Dreaming Of Danzan Ravjaa

A Light in Every Corner -- Updated x2

Wow. Let's take a short journey to a continent far away from our usual bailiwick. If you can’t muster some inspiration from the following, I don’t know what to do for you. This is light years (kinda literally) from the days of Idi Amin, no? Buddhism in Uganda – my stars. Can you guess what part of the first video made me cry?

Thanks to Wisdom Publications’ ‘Go Beyond Words’ blog for the find.

Update: My eldest sister, a long-time Africa hand, in a bit of serendipity stumbled upon this directory of Buddhist centers in Africa. Who knew? I notice that Rev. Ilukpitiye Pannasekara has dubbed himself "The Chief Monk for the African Continent." Quite a title. Come to think of it, when I was in Dharamsala, India, in 1991 I met a Kenyan nun who had been ordained by the Dalai Lama. I wonder whatever became of her?

Update II: Did you notice? Ashin Sopaka points out in the comments that the Buddha statue in the shrine was specially commissioned with African facial features. Very cool.

And speaking of Buddhists in far-flung places, Shambhala SunSpace introduces us to Buddhist in Nebraska. We’re a little late to the party. A young woman named Monica (self-described as “...a normal white girl from a conservative Christian family who found herself to be a liberal, vegetarian, treehugging Buddhist in the middle of beef country”) has been authoring it since 2006. Her very first post begins like this...

“I don’t keep track of dates well, so I have to think back to events. I moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, in August 2004 just before beginning my first year at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Also that August, just before moving, I made my first trip to Shambhala Mountain Center in Colorado. It was both better and worse than I had ever thought it could be. I loved the mountain center. I hated meditation.”

...and concludes:

“It is hard being a Buddhist in Nebraska.”

The original poem she just published entitled 'The Sea' is so lovely I would have blogrolled her just for that.

Go BBC

I’m whiling away some of the dark Mongolian winter hours marveling at the BBC’s ‘Planet Earth’ series. Have you seen it? Just beyond, huh? A couple days ago I saw the ‘Deserts’ episode, and lo and behold the first segment was on my beloved Gobi Desert and its tiny population of wild Bactrian camels. They’re notoriously shy and hard to track, but the BBC crew was dogged, and assisted by an old Mongolian desert sage, got some astounding footage, including the males in rut, which...well, you just have to see it.

Anyway, during David Attenborough’s incomparable narration, he ends the segment by asking, “Why is the Gobi a desert?” Now, I’m putting you on the honor system. It’s a good question with an interesting answer. Without googling, or checking any other reference, try to answer it for yourself (and all of us) in the comments. Why is the Gobi a desert? Why there? Certain Gobi experts (I’m looking at you, Brother Don) might refrain and give others a whack at it first.

Con-fur-ance

I see Prof. Jamie and Smith College have posted word of the conference they’ll host this March 27-9, along with the Five Colleges Buddhist Studies faculty, and the Manjushri Institute of Buddhist Studies, entitled “Buddhism in Mongolia: Rebirth and Transformation.” Good on them. Such matters are receiving way too little serious attention from the world beyond Mongolia’s borders. I was invited to be a speaker, and feel I might have contributed something to the proceedings, but economix is economix; I don’t have the scratch to get there and, frankly, I’m just enjoying winter in Ulaanbaatar way too much.

Jamie also sent me a list of confirmed participants. It’s really strong, featuring a lot of my good friends:

Shagdaryn Bira, Mongolian Academy of Sciences

Lhagva Demchig, National University of Mongolia, Mongolian Arts Council

Johan Elverskog, Southern Methodist University

Ganbold Gonchig, Consul General, Mongolian Embassy to the United States

Christopher Kaplonski, Cambridge University

Mathew King, University of Toronto

Karma Lekshe Tsomo, San Diego University, Sakyadhita

Munkh-Erdene Lhamsuren, National University of Mongolia

Glenn Mullin, Ulaanbaatar

Marylin Rhie, Smith College

Arjia Rinpoche, Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center, Bloomington, IN

Rustam Sabirov, Moscow State University

Hamid Sardar, Axis-Mundi Foundation, Geneva

Rick Taupier, University of Massachusetts

Robert Thurman, Columbia University

Soyolma, Ulaanbaatar, Woman Artist the Year, 2008, Mongolian Arts Council

Orna Uranchimeg Tsultem, UC Berkeley

Vesna Wallace, Oxford University

Kuntu Zangpo, Abbot, Gungaacholing, at Ganden Monastery

The only peculiar element is that Jamie (I assume it was him, since I know he wastes his time visiting here occasionally) put a feed of this dopey blog in the sidebar under the heading “News.” Um, thanks Jamie! That’s all I need, a bunch of top-flight academics sniffing around, just when I was about to post about evidence of the incipient stripmauling of UB with the opening of our very first Kenny Rogers Roasters!

