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October 2001 Guide
108 Bows Ceremony
10/7/01,
10 am
Join us in the 108 Bows ceremony the first Sunday of each month.
This Sunday
it will be led by Sr. Hanasi Abhaya Karuna. The ceremony is
in honor of the
88 Buddhas and is a service of contrition and realignment. It
begins at 10
am and is a good prelude to our Sunday service.
Bro. Sunya Karuna, October 13
Seminar
on
Experiential Buddhist Art
Bro. Sunya Karuna will be giving a seminar on Making Buddhist
Art Art and
Ikons on Saturday, October 13, from 9 am to 5 pm. He will demonstrate
and
help students to create art in a number of mediums. The time
spent working
on art projects will be balanced with periods of meditation
to help focus
the student. A vegetarian lunch and all supplies will be provided.
Call Bro.
Sunya at 626 395-9371 to ask questions or to sign up. The final
date to
sign up is October 7.
October Events
Sunday Talks
10/7 On the Road
11am Rev. Kusala Ratna Karuna
10/14 Our Selves and Others
11am Ven. Dr. Karuna Dharma
10/21 The Five Hindrances
11am Sr. Hanasi Abhaya Karuna
10/28 Clockwise Devotion: the Prayer 11am Wheel
Bro. Jñana Karuna Vajra
Classes at IBMC
Mon Certificate in Buddhist Studies
6:30 Dr. Wanisuriya
Tues The Lankavatara Sutra
7:00 Ven. Dr. Karuna Dharma
Wed Basic Tenets of Buddhism
6:30 Dr. Warnisuriya
Wed Applied Buddhism
7:00 Rev. Kusala Ratna Kaeruna
Thurs History of Zen
6:30 Rev. Vajra Karuna
Fri Elementary Sanskrit
6:30 Dr. Warnisuriya
tba Pali Chanting
Rev. Havanpola Shant
i
tba Elemenrary Pali
Dr. Wanisuriya
Special Events
10/7 108 Bows Ceremony, 10 am,
led by Sr. Hanasi Abnhaya Karuna
10/7 Dharma School, Ven. Sakya Bodhi
10/13 Art Seminar, Bro. Sunya Karuna
10/21 Dharma school, Ven. Sakya Bodhi
Meditation times
Mon, Sun evenings from 5:00-7:00 pm, led by Rev. Sakya Bodhi
Wed evening: 7-9 pm, led by Rev. Kusala
Fri evening: 7:30-9 pm, led by Rev. Kusala
IBMC web page is found at: InternationalBuddhistMeditationCtr.org
You can email us at: IBMC@InternationalBuddhistMeditationCtr.og
Rev. Karuna’s email: Karunadh@earthlink.net
Karuna’s web page: www.KarunaDharma.org
Rev. Kusala’s email: Kusala@kusala.org
Rev. Kusala’s web page: www.RevKusala.org
Rev. Shanti’s email:Hshanti@earthlink.net
Rev. Prabuddhi’s: Prabuddhi@yahoo.com
Rev. Vajra’s email: Madmonk88@aol.com
Bro. Sunya’s email: Sunya2@earthlink.net
Bro. Ksanti and Bro.Sraddha’s email: VictorTom@aol.com
Rev. Chitta’s email: kchitta@yahoo.com
It Doesn’t Pay to be Small
by Maitri Dasi Karuna
It doesn't pay to be small if you're not a human, and in some
ways even if
you are. Our language stresses this: It is said of someone important,
"He's
Mr. Big" or if you say someone has a big head, it means
he thinks he's
important.
We are taught early on that taller is better than shorter: We
idolize
fashion models - women around the world think it's better to
be tall and
thin like they are and men think they are sexy and beautiful
because of the
way they look. Tall men command attention and a common comment
historically,
to male film stars, has been "You're much shorter in person."
Shorter than
what? You can't really tell anyone's size on a film screen,
even Madonna
looks tall on the Big Screen. What they mean is that the actor
is shorter
than they should be to be larger than life, which is how we
objectify
them.And movies are still considered better than television,
because movies
are seen on the "big" screen and TV is the "small"
screen, even though more
people watch TV.
