
Buddhist topics. We thank Rev. Maitri Dasi for the talk by Robert
Thurman,
Rev. Kusala for the talks by Michael Moore and Lama Yeshe Rimpoche.
I'd Like to Thank the Vatican..
By Michael Moore, March 27, 2003, reprinted from the Los Angeles
Times
A word of advice to future Oscar winners: Don't begin Oscar day
by going to
church.
That is where I found myself this past Sunday morning, at the
Church of the
Good Shepherd on Santa Monica Boulevard, at Mass with my sister
and my dad.
My problem with the Catholic Mass is that sometimes I find my
mind wandering
after I hear something the priest says, and I start thinking all
these crazy
thoughts like how it is wrong to kill people and that you are
not allowed to
use violence upon another human being unless it is in true self-defense.
The pope even came right out and said it: This war in Iraq is
not a just war
and, thus, it is a sin.
Those thoughts were with me the rest of the day, from the moment
I left the
church and passed by the homeless begging for change (one in six
American
children living in poverty is another form of violence), to the
streets
around the Kodak Theater where antiwar protesters were being arrested
as I
drove by in my studio-sponsored limo.
I had not planned on winning an Academy Award for Bowling for
Columbine (no
documentary that was a big box-office success had won since Woodstock),
and
so I had no speech prepared. I'm not much of a speech-preparer
anyway, and
besides, I had already received awards in the days leading up
to the Oscars
and used the same acceptance remarks. I spoke of the need for
nonfiction
films when we live in such fictitious times. We have a fictitious
president
who was elected with fictitious election results. (If you still
believe that
3,000 elderly Jewish Americans -- many of them Holocaust survivors
-- voted
for Pat Buchanan in West Palm Beach in 2000, then you are a true
devotee to
the beauty of fiction!) He is now conducting a war for a fictitious
reason
(the claim that Saddam Hussein has stockpiles of weapons of mass
destruction
when in fact we are there to get the world's second-largest supply
of oil).
Whether it is a tax cut that is passed off as a gift to the middle
class or
a desire to drill holes in the wilds of Alaska, we are continually
bombarded
with one fictitious story after another from the Bush White House.
And that
is why it is important that filmmakers make nonfiction, so that
all the
little lies can be exposed and the public informed. An uninformed
public in
a democracy is a sure-fire way to end up with little or no democracy
at all.
That is what I have been saying for some time. Millions of Americans
seem to
agree. My book Stupid White Men still sits at No. 1 on the bestseller
list
(it's been on that list now for 53 weeks and is the largest-selling
nonfiction book of the year). Bowling for Columbine has broken
all
box-office records for a documentary. My Web site is now getting
up to 20
million hits a day (more than the White House's site). My opinions
about the
state of the nation are neither unknown nor on the fringe, but
rather they
exist with mainstream majority opinion. The majority of Americans,
according
to polls, want stronger environmental laws, support Roe vs. Wade
and did not
want to go into this war without the backing of the United Nations
and all
of our allies.
That is where the country is at. It's liberal, it's for peace
and it is only
tacitly in support of its leader because that is what you are
supposed to do
when you are at war and you want your kids to come back from Iraq
alive.
In the commercial break before the best documentary Oscar was
to be
announced, I suddenly thought that maybe this community of film
people was
also part of that American majority and just might have voted
for my film,
which, in part, takes on the Bush administration for manipulating
the public
with fear so it can conduct its acts of aggression against the
Third World.I
leaned over to my fellow nominees and told them that, should I
win, I was
going to say something about President Bush and the war and would
they like
to join me up on the stage? I told them that I felt like I'd already
had my
moment with the success of the film and that I would love for
them to share
the stage with me so they could have their moment too. (They had
all made
exceptional films and I wanted the public to see these filmmakers
and
hopefully go see their films.)
They all agreed.
Moments later, Diane Lane opened the envelope and announced the
winner:
Bowling for Columbine. The entire main floor rose to its feet
for a standing
ovation. I was immeasurably moved and humbled as I motioned for
the other
nominees to join my wife (the film's producer) and me up on the
stage.