It’s opening next to the infamous Marco Polo Ristorante, whose owners were once caught augmenting their income with a brothel on the second floor there. Or so I hear.

Then I was going to celebrate the return of heat to the apartment, and the fact that I can now safely doff my winter cap indoors. I intended to illustrate that with Kute Kitty Pix of Mooj and Nita lounging once again on their favorite tiger towel in front of the kitchen radiator (in the additional hope that food scraps might fall where they could hoover them up without actually, you know, moving), having their own private con-fur-ance in which they only rouse themselves for semi-vigorous mutual grooming. Doesn’t it seem like they’ve become one huge, lazy organism? With very cute pink noses?

But, really, to do that at this point, with Very Learned People directed this way, would be positively jejune, don’t you think?

Hot Pocket -- Update w/pix

Well, the big news bouncing around the Buddhist blogosphere is that Barack Obama had a white kata (white ceremonial offering scarf, called khatag in Mongolia, where it’s usually blue or yellow) blessed by HH the Dalai Lama in his pocket at the time of his inauguration. It was given to him just before the ceremony by Richard Blum, husband of Sen. Diane Feinstein, and the philanthropist who initiated the American Himalayan Foundation. Tricycle Blog’s got the scoop. I met Richard once in Mongolia when they were scouting out expanding their operations into this country. Not sure what became of that. Nice fella, though.

In other news, Mother Tara of the previous post (not the elephant) has summoned me tomorrow morning. Seems she’s taken a liking to me and wants a traditional doctor to listen to my pulses, see if I need a tune-up. She sent me a gift of some lovely incense, fashioned from the fresh ingredients only found on the slopes of Mongolia’s spiritual center, Otgontenger Mountain in Zavkhan province. I hope to make a pilgrimage there in early March; plans are still being formulated, so stay tuned.

In still other news, I seriously courted frostbite today with new British birding friend Tom – an expert on the avifauna of warmer climes as you can see at his excellent Mayan Birding site – tromping about the Bogd Khan Mountains. Worth it? Darn tootin’. Snagged yet another lifer that has eluded me forever in North America, the lovely Pine Grosbeak. Can’t say I warmed up much upon returning home; heat’s inexplicably been off for two days. Nonetheless I plopped a cat in my lap, brewed a hot cuppa, and proceeded to spend way more time than grown monks ought trying to sort out the maddeningly subtle differences between Common and Arctic Redpolls. At the risk of an email deluge, if any of you are experts in redpoll variations, drop me a line!

Update: Keeeeeller! You thought no one would drop me a line, didn't you? Well ha, cuz Tom my birding partner did, furnishing clear photographic proof of what we suspected, that we were observing Arctic (Hoary) Redpolls, another lifer! In case you doubt we're an obsessive lot, check out the side-by-side photo doc he created with pix from this trip, and Common (Mealy) Redpolls from the fall: Download Arctic and Common Redpoll comparison . Tom also got some lovely shots of the Pine Grosbeaks, a few of which are reproduced here for your viewing pleasure:

Tara Comes in Many Forms

As a sumptuous hors d’oeuvre to the rest of the post, I present DODR’s first embedded video, three unbelievably sweet minutes featuring Tara the elephant and Bella the pooch, first posted by Brother Rod over at Shambhala SunSpace (along with some preposterous words afterward about yours truly):

Can you stand it? Brother Adam told me later he’s been a long-time supporter of The Elephant Sanctuary featured in this clip and just loves them. Hephalumps and doggies in Tennessee...how could you not? Check their site.

Your intrepid reporter braved just one errand outdoors today, despite a wind chill of -40F/C, hoofing it to the Post Office, and was richly rewarded. All long-awaited packages magically manifested, including one from my sister that had actually arrived on Dec. 23 but I was never notified. The abashed package guy mumbled excuses and waived the customs fee. The contents were blessedly intact, a true deep Mongolian winter care package from my beloved Sister Laura. Before I even opened it I could detect the delightfully disreputable aroma of the three assorted pounds of dark-roasted Dean’s Beans: Roadhouse Blend, Ahab’s Revenge, and Rwanda Bold. Accompanying these were two BBC DVD sets, the whole Planet Earth series and David Attenborough’s fabulous The Life of Birds (this one the cats will eagerly watch with me, I’m sure). Another package  also showed up containing specially blessed crystals for a Mongolian lama who will use them for a particular Vajrayana ritual, and again because it was two weeks late (‘express mail’ indeed), that fee was also waved off.

Huh. Could all this have had anything to do with my adventures with another Tara yesterday?