Catagorizing
In our society, anything smaller or less important than us is
ours to
subjugate. Children have no rights and look how women have been
treated
through the ages (not to mention the handicapped). It is demonstrated
in all
our important cultural traditions. For example, the concept
of romantic love
as a reason for marriage did not come into the picture until
the early
Middle Ages. Histor-ically, when a father "gave" the
bride away it was based
on the idea that women were property, like goats, and the father
was giving
his daughter to the groom, who in turn took the woman to be
his wife.
Usually with a dowry, so he was paid to take her on top of it.
This wording
is still used today and fathers are still giving their daughters
away, even
if it is only symbolically. Look at slavery, how we objectified
African
Americans in our society and how many people still hold limited,
racist
views.
We still think we own the trees on our property or our pets,
as if you could
own something that is living. Recently the mayor of West Hollywood
put a new
law into effect: that you cannot own a pet, you can only be
its guardian.
Given how women and African Americans have been treated, how
could animals
have any chance at all, since they are easier to subjugate to
our wills?
I lived with an African Grey parrot years ago. I hated the bird.
It was
noisy, it bit, it was untrainable. Because it didn't fit into
my ideas of
what a pet should be I didn't like it. We objectify every-thing
animate and
inanimate around us and put it in a box.. We determine the rules
and it is
very hard for anything, regardless of what it is, to break free
of the
imposed limitations we have put on it.
There was a big controversy, I think it was the late 70's, that
shows this
dramatically: Some boys in two small African villages were given
I.Q. tests.
They were shown generic images, so that language and cultural
differences
wouldn't be a factor. American children had already taken the
test. The
African children all tested way below the average of American
kids the same
age. The results were published and the obvious inferences were
made: that
blacks were naturally less intelligent than whites, after all
you don't need
an education to pass an I.Q. test, it is just measuring your
innate
intelligence. One of the drawings, and the one that caused the
most
controversy, was similar to this one (a line drawing is shown
of two hills,
one bigger than the other, with a goat on top of each) They
were asked which
hill and which goat, were farther away and they couldn't tell.
The NAACP went crazy and the boys were retested. What was later
discovered
was that they didn't have the learned experience, we obviously
have whether
we realize it or not, to recognize a two dimensional representation
of
reality. In real life they had no problem knowing which of two
hills or
goats was closer, but two dimensionally they had no idea what
they were
looking at.
If this is how off we can be with other humans, imagine how
far off the mark
we can be with animals.
Alan Watts did a demonstration of this, which I will now do:
This is a
garbage can. Unless I choose to break it out of that mental
box and sit on
it (garbage can is turned upside down), in which case it is
now a stool or
if I decide to play (speaker bangs on the upside down garbage
can) it, it is
now an instrument. It is as unlimited as we choose to realize.
I was once
invited to a free style percussion event. It was at someone's
house and you
could bring any kind of instrument to drum on. I didn't go because
I didn't
own or have any instruments available to me, or so I thought.
I had plenty
of garbage cans around my house, and pots and pans and probably
a million
other things if I had chosen to see them. But I didn't.
We wonder if we're alone in the universe but we act as if we're
alone on
this planet. Generally what is small, of little importance,
becomes
invisible to us and this is how we look at our natural world.
It's there but
it's not important to us in our daily lives. In the animal world,
small
beings don't stand a chance with us on the planet as we systematically
kill
off species after species. Now, Cod, the most common fish, is
going on the
endangered list because we have overfished it for fish and chips.
The Truth About Evolution
We, in, as Rev Karuna describes as the "Human Species Superiority"
attempt
to judge everything based on ourselves, is based on the assumption
that
humans are, head and shoulders better, smarter, more enlightened
and more
civilized, than any other creature. Because we think that animals
are not as
evolved as we are that is our justification for their abuse.
But it's
obvious that we are more evolved, isn't it? In fact, it may
seem obvious,
but it's not true.
First of all, evolution is not, as I had ignorantly thought
for so long, the
process of becoming more intelligent. It is about adaptation.
That we have a
big brain is not a sign of advanced evolution, quite the contrary.
It was a
choice that humans made to survive. For without it we are very
poorly
adapted indeed to live anywhere on this planet. We can't fly,
our skin alone
won't keep us warm in the cold and we burn in the sun. The reason
human
birth is more difficult than that of any other mammal, is because
we're not
well adapted to stand on two legs, we were evolutionarily meant
to be on
four. And as a result, women's cervical and hip bones have formed
in a way
that is not conducive for a large human baby to pass through
them. We forced
our physical evolution into unnaturalness. As a result, the
risk of injury
to mother or infant is much higher than it is with any other
mammal and many
times more painful than any other animal birth. Birth is easier
for any
other animal than for us.
