Author Archives: Morgan Mussell

Notes on Buddhism

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Japanese Buddha. Photo by Maren Yumi Motomura, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Japanese Buddha. Photo by Maren Yumi Motomura, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Recently, my blogging buddy, Adam (Reviews and Ramblings), asked if I could recommend a good book on Buddhism, since the Dharma (as practitioners call Buddhist theory and practice) is so much a part of my outlook and what I write here. I’ll list some books at the end of this series of posts, but first I need to do some rambling of my own because…it’s complicated! What would you do if someone asked you to recommend a book on Christianity? Or U.S. History? Or writing young adult novels? Or anything you’ve studied in depth because it’s a passionate interest? You might say, “Well, it’s complicated.”

So here goes…

Who was Buddha?

Some 2600 years ago, Prince Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha (there had been countless others before him) was born in northern India. According to legend, a prophecy said he would become either a great king or a great holy man. Hoping for the first outcome, Siddhartha’s father had him raised in a walled palace, where young and beautiful companions and servants saw to his every desire.

At age 29, the prince ordered a chariot driver to carry him outside the palace walls, where he saw an aged man, a sick man, and a corpse. The charioteer explained that aging, sickness, and death are the fate of all living beings. When the prince saw a yogi, and learned that he sought release from suffering, he determined to follow that path.

For six years, he practiced austerities with a group of forest ascetics, but realized that even the most exalted states of consciousness did not offer what he was looking for. He sat beneath a bodhi tree, resolving to stay there until he’d unravelled the mysteries of life and death. During the final night, he withstood assaults from Mara, the lord of illusion, and experienced full awakening in the morning. He wondered if it was possible to communicate this truth – the Dharma – to others. Legend says that Brahma, king of the gods, appeared and begged him to try, and he did so for the rest of his 80 years.

In Buddhist teaching there is always relative truth and ultimate truth, and the question, “Who was Buddha?” is no different. Anam Thubten, a Tibetan master describes “the ultimate Buddha” in these words:

“There is Buddha in each of us right now who can never be defeated by the force of inner darkness, the force of greed, hate, attachment, and delusion, and that Buddha has no form, no image. That Buddha, indeed, is residing in all of us as our pure, quintessential being. We must always turn our attention inward whenever we have the desire to seek divinity, the divine, or Buddha, God, or Brahma.”

Borobudur Temple, Java, 9th c. Creative Commons

Borobudur Temple, Java, 9th c. Creative Commons

What did Buddha teach?

Gautama Buddha gave different teachings to different audiences, and over time, widened the scope of his teachings. When they were carried to other countries, and ultimately to the west, some aspects were emphasized over others. What everyone agrees on is that Buddha taught the reality of suffering and the path to overcome it. Different schools teach different means to do so, but in general, three realizations are key:

Renunciation: This does not mean becoming monastic. It means letting go of the hope that we can ever find the permanent happiness we seek “out there,” in the world, where everything changes. In Tibetan, the word for Buddhist means, “one who lives within.”

Compassion or Boddhichitta: This is the determination to awaken in order to most effectively benefit other living beings who also suffer and desire happiness as much as we do. And as the Dalai Lama put it, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

Right View: This is the hardest to explain or grasp. Although in relative terms, the world appears real and solid, in ultimate terms, it is much like a dream, where nothing is solid or fixed. Beyond memory, the only thing that endures when a dream ends is the dreaming mind, which has no form, no shape, no color, and lies beyond the grasp of any conceptual thought – much like Anam Thubten’s description of the “Buddha within.”

One Tibetan lama said, “Our suffering is like a child dying in a dream.” Everyone knows what it’s like to have such a nightmare and then wake up. As I understand it, all Buddhist practice aims at waking up in the midst of the very life we are living.

One story says that soon after Buddha’s enlightenment, a man passed him on a road. Noticing something special about him, the man asked, “Are you a sage?” Buddha said “No.” “Are you an angel?” the man asked. “A man? A god?” To all of these inquiries, Buddha said no. Finally the man asked, “What are you?”

Buddha said, “I am awake.”

***

Many people think of Buddhism as negative, with it’s seeming emphasis on suffering. There’s more to it than that. Buddha began with this observation: most people spend most of the hours of most of their days with a greater or lesser degree of dissatisfaction. He went on to teach that there is a way beyond dissatisfaction and suffering. “I cannot bestow it upon you,” he said, “but I can show you the road to take.”

That is plenty for now. In my next post I’ll address two other questions whose answers are also not obvious: is Buddhism a religion and is it atheistic? And then finally (I promise) I’ll get around to listing several books and web links on the subject.