Through my friend Sara I heard that the old wise woman reputed to be an emanation of the female Buddha known as Green Tara was here in UB from her far-western Khovd province. People just call her Dar Ekh – Mother Tara. I immediately arranged to see her; I’d met her once before but she was quite ill. This time she was robust and happy and we had a great meeting for a couple of hours.

Brother Don kindly arose from his sore back convalescence today and scanned a page for me from the extremely-hard-to-find 20^th c. autobiography of another Buddhist incarnation from western Mongolia, Diluv Khutagt. In it, he gives a little information about the Dar Ekh phenomenon in Khovd:

“There were no incarnations in any of the 20 Banners [traditional Mongolian social organization units] of the Khovd region. In some of the banners, however, there were female incarnations called Dar Ekh, notably in Dambi Ööld Banner. The Dar Ekh had no temples and no regular incarnation successions but appeared here and there irregularly. They had husbands and usually had a reputation for healing. The most famous one appeared in the Ch’ien Lung period (1736 – 1796) and this started the fashion. She lived to a great age.”

Most intriguingly, this Dar Ekh told me of a particularly wrathful mountain in Khovd associated with Guru Rinpoche, saying, “I regularly speak with the protector of that mountain.” She invited me to come and do a practice retreat there and I instantly developed a hard itch to do just that.

At the end of our visit, I made an offering for her Dharma activities. As I was then packing up to go, she said, “Hey, bring your wallet over here.” I did so, and she called for some raw rice. She then performed some chanting, blessed the rice, sprinkled some inside the wallet, closed it up and handed it back with a faint smile.  Could that have opened the doors at the post office and suppressed all fees today? Hmm...

Finally, I asked if we could have a photo taken together, and she graciously obliged. Isn’t she just gorgeous?

Yes We Are -- Updated x2

I don’t have this thought often, but today I wish I were in America. All my family and friends there are positively giddy in the lead-up to Barack Obama being sworn in as our nation’s 44th President. I’d love to share it with them; I don’t recall an uplifted American mood like this in my lifetime. Perhaps there are older DODR readers who recall John F. Kennedy’s ascension? My grandmother had a framed photo of him on her wall until the day she died in 1991.

It’s late and been a long (good) day – I’m not sure I’ll make it to the live feed of the Inaugural Address – and I don’t have much to say. So I’ll turn it over to one Robert Creamer. I’d never heard of him, but his short essay over at The Huffington Post about Obama's vibrant, inspirational political tone and activity versus the catastrophe of the last eight years is excellent. Here are three choice excerpts:

“It just doesn't square with the right wing narrative. They painted Barack Obama as an unpatriotic, ‘terrorist sympathizing’ candidate whose values are foreign to the American way of life. How could it be that his ascendance to the presidency should be the occasion for the new patriotic spirit sweeping America?”

...

“Eight years ago, my wife, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, decided that – as painful as it was – she should attend the swearing in of George W. Bush. I accompanied her and sat with the other Congressional spouses. Most of the spouses that year were Republicans women who were decked out in diamonds and furs. Bush's speech was pretty unremarkable, with few applause lines - at least until he called for tax cuts. With that the fur bedecked spouse section leapt to its feet and gave the new president a standing ovation. How far we had come from ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.’”

...

“Tomorrow will be a day that Americans will remember for years to come. It will be a day when most Americans – whatever their partisan bent – will feel particularly good about our country. But it will also be a day when people around the globe look at America differently than they did the day before. And they too will be inspired that everyday Americans mobilized successfully to take our country back – that America did not fail them. The world will celebrate that we chose to chart a future governed by the American principles that they have long admired – not the arrogance and selfishness they had come to loath.”

Please share your thoughts in the comments (Christian has promised to be on his best behavior).

Update: What a great inaugural address, a wonderful moment for America and, hopefully, the world as a whole. The size of the crowd was almost inconceivable, approaching that of the entire population of Mongolia! There's some good-natured joking around the Buddhist blogs that we were overlooked in this excerpt from the speech, but to paraphrase one commenter, as Buddhists, we don't believe in our way of life, we practice it. In any case, Obama's sentiment here is gorgeous:

“For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.”

Update II: Oh, I just love this. The 7th Graders at Harlem Village Academies blog their reactions to Obama's swearing-in and address.

Store in a Cool, Dry Place -- Updated

Well, after a brief visit to my fair homeland (where The Weather Channel went into full, 24-hour Ice Age Armageddon mode), Gungyi Lhamo, the goddess of winter, is careening back into Mongolia for at least the rest of the week. Sitting on the mercury, it looks like she might provoke that mythic moment each winter when the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales meet at -40, maybe Wednesday night. Watch Brother Don’s blog; he always provides documentation of such events.