Most animals are much better evolved than we are. Birds, for
example,
because their eyes are set on the sides of their head have a
much wider
field of vision and can see almost all the way around. And,
they can see two
completely different scenes taking place on either side of their
head. So
it's like they're watching two movies at the same time. Scientists
still
don't understand how they can process the information. Their
lungs are fixed
in place and don't expand and contract like ours do. Which is
a much more
efficient mechanism for breathing. So efficient, that Bar Geese
can fly over
Mount Everest, while most humans can't even climb to the summit,
and most of
those us that do need oxygen tanks. Birds naturally adapt to
a 50 degree
difference in temperatures. There are Lories, like the parrots
I now have,
comfortably living in unheated, outdoor zoos in England where's
it's
freezing in the winter and they can thrive in temperatures of
over 100
degrees. We can't. And, they don't need planes to fly, guns
or knives to
kill, fire to cook or electricity to make their world run.
Any animal, according to the evolutionary biologist I saw, could
have chosen
to have a big brain, they opted not to: they're not only heavy
to carry
around they are "expensive" to keep up. The brain
never sleeps and takes a
relatively huge amount of food to maintain which is not practical
in areas
where there are frequent droughts and food shortages. Our brilliance
has
resulted in overpopulation and bodies that are not well adapted
to their
natural surroundings.
We, in most cases, cannot live off the land naturally which
is one of the
problems in areas like Africa, South America and India where
starvation is
rampant. Humans would fare much better in those areas if they
were rats.
And, we admit we know only a little about the workings of a
human brain, how
could we possibly pretend to know how other animals brains are
working or
what they comprehend? I think a big part of the problem is that
we can't
reconcile ourselves. We see ourselves as intelligent from the
neck up and
animals that have to be tamed and controlled from the neck down,
which is
what the Judeo/Christian tradition (which this country lives
by) emphasizes.
So we certainly wouldn't give anything that is all "animal"
any credit for
being intelligent.
Look at birds. We use the term "bird brained" because
their brain is so
small, we assumed they had no intelligence. In fact, a bird's
brain is like
a micro chip, like the one in this handheld computer (shows
PALM Pilot). I
brought a videotape to demonstrate this. Alex, the parrot you
are about to
meet was bought in a pet shop, like you would buy any bird,
he was not
genetically altered. Dr. Irene Pepperberg, whom you're also
about to meet,
is a Harvard Ph.D. and head of Ecological and Biological sciences
now at the
University of Arizona. She has been teaching Alex for a number
of years.
TAPE: The Tape shows Alex, an African Grey parrot solving complex
problems
(in English) put to him by Dr. Pepperberg. She tells us that
people thought
birds were unintelligent because they don't have a cerebral
cortext, the
center of our intelligence in the brain. Instead, birds have
something
called a Striatal area, which is much more compact but just
as efficient.
And, that parrots, crows, Blue Jays and Minah birds, have "humungous
Striatal areas." Alex's responses to the intelligence tests
she uses with
him (which are the same tests used for humans) show his success
rate to be
the same as humans. Alex has the intelligence of a 5 year-old-child.
We then
see Dr. Luis Baptista of the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.
He
communicates with white-crowned sparrows in Golden Gate park
and talks about
the social habits of the birds he has been studying, as in "one
female was
beating up her husband all the time and then she ran off with
another man."
Now when you hear birds singing outside, you will know it's
not just
mindless chatter or random sounds they are making. Baptista
mentions
dialects. What you didn't get to hear is that he can tell birds
who live on
one side of the Golden Gate Bridge to the other by their dialect.
Birds
from different parts of the park he described, moved and changed
the dialect
in their song to match the new neighborhood. There are very
complex social
skills at work, very similar to ours that we are oblivious to
because we
have predetermined that they don't exist. There is a symphony
going on and
we only hear a simple melody.
They are talking to each other and we can communicate with them
if we take
the time to understand them. Learning bird song is just like
learning any
other language. Thich Nhat Hanh says, "If you know how
to listen to the
birds, the sound of the birds can be the teaching of the Eightforld
Path."