I then said what I had been saying all week at those other awards
ceremonies. I guess a few other people had heard me say those
things too
because before I had finished my first sentence about the fictitious
president, a couple of men (some reported it was "stagehands"
just to the
left of me) near a microphone started some loud yelling. Then
a group in the
upper balcony joined in. What was so confusing to me, as I continued
my
remarks, was that I could hear this noise but looking out on the
main floor,
I didn't see a single person booing. But then the majority in
the balcony
--who were in support of my remarks -- started booing the booers.
It all turned into one humungous cacophony of yells and cheers
and jeers.
And all I'm thinking is, "Hey, I put on a tux for this?"
I tried to get out my last line ("Any time you've got both
the pope and the
Dixie Chicks against you, you're not long for the White House")
and the
orchestra struck up its tune to end the melee. A few orchestra
members came
up to me later and apologized, saying they had wanted to hear
what I had to
say. I had gone 55 seconds, 10 more than allowed.
Was it appropriate? To me, the inappropriate thing would have
been to say
nothing at all or to thank my agent, my lawyer and the designer
who dressed
me -- Sears Roebuck. I made a movie about the American desire
to use
violence both at home and around the world. My remarks were in
keeping with
exactly what my film was about. If I had a movie about birds or
insects, I
would have talked about birds or insects. I made a movie about
guns and
Americans' tradition of using them against the world and each
other.
And, as I walked up to the stage, I was still thinking about the
lessons
that morning at Mass. About how silence, when you observe wrongs
being
committed, is the same as committing those wrongs yourself. And
so I
followed my conscience and my heart.
On the way back home to Flint, Mich., the day after the Oscars,
two flight
attendants told me how they had gotten stuck overnight in Flint
with no
flight -- and wound up earning only $30 for the day because they
are paid by
the hour.
They said they were telling me this in the hope that I would tell
others.Because they, and the millions like them, have no voice.
They don't
get to be commentators on cable news like the bevy of retired
generals we've
been watching all week. (Can we please demand that the U.S. military
remove
its troops from BC/CBS/NBC/CNN/MSNBC/Fox?) They don't get to make
movies or talk to a billion people on Oscar night. They are the
American majority who
are being asked to send their sons and daughters over to Iraq
to possibly
die so Bush's buddies can have the oil.
Who will speak for them if I don't? That's what I do, or try to
do, every
day of my life, and March 23, 2003 -- though it was one of the
greatest days
of my life and an honor I will long cherish -- was no different.
May Events
Sunday Talks
5/4 We Are All Prisoners
11am Ven. Dr. Karuna Dharma
5/11 Zen Transmission: HowIt Occurs
11am Rev. Vajra Karuna
5/18 A Buddhist/Christian Experience
11am Rev. Kusala Ratna Karuna
5/25 Stories from the Pali Canon
11am Ven. Havanpola Shanti
Classes at IBMC
Wed Engaged Buddhism
7:00 Rev. Kusala Ratna Karuna
Thu Elementary Sanskrit
6:30 Dr. Warnisuriya, Library
Fri Meditation
7:30 Rev. Kusala Ratna Karuna
Special Events
5/4 108 Bows Ceremony
10am led by Rev. S’raddha
5/10 Seminar on an Overview of the History of Japanese Buddhism
9:30- Rev. Vajra Karuna
4:30
Meditation times:
Mondays: 7-8 pm,Tibetan Meditation, led by Rev. Kelsang Chitta
Wednesdays: 7-9 pm, led by Rev. Kusala
Fridays: 7:30-9 pm, led by Rev. Kusala
Tuesday & Thursday mornings
6:00-7:00 led by Rev. Hanasi
IBMC web page is found at: IBMC.info
Ven.Karuna’s email: Karunadh@earthlink.net
Ven.Karuna’s web page: www.karunadharma.org
Ven.Shanti’s email: Hshanti1@yahoo.com
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.edu
Rev. Kelsang Chitta’s email: Kchitta@yahoo.com
Rev.Maitridasi’s email: Mira@MiramandMango.com
Rev. Sunya’s email: Heartlandzen@Yahoo.com
Rev. Ksanti and Rev.Sraddha’s email:Victortom@aol.com
Rev. Hanasi’s email: Abhayakaruna@dslextreme.com
CBS web page: Kusala.org/ratanasara/college.html
CBS emaill: Hshanti1@yahoo.com
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