Update: Jumpin' Jehosophat. Weather Underground is saying that the ambient temp Thursday will only get to -20F/-29C, but a sharp wind will make it feel like -72F/-58C. My first thought was, "Is that even possible?" For those of you who do, please keep Mongolia in your prayers. That's the kind of weather that actually kills people and animals.

So I’m glad to have visited Hustai National Park last Saturday, Mongolia’s preserve for the Takhi, one of the world’s last ancient races of wild horse (the wider world knows it as Przewalski's Horse). It was a boys’ day out, and the five of us were a truly international crew, representing four continents.

Hitting the road 7am-ish, we arrived with the sun at the Park’s Visitors Center. Learning that the resident biologist was still sleeping, we lingered a bit anyway for a hot beverage (some had coffee, some had tea, and yet none of us were disagreeable about it, even though the poll in the last post shows DODR readers' intelligent bias toward the moral and spiritual efficacy of coffee). Peeking into an adjacent room provoked some bemused shock from us Westerners. I recalled the board game Clue (originally named Cluedo by the Brits -- who knew?) and thought, “Colonel Mustard in the Billiard Room with...a double-headed axe? A chainsaw?”

Of course it made sense. The rec room, heat-free, served as a perfect deep freeze for the meat needed for winter (I always laugh a little when I see a product that says ‘store in a cool, dry place,’ and wonder if anyone sends them to Mongolia). Hustai maintains one of the only year-round tourist camps. Ishee, the Mongolian in our crew and a herder in his youth, eyed the carnage and said, “About three cows.”

And with that, off into the park we drove. The Takhi may be prehistoric, but they aren’t Neanderthal (Neigh-anderthal?) They’ve learned quickly that the vehicles on the park’s roads and the bipeds they disgorge aren’t any threat; the clicky things they point at them don’t launch any projectiles, either. And we all pulled out our clicky things. The Takhi is a beautiful beast, so perfectly suited to its natural steppe environment. There are now about 220 in the park, re-introduced from animals preserved in European zoos. They are a bit shy, and these are the only shots I got that didn’t exclusively feature Takhi tushee (yes, Sarah, I am sending you a hi-res of the bottom one):

The Takhi’s only worry are the few score of wolves that also call the park home, one of the few places in Mongolia where they themselves are protected from the rifles of herders defending their livestock. I was a bit disappointed not to see one, but that was more than made up for when we spied small groups of Mongolia’s magnificent Red Deer. This time of year, the stags are sporting the huge, backwards-arching antler racks that one finds carved into Mongolia’s famous ‘deer stones.’ I find these images somehow so full of the gorgeous life of the steppe, rendered with obvious love and respect by the artists, that if my monastic vows allowed for merely decorative tattoos, for sure I’d ink one of these stylized Red Deers and wear it with special Mongol pride:

Of course, three of us were primarily on the lookout for birds. Now here are two views of what the winter steppe looks like in the park:

You wouldn’t think any sane bird would hang around during the, you know, ten months of winter here, would you? But we found 20 species Saturday, all of which get real bragging rights when their sun-loving cousins arrive in the spring. I’m thrilled to report a lifer in the batch; during the day we flushed up three small coveys of Daurian Partridge, so well-camouflaged and so handsome if you can see one in the open. No mean feat, but I done did it. Here were their intrepid observers, actually quite warm in the full sunlight, climbing around on the rocks:

Bad Cull

Yesterday’s UB Post brings word of an annual effort that I tend to blank out of my mind during the course of the year. A small item announced that “Ulaanbaatar’s Municipal Administration began a campaign to eliminate street dogs.” The “culling program” (don’t you just love the euphemisms?) expects to round up and slaughter about 3000 dogs citywide. There’s nothing to be done about the program itself, at least this year, but for those DODR readers who are so inclined, do please pray and dedicate merit to this situation. And as Buddhists, we would not just pray for the dogs and their more fortunate rebirths, but we would also consider with compassion the karma being incurred by those who ordered the slaughter, and those whose rotten job it is to carry it out.

This Sunday, our UB Buddhist Study and Practice Group will gather again at 3pm (in the permanent ger structure instead of the main temple) and I will teach how to perform the simple Amitabha and Chenresig sadhanas. These are ideal to dedicate to those passing out of this life, so I’ll also talk about one of my teacher’s favorite subjects, the equality of all life, and the corollary virtue of kindness to animals. All are welcome, as they say.