In the Jakata Tales the Buddha was an animal in many of his
previous
lifetimes. And, it states consistently in the Lotus Sutra that
all living
beings can attain Buddhahood, can become enlight-ened. How do
we know that
birds are not Buddhas already and we are just too ignorant to
hear their
teachings?
The Catholic Church decreed centuries ago that only animals
capable of
intelligent speech could have souls. Parrots were excluded because
they were
thought only to be able to mimic humans. Now we know otherwise,
so I guess
according to Church dogma they do have souls. In which case
we cannot
rightfully harm them. In Buddhist terms they have always had
souls, though
we don't use that term.
You may say "but birds don't create as humans do."
Maybe they don't need to.
They don't have movies or art, but we don't know what they see,
what goes on
in their brains. Maybe since they have much broader color spectrums
than we
do, they don't need movies or they create images in their minds.
And what
are things like movies and art for anyway? They are tools for
expression,
realization (we look to art and literature to tell us truths
about
ourselves) and they are means means for joy - going to the movies
is one of
our pleasures. How could we know if birds, for example, don't
already have
means of expression? They have language; maybe they have poetry.
Maybe it's
haiku.
30 % of the time birds fly they do so just for fun. And, if
they're already
enlightened they don't need these things. Who are we to judge
with our
limited frame of reference? Dr. Baptista died last year and
a symposium on
birdsong is taking place this November in his honor. In the
brochure it
states "The exquisite tonality and intricate melodic detail
of many birds'
songs marks them as musicians of the first order. Some easily
learn huge
vocal repertoires within an amazingly short time period."
It’s in the DNA
So birds are similar to us in their behavior, in their language
abilities
and in more ways than that. What Buddhism has said in one form
or another
for 2700 years is that there is no separation between us and
other life
forms. It turns out Buddhists were right: The genetic difference
of any two
people on the planet, whether they are fat, thin, black, white,
Japanese,
American, Greek or African, small or big, is 1/10th of one percent.
Science, via the Human Genome project at MIT has now also shown
that we have
very humble origins: we have only twice as many genes as a fruitfly
and we
are directly descended from worms and are still carrying their
DNA in us. We
also share at least 50% of our DNA with a banana. There is really
nothing
special about being human regardless of how much we want to
delude ourselves
into thinking so. Eric Lander at MIT who is in charge of the
gene mapping
said, "The fundamental mechan-isms of life were worked
out only once on this
planet and they were used in every organism. We have all the
same basic
func-tions as every other life form on the planet." So
if every other life
form on the planet are either our relatives or our ancestors,
when we eat
another sentient being it is like eating a member of our family.
Natural Balance in Nature/Flawed Thinking
You may say "but animals kill each other." I believe
what Christ said, that
"one day the lion will lay with the lamb." I believe
that is the spiritual
evolution for all living beings. But natural enemies are the
balance factor
in nature for now. As Alan Watts says, you can't have a sunny
side of a
mountain without having a shady side. And, flies go with spiders,
otherwise
there are too many spiders or too many flies. And usually it's
the weak or
sick that are killed, keeping overpopulation in check. The problem
is that
we don't have any natural enemies anymore. We consider every
cockroach in
our kitchen a natural enemy. But, we are unnatural enemies of
every species
on earth, including our own.
And we don't flow with the natural balance of nature. Especially
here in the
U.S.: We represent 5% of the world's population and use 35%
of its resources
every year. And, we do terrible things to animals - daily. When
I was in
China I ate dog. I thought it was the most delicious chicken
dish I'd ever
had. The guide took me outside, behind the kitchen area to prove
to me that
it was dog and I am still sick over it, this many years later.
But I have to
tell you they didn't look like any dogs we know. They behaved
like terrified
wild animals. That is what we've done to them. We've made them
prey and now
they behave like it. It's so much easier to kill them when they
behave like
that. The artist Catherine Chalmers said , "There is no
innocence in
eating."
There are a million examples of human cruelty where we don't
even think
we're being cruel: For example, I recently found out that that
in the 18th
century the French pulled the hearts out of live parrots to
treat gout.
Think that's awful? It's just as awful to murder animals for
food. What
difference does it make why we kill them? With our big brains
we are still
killing animals just because they taste good. We don't need
to eat them, we
choose to. And, it is not more right to kill something for food,
when we
have other food sources, than to cure gout (if it actually worked)
or to
wear skins for warmth. That is our distinction. Either way the
animal is
killed, against its will and before its time. It's a federal
offense to
harm or capture a crow. How about it if it was a federal offense
to harm a
lamb?
