Book Review: Pain and It's Ending: The Four Noble Truths in the Theravada Buddhist Canon; Carol S. Anderson, 1999

In this exhaustive survey of canonical iterations of and scholastic research on Buddhism's central philosophical tenet, American scholar Carol S. Anderson concludes that the value of the Four Noble Truths lies not in being the subject of the Buddha's first teaching (which it most probably wasn't), nor in being a catalyst to stream entry or nibbana (which seems in the first case to have happened only to those who were taught directly by the Buddha, and the second to be a late addition to the canon). Its value, she claims, lies in the fact that the Theravada compilers in fact remember it in these two ways. In this sense the Four Noble Truths is more revealing of the compilers than of the Buddha himself.

As early as the 1930's Western scholars were questioning the historical accuracy of the Four Noble Truths as the subject of the Buddha's first discourse. One noted that the language appeared to be a gloss written for the monastic community, another that versions of the Four Noble Truths exist in other Indian religious texts that predate the Buddha (Yogabhasya and Nyayabhasya), still another that there may have been a mistaken conflation between the Four Worthy True Things (as one scholar translated the Four Noble Truths) and the Four Paths (magga) or the Four Stages of Mindfulness (sattipatthana). More modern linguistic analyses have revealed no single fixed grammatical form for the various iterations of Four Noble Truths. In fact the four propositions were in their earliest expression probably not known as “noble” nor as “truths,” and were most likely inserted into the Dhammacakkappavattana-sutta at some later date, but still prior to the final redactions of the Theravada cannon. To account for the similarity of redacted versions, one scholar has offered a principle of leveling, that where all known versions of a passage agree, this is probably the result of harmonizing of earlier traditions.

As logical propositions, Anderson finds the Four Noble Truths functioning in the Abhidhamma as denaturalized discourse, an abstraction in a net of abstractions and of no particular importance in and of itself. Within the structure of the Path, as found in the Vinaya and Sutta pitakas, she finds the proposition takes on two distinct transformative powers. In the Mahavagga's conversion stories of the first one thousand members of the sangha, the Four Noble Truths, as part of a graduated discourse by the Buddha, opens the dhamma eye and enables the practitioner to realize stream entry. In the Diga and Majjhima Nikayas, comprehension of the Four Noble Truths is the last step in a graduated practice leading to the destruction of the corruptions (desire, becoming, ignorance) and arahatship. Anderson cites research to suggest the placement of the Four Noble Truths at the end of the path, as found in the Sutta Pitakas, is probably a late addition by the Theravada compilers, and notes that the ability of the Four Noble Truths to open the dhamma eye is never related in an episode where the stream enterer was taught by someone other than the Buddha. Since his passing, the Four Noble Truths then have functioned within the path as a symbol of the enlightenment experience.

As the Four Noble Truths has no historical or propositional value, being perhaps not even the words of the Buddha himself and merely one proposition in a web of logical discourse, of what particular value is it? Anderson's conclusion is that its value lies in its uniqueness, in serving both symbolic and propositional functions, and in the fact that the Theravadan community regards it highly. Despite this rather weak conclusion, this is a commendable research effort, offering students of Buddhism in clear writing a concise summary of scholarship on the Four Noble Truths. Perhaps someday soon someone will pursue the questions that Anderson has left unconsidered. Why did the Theravada compilers need to put words into the mouth of the Buddha (when there were so many to begin with)? Are there not other propositions that could have served equally well as symbols of the enlightenment experience? What does this need to create symbols and to simplify the Buddha's message tell us about early Buddhist communities?

Buddhist scholar LS Cousins offers a more critical review on the book here, arguing that Anderson may have misinterpreted some of the research she reviews.

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Book Review: How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings; Richard Gombrich, 1997

This book is not an easy read. The four essays cover obscure scholarly topics, the arguments based on Pali and the Brahmanical cultural milieu of the Buddha's age.

Nonetheless, I found it quite compelling and refreshing.

Compelling because of the author's careful detective work; refreshing for it's approach to the Buddha and early Buddhism. This is no work of religious devotion, but a sober reflection on how the behavior of scholastics and practitioners influenced the creation and evolution of Buddhist thought.

How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings collects a series of four papers and one public lecture presented at the 1994 Jordan Lectures by Richard Gombrich, Pali and Sanskrit scholar and current Academic Director of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies. He lays out his interests in the lecture as “how the Buddha's teachings emerged through debate with other religious teachers of his day,” and “how his early followers, in attempting to preserve the Buddha's teachings, subtly and unintentionally may have changed them.” His arguments proceed from the assumption that even though our oldest existing copies of the Pali texts are no more than 500 years old, by comparing recensions and the later commentaries, it may sometimes be possible to trace the development of ideas and, through the tracing, identify their earliest expression, as well as points along the way at which they were altered.