I’m also going to propose a compassion project to the group. Today I learned that the shy, yellow mommy-type dog that hangs out in the temple courtyard (and who aaaalmost let me pet her today), is really a mommy-type. She’s quite pregnant (I thought she was just a little lopsided). Now this presents a dilemma. It’s bloody freezing and she doesn’t have anywhere warm to give birth. It’s highly likely that most if not all of the puppies would freeze to death. So. I’m going to see if we can rally the troops to petition the head lama to let us find or create some place for her to safely deliver her brood, commit to trying to find homes for the pups, and once it’s safe, get mommy spayed. I’m hoping this will balance out the “culling” karma a bit.

Now, on a lighter note, it seems Brother Don has fired a shot across the bow of the SS DODR, with a highly insinuating post about the moral character of coffee and those who worship enjoy it. He even goes so far as to approvingly link to ‘evidence’ purporting to show that elevated caffeine intake makes one more prone to hearing voices and other hallucinatory experiences (what? who’s there?!). But instead of going mano a mano with him on this, since I am after all a man of peace and he's quite a bit taller than me, let’s take this occasion to experiment with DODR’s first readers’ poll, and let the vox populi decide:

We Are Everywhere

Wow. Dig Hillary Clinton talking like a straight-up Buddhist in her opening remarks before her confirmation hearing as U.S. Secretary of State:

“The president-elect and I believe that foreign policy must be based on a marriage of principles and pragmatism, not rigid ideology, on facts and evidence, not emotion or prejudice. Our security, our vitality, and our ability to lead in today's world oblige us to recognize the overwhelming facts of our interdependence.”

Little ray of hope for your Thursday.

(h/t Juan Cole, Informed Comment)

How Many More Spoons Has Gaza Got?

Jeez. While I’m tapping out paeans to friggin’ flying squirrels, Sister Sangye’s writing this (you owe it to yourself to click the link she provides to The Spoon Theory – you’ll never see those you know suffering from chronic illness, physical or mental, the same way again), in loving response to Brother Chris’ phenomenally moving story here. Somehow I missed the fact that Chris, one of my sangha brethren and just about the most delightful person you’d ever get to know, has been blogging again. Read him regularly at Bowdawg on the Mend, and my apologies to him (and you) for the delinquent addition of a link on DODR’s blogroll.

In a similar vein, I’ve been absorbing the news and pictures coming out of Gaza with deep sadness at the fundamental futility of it all. I’ve wanted to write about it, but each time I start to construct a response, a voice in my head says, “Yeah, but your country... (apparently the voice in my head isn’t American) ...has perpetrated violent attacks and occupation in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan that have killed anywhere between 10 and 100 times more civilians. And they didn't just greenlight this catastrophe, they're bloody cheerleading it.” It’s undeniable and achingly shameful. I’m going to have a jolly little celebration on January 20, as the heartless, immoral demons running the joint for the last eight years finally take a hike.

But I see that the Canadian monk, Ajahn Punnadhammo, a gifted and thoughtful writer who I wish posted more, has addressed the Gaza massacre in two recent essays, here and here (if nothing else, go to the first one and watch the video of the impossibly courageous Palestinian girl deliberately placing her body between heavily-armed Israeli soldiers and stone-throwing Palestinian boys and quietly pleading with them to back away and, you know, refrain from killing them). He said all that was in my mind, and better than I would have managed to express it.

Now, if you need to a little counterweight to all that heaviness, it’s a little naughty as a monk, but I’ve been preserving some semblance of lonesome Mongolian winter sanity through the ministrations of increasing pharmaceutical doses the brilliant DJ’s over at Dragon Radio Lounge. If I could hire someone to design the soundtrack to my life, that crew would be serious contenders for the job.

Wild Life

Last Saturday’s birding excursion took us out to Manzushir Khiid to work the forest near the ruined monastery. No surprises in the suite of birds we saw, though we did get, as my Aussie friends would say, cracking good looks at Eurasian Nutcracker and a feeding flock of Red Crossbills tearing up the pine cones. The highlights, instead, came in mammal form. In addition to a very cute, tufty-eared Eurasian Red Squirrel (just about black ‘round these parts, and sporting the truly crappy Latin name of Sciurus vulgaris), we caught up with another rodent feeding on tree buds that none of us could quite place. Andreas, my research turned up, was right in his assessment that it was a kind of flying squirrel. This had me going “shoo-wee!” cuz I ain’t never seen no flying squirrel nowheres. Turns out it was indeed a Siberian Flying Squirrel and my only regret is that we didn’t see it stop stuffing its face, grab its flaps, and leap into the breeze. Comme ça:

 

Sucker can apparently glide up to 75 meters.