The basic problem is that our thinking and decisionmaking is
flawed: I
remember when AIDS was a crisis for years before the majority,
the big part,
of American society paid any attention. Because it was mostly
affecting what
was perceived as, the small, insignificant, Gay population.
It was only when
it was announced that Rock Hudson had died of AIDS and Elizabeth
Taylor
became a proponent of the cause, that the large part of our
population
changed their mind about it. Both actors were larger than life,
big in our
minds and therefore important enough to pay attention to. Psychologists
say
we can't hold two opposing ideas at the same time: So many Americans,
especially women, who idolized Rock Hudson and couldn't let
go of that
image of him had to face a choice: to change their minds about
someone they
had admired for decades or to change their minds about AIDS.
They chose
the latter, the logic being: If it could happen to Rock Hudson,
then it
could happen to anyone. So people willingly changed their perceptions
and
saw AIDS for the disease that it is.
Buddhist Responsibility
The way the majority of people thought about AIDS early on is
still how many
of us are thinking about animal welfare. If we are taking care
of our dog or
cat we think we are kind and compassionate -- that we're doing
enough. The
rest, the fact that millions of animals are systematically being
killed,
eaten, hunted and treated like objects doesn't affect us in
our daily lives:
we don't see it so we ignore it.
I heard a good phrase recently: What's popular isn't always
right, what's
right isn't always popular but if people don't stand up for
important issues
they're not good for much! Gandhi said the way to measure the
civilization
of a culture is by how it treats its most fragile creatures.
We are not
doing so well on that scale and it starts with us. This point
is especially
true for us as Buddhists. We don't have the luxury of a divine
God who is
going to take care of everything, solve all the world's problems
if we all
just pray hard enough. We have to take care of the small and
weak beings or
it won't get done. Buddhism was started by one man, one man
changed the
world.
I think it's harder for humans to attain enlightenment, not
easier. We've
broken the cycle of life and tried to make it linear. We've
taken the
segments and tried to keep them separate, we've compartmentalized
them. We
tell children that babies are brought by the stork. When people
die we dress
them up and put them in a box, we make death nice and neat.
We've filled
these segments we call life, with illusion and we label them.
I get fruit
with labels on it like this apple, telling me what it is. Labeling
fruit,
it's absurd. We need to get rid of the segments and see life,
as Alan Watts
calls it, as the "ecstactic play of the universe"
always unfolding.
Thich Nhat Hanh reveres rocks, nothing is below his respect.
Thich Nhat Hanh
sees that we are inextricably linked with rocks, we need minerals
in our
bodies to survive. This is not an abstract thought, this is
reality. It's
important to see things as they really are, not as we choose
to believe they
are. How? When you see a sparrow, be open to the concept that
this is a
perfect being regardless of what you think you know about it.
Buddha said
not to take anything on faith, to see for ourselves through
direct
experience. Have some direct experiences of your own and then
decide.
Compassion: How do we do it?
We naturally tend to take care of those like us. When hurricane
or flood
victims are helped they are usually helped by people in other
areas, who are
like them, who also have homes and families, they could lose,
who identify
with the victims. Having compassion, having an open heart is
a fundamental
tenet of Buddhism and generally, when we don't identify, we
don't have
compassion. The challenge in Buddhism is to have compassion
even when you
don't identify.
Having an open heart doesn't mean just towards those close to
you, it means
towards those people or other sentient beings you normally choose
to ignore.
As Thich Nhat Hanh says in the case of the young Vietnamese
girl who was
raped, it's easy to have compassion for the innocent girl, it's
harder to
have compassion for the rapist and that's what we need to work
on. TNH says
we would have done the same thing if we'd had his history, his
parents, his
upbringing, his anger and pain. So that's what we have to connect
with. Last
week, you may have seen it on the news, there was a twelve-year-old
boy lost
in the San Bernardino mountains. He'd gone hiking and got separated
from his
father and brother. Hundreds of people turned out to find him,
people
tracked with flashlights all night, search and rescue teams
combed the
mountains on foot, with helicopters. People stayed out all night
lining up
their cars with their headlights on so he might see the light.
I couldn't
help but wonder: if it was a homeless person who was lost if
they would all
have come out to save him? We have lost people, so many homeless
people are
lost right here in the city. Nobody cares.
