International Monk of Mystery

As you can see in the left hand column, I've got a "clustrmap."  It shows roughly how many hits and where they come from around the world.  So far, I've got hits from several location in N. America, Peru, Europe, India, Mongolia, China, Thailand, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand.  And Iceland.  I'm waiting for Africa and then I'll have hits from every continent but Antarctica. 

It's cool to see that we live in an age where we can communicate with people around the world.  And with translation technology, at least some of those people don't have to speak English.  At least one person has viewed the site translated into Italian. 

This reminds me of something Ven. Master Hsing Yun, founder of the Taiwanese order Fo Guan Shan (Buddha's Light Mountain) and UWest, has said more than once in a series of lectures he's been giving here at the university this week.  Several people have asked questions touching on how to create world peace, suggesting that we need unity to do so.  Ven. Master has said that we simply need to respect our differences, not "all become one."  If the world were all one color, for example, that would be really boring. 

It's been an interesting series of lectures on the Heart Sutra.  Ven. Master isn't approaching it with heavy academic talk for the most part, but with stories to illustrate emptiness.  I might have the details of this story wrong, but I'll give it a go:

There was a man who needed a place to sleep, so he went into a temple and lay down under the altar.  Much to his dismay, a small ghost came into the shrine room carrying a corpse.  A moment later, a large ghost came in and the two ghosts started fighting over who owned the corpse.  Suddenly, the little ghost noticed the man under the altar and asked him to solve the dispute over who owned the dead body.  The man was quite scared because he thought that if he told the truth, the big ghost would harm him, but if he lied and sided with the big ghost, the small ghost would get angry and harm him.  In the end, he decided to tell the truth and said that the little ghost had brought the body in.  This made the large ghost angry and so he pulled one arm off of the man and ate it.  Well, the little ghost said, "You can't do that!" and gave the man one of the corpse's arms.  So the big ghost pulled off the man's other arm and ate it.  Again, the little ghost put an arm from the corpse on the man.  This went on until the man had a completely new body.  After the ghosts left (because there was no more corpse to fight over) the man pondered his dilemma.  His body was no longer his, so was he still himself?  Where is the "I" located if not in the body? 

I think this story is a good illustration of our attachment to our physical form, but the physical form is not the "I."  In fact, you can't find the "I" anywhere, because it, like the body, is made up of nothing but various causes and conditions that are constantly changing.

As I understand it, Nagarjuna said that you can't break down time to an indivisible moment, so you can never grasp at anything, including the "self."  All things are changing constantly (because the causes and conditions that make them up are in constant flux), so the moment you think you've got it, it has already changed.  This is how impermanence leads us to emptiness.  Emptiness, however, is not nothingness.  Emptiness only exists on the basis of something.  Without constantly changing causes and conditions, there is no emptiness to speak of.

My head is starting to hurt, so I'll leave it at this for now.  I'm really looking forward to learning more about the various philosophical schools that developed in India, especially Nagarjuna's Middle Way school of thought.

In other news, a couple of weeks ago, I filmed a short instructional video on the eight offering mudras.  A friend here at school, Bill, works with the audio visual equipment and he loves doing video editing, so he's working on the finished product now.  You can see a short video he did with my buddy Shakya and his roommate Eldor in West Hollywood on Halloween here.  I think he did the music for it, too.

I think we're going to do two versions, one shorter version to post on youtube for public consumption, and a slightly longer version that will ultimately be available on DVD.  We're filming again tomorrow, this time a short thing on doing prostrations and possibly how to set up and care for an altar.  I hope to do later sections on iconography and other things.  When several sections have been filmed, we'll put together the longer DVD.  So, keep an eye out for an announcement on this blog for the youtube debut.  I hope people find it useful.

Comments

[Carrie Froseth]

I don't know if this will make any sense based on this blog but, as you know I just spent some time in the hospital. One of the tests I had was a doppler - or an ultrasound looking at the veins in my legs for clots (none found!). It was interesting because the test came with sound. The sound was like the ocean and at a certain point during the test, the technician had the ultrasound wand on one part of my leg and she squeezed my calf and there was a huge whoosing noise (this is a good noise to hear). It sounded like a huge wave coming up and I realized, I'm mostly water and how cool it was to hear that nose inside me.

[Rinchen Gyatso]

Carrie: It makes perfect sense. However, what is water? It is also empty of any real, or fixed, existence. Think about that, and the fact that you are simply the result of a multitude of causes and conditions. Some people get freaked out by that concept, but I find it really liberating. It means all my problems and fears have no real basis and so they won't be with me forever. :) ...Now if I could only remember that when I'm frustrated or scared....

[Amy Dyrek]

Hi, I just read Carrie's comment about "water" and then your response. It is a liberating thought and I will try to keep it with me. It got me a little choked up, as I probably need to think of myself this way more often.