Despite the lack of avian fireworks, it was a simpatico crew, and we agreed that this Saturday we’d hook back up and take a road trip out to Hustai National Park, a site I haven’t visited yet. In addition to the strong possibility of catching up with that dang Pere David’s Snowfinch, Hustai is renowned as the preserve for the reintroduced Przewalski’s Horse (Takhi to the Mongols). This sturdy little beast is about as close as one gets these days to the prehistoric wild equines that used to roam the Central Asian steppe in great numbers.

And that's about all the wild life I can muster these days.

Fond Farewell -- Updated

From just about the beginning of this Central Asian odyssey, Brother Khishigt has generously served as idea instigator, introducer, ace translator, and fellow Guru Rinpoche enthusiast. Here we are on the day of the initial printing of the Mongolian translation of Mipham Rinpoche’s Shower of Blessings practice:

Lately, though, Khishigt’s been a wee bit preoccupied. He participated in an Australian English language program (taught by New Zealanders, but whatever, it’s all just kind of Down There, isn’t it), rang the bell on the standardized exam, and earned himself a full ride for two years’ Masters study at a university in Perth. He’ll soak up alternative energy technology, smarts Mongolia could really use, then boomerang back.

I’ll miss him greatly, but I’m sure you’ll join me in wishing him all the best. I loved my time in Australia and hope he will too.

Update: I forgot to mention one thing. Because of my top secret spyware, I know DODR gets readers from Perth. If this is you, and you're willing, it'd be awfully nice to extend Khishigt some of that famous Aussie hospitality. He's a great guy, speaks English (obviously), is a faithful Buddhist, and he'll be a long, long way from home. If you'd like to get in touch with him and welcome him to your land, please email me (my email's in the margins here somewhere) and I'll arrange it.

Oh! That reminds me – I recently read an Australian Buddhist joke of all things:

After a long journey, an Aussie spiritual seeker approaches the meditation master at a remote hermitage in the Himalaya. After sitting respectfully, the meditation master looks him over, leans in and asks, “Have you come here to die?”

“Aw, no mate,” replies the Aussie, “I got here yesterday.”

Dharma Club

I had designated tomorrow a get-outta-the-city mental health day. One Brother Andreas from Germany wrote in, saying he would be in UB during January and could we go out birding sometime? Brother Brian and I thought that was a swell idea and rigged it up, recruiting an aspiring Mongolian birder to come along. Then I just looked at tomorrow’s forecast. High might struggle up to 1F (-17C), but with a stiff breeze that'll make it feel like -31F (-35C). Tomorrow will be a day, to be sure, but I think I need to scrub the “mental health” designation, even fortified with Abbot’s Choice Dark French Roast. Also worried about squelching the enthusiasm of our Mongolian friend. On the other hand, there’s a fair chance of spotting the very handsome Père David’s Snowfinch, so...

Anyway, assuming I thaw out in time, not at all certain given how they’re screwing around with my building’s heating lately (decidedly off at the moment; I’ve strapped The Mooj to my head for warmth), on Sunday we will resurrect our Ulaanbaatar Dharma Practice & Study Group. Lama Bayantsagaan of Lam Rim Datsan (located south of Gandan Monastery on the east side, below Ikh Khuree) has kindly offered a room for our use, so anyone here in UB is welcome, along with friends and family, to come at 3pm. For this inaugural gathering, I’ve had two short chanting practices translated/transliterated into Mongolian, dedicated to the Buddhas Amitabha and Chenresig. In addition to chanting those, we’ll practice a little meditation, I’ll offer a short teaching (in English with Mongolian translation), and we’ll have some time for discussion. Not sure yet about coffee and donuts. The intention is to make this a weekly affair.

Grounds, Path and Fruit

I don’t know if the Buddha precisely discussed a matter we might term ‘beverage karma,’ but if he had, I would recently have been slotted into the category of ‘dismal.’ Early last month I ground the last of my good coffee and proceeded to the mediocres I'd received and politely stored away as well-meaning gifts. These disappeared around the turn of the year, forcing me to finally crack open the ‘in case of emergency break glass’ bag of 8 O’Clock potting soil I’d hidden in a plain brown wrapper at the back of the freezer. It’s as one of our monks so eloquently put it once, “drugs is drugs,” but honestly I prefer to indulge my one remaining vice with just a bit more panache.

Today, however, the black cloud lifted, and was that just a wisp of angelic chorus I detected on the icy breeze?

Brother Luke has returned from his mothership in Seattle, bearing two bags of life-giving elixir devotedly roasted by the good friars at All-Merciful Savior (you got that right) Russian Orthodox Monastery of that little NW Eden, Vashon Island. He did get ground instead of whole bean, but in the spirit of the source, I’m full of forgiveness.

In’shahallah, there are also Dean’s Beans winging their way Mongolward, courtesy of a truly loving sister.