It may be easy to have an open heart for Alex, the gray parrot,
when you see
him, harder to have one for the bird that poops on your newly
washed car (as
one did with mine a few weeks ago across the street here, I
just smiled, I
was parked under his tree) or the seagulls who can be annoying
at the beach.
Keep in mind with the seagulls that the beach is their home,
you're just
visiting. You'd be annoying too if you were hungry and people
were eating in
front of you in your living room and didn't offer you any food.
And
generally, you wouldn't go to someone's home with food to eat
and not bring
them anything. That would be very impolite. But we do it all
the time to
the seagulls, we never think of them. By the way, seagulls have
humongous
Striatal areas in their brains and are just as smart as parrots.
One of the meditations the Buddha is said to have practiced
to gain
enlightenment is the meditation on Loving Kindness towards all
beings: he
practiced opening his heart. The Dalai Lama said recently said
in a talk at
UCLA "we must speak to every one, to every stranger as
if they were our
friend. We must appreciate all living beings this way, even
animals." When
was the last time you spoke to a bird? I do it all the time
and they stop
and listen to me, sometimes they talk back.
The Dalai Lama also said "in order to take care of our
own interests, we
must take care of others." He was using skillful means.
He knows it's hard
for humans to do anything unless there is an incentive for them
to do it. So
he was stressing that if we want our own interests and happiness
to be
realized, we must take care of the world. We have a global responsibility.
He said when there are problems across the world, in the oceans
in Japan, we
end up with them here in the U.S. The stock market in Asia directly
affects
the stock market here. The weather and ecology in Asia will
directly affect
the ecology and weather here. He's right: On the news for the
last week the
weatherman has been talking about our weather as being affected
by the
monsoons. Monsoons? I thought Monsoonal weather was in India,
or somewhere
over there, not here. But it's here now. It's affecting our
temperatures
right here in LA. This planet is not that big and we, with our
big brains,
become more responsible because of the fact that we can think
intelligently
and because of the amount of damage that we do.
Alan Watts said, "We have to come to terms with nature
by wooing her rather
than fighting her, and instead of holding nature at a distance
through our
objectivity as if she were an enemy, realize rather that she
is to be known
by her embrace." Blake said, "Everything that lives
is holy."
Right now is the middle of summer training all over the world
in Buddhist
monastic communities and it coincides with the rainy season
in India. It is
a time for more intensive practice, mindfulness and awareness,
but it can
also be for a time for lay Buddhists to look more closely at
their actions,
to be more mindful and aware. The Buddha directed his monks
to stay indoors
during the rainy season, not because he was concerned about
them getting
wet, but because the rains generated life and forced many insects
and small
animals out of hiding and on walking paths.
It must have been a big inconvenience and hardship to keep hundreds
and
hundreds of monks indoors for three solid months. It also must
have
inconvenienced many of the lay people they ministered to who
couldn't come
to the temple for one reason or another. The Buddha used skillful
means to
save the insects and make his point by having the monks stay
indoors,
ostensibly for intensifying their practice. I think it was really
to protect
all the small creatures since the Buddha, being all seeing and
knowing, and
with a fully opened heart, must have been mortified by the idea
of the
millions of innocent lives that would have been taken. I think
he had to
give an incentive to his monks, that they would be strengthening
their
practice (and thereby expediting their enlightenment) to keep
them indoors.
Otherwise, surely many of them would have ventured out. He couldn't
control
the population at large but those who he could control he did.
And Summer
Training is still saving the lives of millions of small creatures
every
year and has for 2700 rainy seasons.
But why didn't the Buddha do more? Why didn't he tell anyone
who would
listen not to kill or eat animals of any kind? We must remember
that the
Buddha was preaching to a largely hungry society who didn't
have a lot of
choices about what to eat, that had a caste system which kept
large segments
of the society in poverty (and still does). And, the Brahmins,
the wealthy
ruling class who held the religious traditions, had rituals
of killing
animals which they saw as a spiritual tool. If I were speaking
now in a
poverty stricken African or South American village I would not
be giving
this talk. It is apparent that to me that the Buddha spoke to
his listeners
with information they could incorporate. Buddha had a hard enough
time
letting women into the Sangha, and wouldn't have done so if
he hadn't been
pressured to, even though he said that women could attain enlightenment
as
easily as men. He surely figured that if the men were enlightened,
with
their new wisdom everyone and everything else would naturally
follow.