 

 

It’s In His Kiss by Vickie Lester: a book review

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IIHKCover5x8final291p copy

Death is a sidewinder. It strikes from a place concealed and unthinkable, triggering a reality completely unexpected. – Vickie Lester

Anne Brown, a New York teacher and author of literary novels is on her way to Palm Springs in the middle of winter. Movie studio bigwigs are flying her out to renew the option on her first novel, a decade out of print. Why do the rich and beautiful people welcome her with open arms? Is it because she’s the out of wedlock daughter of a retired movie mogul?

No, it’s a bit more sinister than that, Cliff, the most beautiful person there, tells Anne. An acting agent, he fills her in and offers to help her navigate the proverbial shark infested waters. And draws her into a whirlwind affair that is hardly the norm for Anne, a confirmed bachelorette, who thinks of herself as the girl that guys just want to be friends with.

It seems too good to be true, but it is, until the following morning, when Cliff is found dead by the side of the road in his Ferrari. It looks like a tragic heart attack until the coroner finds he overdosed on the kind of drug cocktail used to enhance pleasure at the gay sex club up the road. Cliff hardly seemed gay to Anne, and everyone who knew him swears he was straight in every sense of the word.

Filled with grief, anger, and curiosity, Anne begins to ask questions. It soon becomes apparent that everyone at the Palm Springs house that weekend was hiding something. “Was there not one single normal person in all of L.A.?” she wonders. And then a black Escalade tries to chase her down on the freeway…

Vickie Lester, who blogs at Beguiling Hollywood, used to write screenplays, “Horrid, arty, little things,” she says, “that were…optioned again and again, but never made into movies. Perhaps, because they were neither commercial or cinematic?”

Now she has turned her considerable talent and insider’s knowledge of Hollywood into a gripping mystery, with an ending I never saw coming.  It’s In His Kiss is funny and smart and offers an insider’s view of a world of illusion that still fascinates.

The City of Angels was named for beings most often seen by children, visionaries, and the insane. The best novels out of LA are woven with a noir tone – all that sun and all those palm trees have to cast a shadow. Anne Brown and Phillip Marlowe are very different characters, and yet I imagine the spirit of Raymond Chandler is pleased. As a fan of both authors, I know I was!

Vickie Lester at Joshua Tree

Vickie Lester at Joshua Tree

Happy birthday Taj Mahal!!

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Taj Mahal, 2005. Creative Commons

Taj Mahal, 2005. Creative Commons

Today is the birthday of Henry Saint Clair Fredericks, Jr., one of my all time favorite blues musicians, whose stage name is Taj Mahal.  He was born May 17, 1942, in Harlem to musical parents. His mother sang in a gospel choir, and his father, Henry Sr., was a West Indian jazz singer and piano player, whom Ella Fitzgerald called “The Genius.” The family used a shortwave radio to listen to world music.

Henry Jr. developed an early love for music and mastered a number of instruments, but had an equal interest in farming after the family moved to Springfield, Massachusetts. He went to work on a dairy farm at 16, and at the University of Massachusetts, he majored in animal husbandry before deciding to pursue a career in music. He chose Taj Mahal as a stage name after recurring dreams of Gandhi, India, and social tolerance. In 1964 he traveled to Santa Monica where he formed a band with Ry Cooder and won a recording contract a short while later.

Mary and I heard him once at the Palms Playhouse, in Davis, CA, when it was still housed in the barn on a family farm, a casual and intimate venue musicians loved. We were in the second row, right in front of Taj as he hammered away on a grand piano. He’s a big man, tall enough for the NBA, and he threw himself into the music. It was an unforgettable evening.

I play this music when I want something upbeat –  roots music in the widest sense of the term, evoking that impulse toward joy that makes people everywhere want to sing.

Happy birthday Taj, and many, many more!

The power of solitude

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Beside the Dalai Lama, Pema Chödrön is probably the most widely known practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism. Born in New York City, she was ordained as a nun in 1974 and has written several popular books on Buddhist practice, including When Things Fall Apart (1996), The Places That Scare You (2001), and Start Where You Are (2004).

In 2006, Bill Moyers talked with Pema Chödrön as part of his Faith and Reason series. Here is the full interview, and below is segment, lasting just under five minutes. Chödrön, who spent a year in silent retreat, says everyone needs periods of solitude in life, even if just a brief time every day. Distraction, she says, is not just our phones and gadgets, but the distracted state of our ordinary minds. Just a little time out from this allows us to re-engage our lives with a “more spacious” awareness, and this makes it profoundly valuable.

Guarding the mind

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guard mind 1

One summer when I was working in high-tech, I had the following experience for several weeks: I’d leave the house, enjoying the fine weather. After a pleasant enough commute, I’d grab some coffee at the cafe, greet co-workers who were doing the same, and then find myself, when I arrived at my cubicle, in a foul mood, angry, and/or depressed.