But the sudden upsurge of pure beverage karmic ripening didn’t stop there today. You know you’ve been in Mongolia a while when you walk into a temple, read a handwritten sign that says, “Fresh Camel Milk Available; Inquire Within,” and you go, “Camel milk?! Dig it!!” and gallop off to score a liter, forgetting your previous errand in rapt anticipation of hot, sweet creamy goodness on tomorrow’s muesli.

And that’s it. That’s all I got today.

Oh wait. That's not true. Check it. In my 18 years as a Buddhist, I've never seen anything like the Buddha Head of Kruba Woon.

Lotus Transplant

Brr. Heat’s off for some reason. Well, here’s what the next few days’ Ulaanbaatar weather looks like. I’m sure it’ll be fine.

But as of today, my nighttime warmth has been reduced by 1/3. As a counterweight to this week’s puppy sadness, I derived great comfort in the successful November rescue of Miss Padma. What a first rate cat she's turned out to be; I quite grew to love her furry little face. Thus it was a bittersweet moment this afternoon when I accompanied her to her new home, that of Lama Purevbat (the founder of the Mongolian Institute of Buddhist Arts), his wife Kim, and their two daughters, Hanna (15) and Lhamo (8). Needless to say, the girls are over the moon to have a new kitty cat. Here’s Padma with her smallest new mommy, Lhamo:

And yes, I also gave them the Meow Town Cat Gym. In a year and a half, Mooj and Nita couldn’t work out that the sisal posts were for scratching, not the sofa, not the desk legs. (Remember the hilarious moment when I first proudly brought it for them from America? It was in this critter-happy post.) On the other hand, it took Padma all of a minute and a half to discover the joys of sisal abuse, to play endlessly with the hanging fuzzball the others ignored, and to make Meow Town her personal domain and fortress. She kinda needed it. Mooj was cool about Padma, of course. I mean, he’s The Mooj. The Mooj abides. But Nita, well, Padma seemed to provoke in Nita bug-eyed outrage by her very existence, frequently expressed in plaintive caterwauls, and occasionally in attempts at all-out assault. Padma’s quick, but she’s tiny, and it was a semi-intimidating situation for her at my place that showed no signs of improving quickly. I think she’ll emerge into the fullness of her lovely personality as the solo object of girly affection in her new home. And I can contemplate attachment and impermanence.

Now, as long as we’re on the subject of the natural world, I want to introduce you to a new blog I discovered. It goes by the peculiar, and slightly apostrophe-challenged, name of “marktwainssecretary’s blog,” but don’t let that put you off. Its stated subject matter is “Science, Nature and Buddhism.” I find it a highly worthy effort, and so might you. Check it.

And in this same vein, kinda, I should give a shout out to the blog that’s created the most traffic by far for DODR over the last month or so: Bizarre Creatures. It’s connected because somehow its author happened upon the photos and query I posted after one Gobi trip a couple autumns ago in which I had encountered, well, some very bizarre creatures. Turns out they were some species of the ridiculously, prehistorically ancient triops, known to science, which irked me. I was so hoping I had discovered a hitherto unknown species and I could name it: Triops Konchogii. So why are so many people finding that old post about my old post? Probably because they did exactly what I did when I clicked over: I got totally absorbed in the creatures he or she featured, and read every single page, hardly daring to consider what actions in previous lives created the karma for such manifestations. Didn't you?

The Highest Thought We Can Think

Today I’m going to talk some good Buddhist talk, so if that’s not your cup of nog, you’re free to click on over and watch the "Top 10 Incredible Animal Videos" of 2008 (I know the Buddhist types are going to click this, too, and you should: the gibbon teasing the young tigers made my sides ache and the lion reunion brought a tear ta me oi). Otherwise, a couple thoughts for the new year, in some ways a thank you to those who offered such kindness and wisdom in the comments to the previous post and privately by email:

The way we construct concepts of beginnings and endings is somewhat arbitrary, isn’t it? And yet, since we collectively accept them, they carry some psychological weight. So I’ve made it a habit to precede the transition from one year to the next in purification meditations, and then mark the moment of the new year with a renewal of my fundamental vows. In Buddhism, these are called the Refuge and Bodhisattva Vows.

Taking the Refuge Vow is what makes one a Buddhist. Listening to and contemplating the Buddha’s teaching, one may come to realize the futility of pursuing stable happiness among the ever-shifting phenomena of this world. One may further see that the state of enlightenment, the unbound, natural state free from the deeply delusional idea of ego, and the disquiet emotions and unskillful actions that flow from this error, is perhaps the highest and most noble goal of this human life. In a simple but profound ceremony one declares one’s refuge from the endless round of rebirths impelled by ignorance to be threefold: the Buddha as the exemplar of the enlightened state, the one who overcame suffering and saw precisely how others might do the same; his teaching, or the Dharma, as the true method by which one may reclaim one’s natural state of enlightenment; and the community of those who live according to the ethics, contemplation and meditation of the Dharma, known as the Sangha, as the reliable support for one’s pursuit of enlightenment. Finding this sublime refuge was, for me, an indescribable relief as I struggled with an increasing sense of the meaninglessness of worldly pursuits.