Today, we have supermarkets overflowing with food available
'round the
clock, but if you suggest, as Oprah did a couple of years ago,
that it isn't
good to eat meat, you get a reaction just like you would have
had 2700 years
ago in India: The powerful meat industry goes crazy and there
is a huge
backlash from the public.
Depraved Indifference
If you say, "well I don't go out and kill anything intentionally
and the
meat is already packaged and in the supermarket," that
is just denial. Not
doing, not taking action to stop killing, is the same as promoting
it. Look
at Gandhi, he revolutionized a country with non-action. If you
see someone
being killed and do nothing to stop it, in legal terms, that
is called
depraved indifference. We act with depraved indifference every
day.
That we eat animals when we don't need to shows our depraved
indifference to
their right to live. We could eat humans, there are plenty to
go around and
from what I've read they taste just fine. But we see other humans
as the
same as us. We see animals as something separate and lesser.
Sara Lane, the woman who introduced me to IBMC more than a decade
ago, told
me, even though I protested, that I was in favor of capital
punishment if I
wasn't doing anything to stop it. She said I should take responsibility
for
pulling the switch because by not taking any action against
it I am also
killing that death row inmate. She said "it's your hand
on the switch right
next to the executioner's" I couldn't see that then, but
I do now. She was
right. There are millions of deaths we all cause daily.
When we talk in Buddhism about eliminating dukka, or suffering,
it is not
just our dukka, but the dukka of all living beings. I'm not
talking about
the Bodhisattva vows. What I'm referring to is that If we understand
that we
are inextricably linked to everything else then we have to realize
their
suffering is ours. And, just as when African Americans in this
country were
not free, none of us were on a number of levels, it is just
as true that if
we persecute animals, we are not free. The human genome project
has also
found out that no gene operates in isolation all genes are dependent
on
other genes. The First Precept
The first precept in Buddhist vows is not to take life and as
the first
precept, it is the most important one to practice. Thich Nhat
Hanh, whose
order practices Engaged Buddhism, interprets it as follows:
“Aware of the
suffering caused by the destruction of life, I vow to cultivate
compassion
and learn ways to protect the lives of people, animals and plants.
I am
determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to condone
any act
of killing in the world, in my thinking and in my way of life.
“
I think none of us are living this precept truly. The question
is are we
really trying? It's not spiritually enlightened not to murder
when you know
you can be put in jail and lose your freedom. The issue is when
it's not so
obvious, like caring about animals lives when your society condones
killing
them. That's where the spiritual growth is. I found out recently
that a
local pet shop is selling baby turkeys so you can feed them
and raise them
and then kill them for your Thanksgiving dinner. I have been
thinking about
buying all the baby turkeys and setting them free.
Buddhism is about personal responsibility. We don't have a divine
deity that
will intervene if we pray hard enough, and we can't say "it
was the insect's
karma" if they got stepped on. That is an excuse not to
be responsible for
our own actions. What we always need to do is look at our part
in it. No
one makes you enlightened, it is up to you. It is your choice.
Don't be
small-minded.
I decided to stop eating meat when I realized that anything
that can look me
in the eye, has a brain, has feelings, and is entitled to have
a life. But I
then realized it wasn't them looking me in the eye, it was me
looking them
in the eye and seeing a being in there that is just like me.
I would
suggest that the next time you want a steak or a hamburger,
don't go to
MacDonald's or the supermarket or a restaurant, go find a cow.
Take a good
look at it. Look in its eyes, mindfully. Have a direct experience
of its
humanity and then see if you can kill and eat it. A friend told
me she'd
met someone the other day that was raised on a cattle farm and
was
responsible for raising the baby animals until they were old
enough and then
taking them to the slaughter. He got to know them personally,
as Dr.
Baptista said. He asked to go live with his uncle who was a
crop farmer
because he couldn't sleep at night. It was not something he
got used to. It
was morally reprehensible to him, to his heart. He's a vegetarian
now. I
also recently heard a woman say that she was raised on a farm
and at 13 she
accidentally walked in and saw a cow's head cut off it's body
and still
hasn't recovered from that trauma. She's 45 now.