Finally, I began to notice the almost subliminal self-talk that started the moment I hit the parking lot: imagining negative outcomes for everything I had going on that day. I’d picture meetings, or presentation, or projects falling apart. A quiet but persuasive inner voice would label co-workers’ motives in the harshest light. My boss at the time was a friend who had just finished his MBA and was still finding his way by trial and error. This made him a perfect projection screen. I’d sometimes find myself wondering if he was now out to get me.

Once I caught this inner thought train and started to listen, it fell apart, as such things do in the light of day. This is one key result of mindfulness practice: attend to a thought – any thought – and it begins to shift and change, revealing its nature as something far less substantial than we think. Jung had a parallel insight when he realized, “My thoughts are not my own,” and compared them to animals encountered while walking in the forest.

Hist Center Window

Since that summer, I’ve learned to listen more closely for thoughts flying under the radar. That’s part of what prompted several posts this spring with the theme of consciously choosing where to place the attention. A recent post on the Shambhala Publications blog quoted a verse along these lines written more than 1200 years ago. A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life by Shantideva (c. 685-763), a great Buddhist master and scholar, is still widely studied today (see note 1 below). In chapter 11, “Vigilance,” he deals with guarding the mind against against unwholesome states, for this is where all our actions are born. The chapter is composed of 109 quatrains. Here are the first three:

1.
Those who wish to keep a rule of life
Must guard their minds in perfect self-possession.
Without this guard upon the mind,
No discipline can ever be maintained.

2.
Wandering where it will, the elephant of the mind,
Will bring us down to pains of deepest hell.
No worldly beast, however wild,
Could bring upon us such calamities.

3.
If, with mindfulness’ rope,
The elephant of the mind is tethered all around,
Our fears will come to nothing,
Every virtue drop into our hands.

Shantideva. Public domain.

Shantideva. Public domain.

Guarding the mind is not just a Buddhist concern. When I Googled the phrase, most of the hits came from Christian websites and blogs. These discussions centered on Philippians 4:8, “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things”

Many of the thoughts, suggestions, and practices were similar to Shantideva’s writing as well as a more recent statement by the Dalai Lama. I am even aware of both Buddhist and Christian scriptural practices for wearing imaginal armor to shield the heart/mind from negative influence. I would not be surprised to find similar practices in other spiritual traditions.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have a few days away from my usual routines and concerns to consider these things. I’m struck again, as I was in the work episode I related above, by how subtle the negative inner voices can be.

Another bias I find in myself was articulated by James Baraz, a Buddhist meditation teacher in an article on the Huffington Post, Can We Afford Joy in a World of Suffering. Baraz describes “the Kumbaya factor,” as the fear that if we consciously turn away from what is negative, we may simply wind up “in La-La Land singing Kumbaya.”

Everyone has to work this out for themselves, but Baraz makes several key points. Depression saps our energy. No one benefits self or others while wondering, “what’s the use.” In the work experience I related above, I wasn’t the best of co-workers while imagining others were out to get me.

I’m reminded of a story I heard several times in college. In 1927, Buckminster Fuller walked to the shores of Lake Michigan, thinking to end his life. He had just lost his job and felt responsible for the death of his daughter a few years earlier. He would later tell lecture audiences that as he looked into the waters, he felt surrounded by light and heard an inner voice say:

“You do not have the right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong to you. You belong to the Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others.” (Fuller)

The experience led Fuller to re-examine everything and resolve to live his life as “an experiment, to find what a single individual [could] contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity” (see note 2 below). In this epiphany, Fuller locked onto the same truth that Shantideva articulated 1200 years before:

54.
Examine thus yourself from every side.
Note harmful thoughts and every futile striving.
Thus it is that heroes in the bodhisattva path
Apply the remedies to keep a steady mind.

55.
With perfect and unyielding faith,
With steadfastness, respect, and courtesy,
With modesty and conscientiousness,
Work calmly for the happiness of others.

Speaking in the same tradition for a 21st century audience, James Baraz summed up the idea this way: “So can we afford joy in a world of suffering? I believe, in a world of suffering, we can’t afford not to find joy.”

reflection 4

Notes: _____________________________________________________

(1) In Buddhist terminology, a Boddhisattva is one who vows to seek spiritual awakening not for self alone but for the benefit of others.

(2) Some historians, finding no account of Buckminster Fuller’s epiphany in his writings for 1927, have wondered if he made up the story later. I can only speak for myself and observe that I’ve never put my most profound experiences in a journal: the writing is too pale, and there’s no need, since the events themselves remain vivid.