But somehow, as 2008 mysteriously flowed into 2009, I was able to regain the sense of awe and wonder that my first teacher, Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, instilled in me through introducing the birth of bodhicitta and inspiring me to take the Bodhisattva Vow.

Now, don’t be scared off by big Sanskrit words. It’s actually my hope that someday “bodhicitta” will become a common and well-known part of our spiritual lexicon. “Bodhi” means “enlightenment” – you can see the same roots that produce “Buddha”; “citta” means “mind” or “thought”. So together, bodhicitta is the mind or thought of enlightenment. At least one English translator calls it the “enlightened attitude.”

At the level of the Refuge Vow, one’s aim is to break free oneself from the bonds of samsara, the rounds of rebirth caused by our unenlightened views and actions. As one delves deeper into the matter, however, one may see that the notion of liberation separate from others ultimately makes no sense. In truth, we are inseparable from others. It becomes clear that thinking that “my” suffering will be overcome by “my” enlightenment, as opposed to “others’ suffering” and “others’ enlightenment” which is theirs to work out, is just more ego-based thinking and has no place in the goal of realizing non-dual awareness. Thinking about the false way we create the ego-idea, and how it unnecessarily separates us from others, begins to dissolve those barriers. As they dissolve, our neurotic, competitive attitude towards others gets replaced by an abiding sympathy, love and compassion. We see that we’re all dissatisfied and suffering for the same reason, and enlightenment is the ultimate solution.

So at this point we can take the example of two drowning people. If one of them has his or her wits about them, they will realize that in order for both to be saved, one has to get to shore, and then throw a lifeline to the other. In other words, to reach the safety of the enlightened state, one must achieve it first, then save the others. This is the basis for the Bodhisattva Vow.

The bodhisattva is an “awakening being” and his or her vow is this: to strive along the path to Buddhahood, supreme awakening, while at the same time promising never to leave samsara until each and every sentient being has been established in the supreme bliss of enlightenment beyond any possibility of suffering, no matter how many countless lifetimes this takes. Sometimes extremists of other religions might say to a Buddhist, “Your path is a false one and when you die you will go straight to hell.” A savvy Buddhist might reply, “I would welcome that. How else would I save the beings there?”

I can’t think of any idea in any culture or religion higher than that of bodhicitta. Seriously, can you? It has nothing to do with just being righteous in this life; it’s the motivation and actions whereby one feels no compunction to even sacrifice one’s own supreme enlightenment, lifetime after lifetime after lifetime, until such time as the infinite variety of beings in all six realms of existence are utterly free.

Shantideva, as ever, puts it best. This is from the first chapter of The Way of the Bodhisattva on “The Excellence of Bodhicitta,” verses 21-30, and it’s my small New Year’s gift to you. I cannot claim in any way to be a bodhisattva, and yet I truly wish for your every satisfaction in this world, and your liberation in inconceivable enlightened bliss:

“If with kindly generosity

One merely has the wish to soothe

The aching heads of other beings,

Such merit knows no bounds.

 

“No need to speak, then, of the wish

To drive away the endless pain

Of each and every living being,

Bringing them unbounded virtues.

 

“Could our fathers or our mothers

Ever have so generous a wish?

Do the very gods, rishis, even Brahma

Harbor such benevolence as this?

 

“For in the past they never,

Even in their dreams, conceived

Such profit even for themselves.

How could they have such aims for others’ sake?

 

“For beings do not wish their own true good,

So how could they intend such good for others’ sake?

This state of mind so precious and so rare

Arises truly wondrous, never seen before.

 

“The pain-dispelling draft,

This cause of joy for those who wander through the world –

This precious attitude, this jewel of mind,

How shall it be gauged or quantified?

 

“For if the simple thought to be of help to others

Exceeds in worth the worship of the buddhas,

What need is there to speak of actual deeds

That bring about the weal and benefit of beings?

 

“For beings long to free themselves from misery,

But misery itself they follow and pursue.

They long for joy, but in their ignorance

Destroy it, as they would a hated enemy.

 

“But those who fill with bliss

All beings destitute of joy,

Who cut all pain and suffering away

From those weighed down with misery,

 

“Who drive away the darkness of their ignorance –

What virtue could be matched with theirs?

What friend could be compared to them?

What merit is there similar to this?”