I didn't come up with all this myself. I am living with a Bodhisattva,
my
parrot, Mango. He has been systematically, and very con-scientiously,
educating me over the six years we've been together. When other
people are
around he mostly just does the normal, cute, bird stuff, but
as soon as they
leave he says "okay enough fooling around, let's get back
to work on wising
you up." College degree and all, I'm just a dummy to him.
In a recent Sopranos episode Carmela went to see a psychiatrist
for her
anxiety about Tony's lifestyle. The shrink told her while she
didn't commit
the crimes herself, she was benefiting from their result. She
had nice
clothes, good food, big diamonds on her fingers. Where did she
think it came
from? She said she never thought about it that way. He said,
well now you
can no longer say you didn't know. You can live in denial &
do nothing, but
you can't say you didn't know.
Most of us now know how serious and extensive the damage is
that we've done,
to the ecology and to the other sentient beings we live with
on this earth.
We have behaved like bullies picking on beings smaller than
us. And it is a
powerful form of denial that allows us to not see the natural
value of
animals and insect life.
The opening line of the Tao Te Ching is, “The Tao that
can be told is not
the eternal Tao,” which can also be translated that it's
not enough to talk
the talk, you need to walk the walk. Just giving lip service
to Buddhist
principles is not living them. In the Dammapada the Buddha said
"The
greatest impurity is ignorance. Free yourself from it."
Alan Watts calls it
"Ignore-ance". That we choose to ignore what we know
to be right, that we
choose to live in denial.
And this takes us further from enlightenment, not closer. In
Buddhism, ignorance is
not bliss - it is the cause of suffering, ours and everything
else’s. But
ignorance is the one thing we can conquer. We may not be guaranteed
enlightenment in this lifetime (though I think it's possible)
but we can
live with an open heart and a willingness to break the narrow-minded
constraints and conditioning of our own cultural and species
biases. The
real world is waiting to be experienced for what it is.
In 12 Step programs, which also propose a spiritual awakening,
they say
"Progress, not perfection." In Buddhism we say progress
towards perfection.
In Buddhism no one can make someone enlightened; we need to
make the right
choices, we need to do it ourselves. We must ask ourselves,
"Do we want to
live in an enlightened way?" In 12 Step programs they say
"Act as if"
until you want to do something. "Act as if" you are
enlightened and you will
be.
When we can extend our understanding, be open minded to accept
other
creatures as equal to us, not less than, based on our imposed
biases then
we're getting somewhere spiritually.
Krishnamurti said "Enlightenment is now or never."
And from the movie the
Matrix "Only you can free your mind."
Letter from a Prisoner
Today a friend of mine, Timothy Lumpkin, was stabbed to death.
He was an
inmate that didn’t have a lot of time left on his sentence.
He was never
given the chance to become rehabilitated and to become free
and to see and
love his family. When is enough enough? I wonder: Will I live
to see my
family again?” The daily stress that inmates are put through
are numberless.
Not only do we as inmates have to wonder if we are going to
live tomorrow,
or are we going to die of sickness, or is an inmate going to
make a shank
and kill one of us.
These politicians tell the community, “We are going to
add more programs and
things to help inmates better themselves.” Is this happening?
Not by far,
prison programs are not real programs. They are a fluke to draw
funding.
They are put there as something to just make it look good on
paper.I see
officers day in and day out abusing inmates, day in and day
out, I see
inmates abusing each other. The prison that I’m at is the
prison that
executes. They have deathrow here. Outta all actuality we are
on deathrow,
period!
Why won’t people that are free demand these prisons be
investigated for
neglect and abuse and poverty. Enough is enough.
Just think, people complain about traffic every day. What is
that compared
to wondering if you are going to live or die? I’m a Buddhist
inmate and ask
for all brothers and sisters of the Buddhist community to come
together and
to help all inmates that we can; I’m learning the Dharma
under my wonderful
teacher, Ven. Karuna Dharma, but I try to reach all of my fellow
inmates by
the little I learn every day. It’s a hard task, that’s
why I need your help.
There are only two Buddhist gatherings here at this prison a
year. Most of
Kentucky’s prisons are totally in the dark on Buddhism.
Can you help us? The
time is now. Inmates need something to help them. Why can’t
it be Buddhism.
I ask for us all to reach out and show love to everybody. I
ask that you all
remember Timothy Lumpkin as a seed that was starting to flower
on the path
to enlightenment.
May the Buddhas bless you all.
Derek Newkirk,
Eddyville, KY
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