The 10,000 Idiots

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Hafiz. Public Domain

Hafiz. Public Domain

Hafiz or Hafez was a great 14th century Persian poet and mystic whose dates are given as approximately 1325-1389. During his life, he is said to have composed 5,000 poems of the seeker’s longing for union with the divine. Unfortunately, many of these were never written down.

His poems retain an amazing resonance to those who practice any kind of spiritual discipline.  This is one of my favorites – not one of his most sublime, but always relevant…

The 10,000 Idiots

It is always a danger
to aspirants on the Path
When they begin to believe and act
As if the ten thousand idiots
Who so long ruled and lived inside
Have all packed their bags
And skipped town
Or
Died

A classic trickster woman

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A blogging friend, Calmgrove, commented on my previous post, saying how strange it is that in modern times, despite an abundance of comediennes, there are no female tricksters. Then it struck me – and it’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t think of this earlier.

In an era when tricksters come to us on screens rather than stories told around a campfire, we cannot forget Lucille Ball’s role in “I Love Lucy.” The show ran from 1951 to 1957 and was the most watched the American television program during four of those six seasons. It is still in syndication in dozens of countries around the world.

Lucille Ball and Orson Welles.From a 1956 episode. Public domain.

Lucille Ball and Orson Welles.From a 1956 episode. Public domain.

Lucille Ball, with her clowning and physical comedy, set a tone that is still at the core of many sitcoms. Most of the best known women comics who followed cite her as a groundbreaker, an inspiration, a mentor, and often a friend. In terms of our “classic trickster” test, that is what she was, at all times. Never just a funny housewife, Lucy was an outrageous but charming disrupter, whose pioneering humor enlivened the spirits of millions who watched her.

I dare you to get through the chocolate factory scene with a straight face.

Quite a few full episodes of the show are available on YouTube.

Another note on tricksters

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Groucho

I want to argue a paradox…that the origins, liveliness, and durability of cultures require that there be space for figures whose function is to uncover and disrupt the very things that cultures are based on. – Lewis Hyde

It has always made sense to me that the 1920s, 30s and 40s, when times were hard for so many, gave birth to our great movie tricksters: Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, The Marx Brothers, and The Three Stooges. Their send ups of the 1%, among other things, are still hilarious. Where are their equivalents today?

My self-imposed moratorium on negative blog themes has passed. As I caught up on news I had kept at arms length, I found myself thinking often of trickster stories. In part because they are funny, and most of the news is not. And partly because the folly of tricksters has a sacred dimension while the folly of our headline makers is often just foolish.  If you invite the Three Stooges to lunch and serve pie, the outcome is fairly certain. I read that the Georgia legislature voted to allow patrons to carry guns into bars; the result is likely to be just as predictable, but without the catharsis of laughter.

stooges pies

In his introduction to Trickster Makes This World (1998), Lewis Hyde emphasized several key points:

1) Tricksters both make and violate boundaries and live in relationship to them. Where there are no boundaries, trickster creates them, as in several Native American creation myths where Coyote makes the land and separates it from the sea. Where there are cultural boundaries, tricksters blur or invert the distinctions: right and wrong, friend or foe, male or female, living or dead.

2) Tricksters are usually on the road, and this makes them outsiders.
Through most of human history, solitary travelers have been rare. Until the last century, most people lived and died close to the area where they were born. Nomadic people travelled as tribes or clans, but Hyde says trickster is “the spirit of the doorway leading out, and of the crossroad at the edge of town. He is the spirit of the road of dusk,” who may pass through city and town but only to “enliven it with his mischief.”

charlie chaplin and dog

Hyde points out that although there is an abundance of clever women who know how to be deceptive in world mythology, they are seldom full-time tricksters. Once the evil is vanquished, the curse lifted, they tend to settle down. Coyote and Loki do not domesticate, and the older cultures who gave us these stories would have had trouble imagining a woman who opted for a solo life on the road.

3) Tricksters are liars and thieves, but they are not petty criminals.
Tricksters steal things like fire and cattle, and according to Hyde, are often honored as creators of civilization. “They are imagined not only to have stolen certain essential goods from heaven and given them to the race but to have gone on and helped shape this world so as to make it a hospitable place for human life.”

We cannot be too doctrinaire about these things, for there is a distinction between “large” stories, like creation myths, and “small” folktales, where trickster sometimes steals cattle for himself. When he does so, however, in tales like “The Little Peasant” from Grimm, it is usually a case of swindling a swindler, or people who are dishonest and greedy to start with.

For obvious reasons, trickster isn’t welcome in corporate boardrooms. Like Robin Hood, he is into redistribution of wealth. He’s the patron of whistle blowers everywhere, and will gladly gum up the machine when it is no longer serving the greater good.

Perhaps that is why we need him now more than ever. We don’t even have to do anything. Hermes travels as fast as thought. For good and for ill, trickster is already here.

Chaplin modern times