Over a 40 year career in which he taught extemporaneously to people from a wide variety of backgrounds and learning, Gombrich notes that the Buddha's “skill in means did not stop at conversion, or did not die out when the Buddha died, but must have gone on influencing formulations of the teachings.” Debate within the sangha led to processes that over the years subtly altered the meaning of the texts, including banalization, or simplifying difficult ideas; literalism, creating unnecessary and unjustifiable distinctions based on synonymous terms or phrases; and systemization, the process of developing a unified theory. That such processes alter texts and ideas in modern life seems a rather commonplace observation, but one that seems to have been overlooked in Buddhist studies. At least what little I have read.

Many of Gombrich's findings are tentative, but that seems besides the point. He appears more interested in setting out a research agenda, a call to colleagues for more nuanced reading of the Pali texts, reading informed by a thorough history of the Buddha's age, reading responsive to competing interests within the Buddhist community, reading sensitive to satire and humor, metaphor and allegory.

For more details on the topics and specific arguments, see John Holder's 2000 review; for a critical reading of the book, see Bhikkhu Bodhi's 1997 review.

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Book/Lecture Review: The Noble Eightfold Path; Bhiku Bodhi, 1984; Sangharakshita, 1968

Many English accounts of the Noble Eightfold Path read like the Buddhist 10 Commandments, moral edicts handed down by the prophet of enlightenment. And that's pretty much the treatment offered in American Theravada monk Bhikku Bodhi's slim volume, a concise summary of rules for living. This book would probably be of most use to someone with little to no background in Buddhism, though anyone needing this kind of basic information might be served equally well by reading the Wikipedia entry to the Noble Eightfold Path, or any of the treatments offered at numerous Buddhist websites. Those with a foundation in the basics will find Bodhi's explication lacking in imagination or psychological depth. In fairness to the author, this book appeared quite early in his scholarly career; if he were to come back to the subject today, he might deliver a fuller, richer account.

For a more substantial treatment of the path, you might like to try the lecture series by English monk Sangharakshita. Founder of the Western Buddhist Order, Sangharakshita stayed on in India after WWII to ordain as a Theravadan monk, studied Pali and Sanskrit at Benares Hindu University, and went on to practice with Vajrayana and Chan teachers. He returned in 1966 to teach in the UK, where two years later in London he gave a weekly series of eight hourly lectures on the Noble Eightfold Path that he describes as introductory for new aspirants and a revision for those already practicing. It is perhaps the most insightful explication of the subject that I've had the pleasure to encounter, one in which Buddhism is presented as a Utopian ideal encompassing every facet of human life, not just a technique for experiencing a glimpse of ultimate reality. Generally a critical reader and circumspect in praise, it comes as something of surprise even to myself to say that this series has inspired a reevaluation of my relationship to Buddhism.

Sangharakshita is a witty and linguistically limber speaker, well read and able to include examples from various Buddhist traditions, as well as from English and Christian literature. He is something of a controversial figure for teachings on family and sex relations, as well as somewhat infamous for episodes of sexual impropriety and organizational mismanagement. This lecture series was conducted when Sangharakshita was just getting started in the UK and doesn't touch on any of his later controversial teachings. If you can set aside the scandal and listen with an open mind, you'll find this series intellectually rewarding. Bodhi's book in comparison is like reading a sport's rule book – all detail but no sense of the drama of the game itself.

The Sangharakshita lectures are available for download here.

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Book Review: Zen Effects: The Life of Alan Watts; Monica Furlong, 2001

I met Alan Watts about a year ago through a series of recorded lectures. From the first listen I was enthralled by his learning, wit, and eloquence. His talks were magic spells woven from strands of Zen, mystic Christianity, Taoism, and psychology, calling the listener to wake up, to see through the assumptive illusions of life, to put aside the effort of trying to change yourself and simply be yourself. For more than a couple of months I listened rapturously nightly, often going back to some of the more challenging and insightful talks.

Aside from a lecture in which he spoke about his childhood interest in Asian art and his experience of English boarding school, what little I knew about him I picked up from references in his talks: he lived in California, was a former member of the clergy, had experimented with psychoactive drugs, and had met or knew a seemingly large coterie of influential and interesting people.

What I didn't know was what an utter shambles he made of his personal life, which author Monica Furlong chronicles painfully enough in Zen Effects. Watts seemed never to have had any great purpose in life except to enjoy as much of it as possible, but for as much enjoyment as he received he seemed to have caused an equal amount of grief for those around him. He was, Gary Snyder remarked, “one who sowed problems wherever he went.”

His only professional experience as a clergyman ended in shame for his wife, his parents, and his church. For all the wit and charm and understanding he exhibited in public life, his private life was a cold and callous string of marriages punctuated by infidelity and child neglect. And despite a call to his audiences to embrace uncertainty, his fear of loneliness led to an alcohol induced death at the age of 53.

In many of his lectures, Watts referred to himself self-depreciatively as a philosophical entertainer and a genuine fake. I used to think he was simply making fun of himself, a bit of harmless manipulation of the audience. In the context of his personal life, though, the remarks seem almost confessional, a plea for understanding and perhaps forgiveness.

For many who idolized him, the pain of deceit is too great to bridge the gulf between Watts' public teachings and his private life. For myself, I can still appreciate his great intellect, his insight, and his ability to communicate. But I'll never quite think of him the same.

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Book review: Tsering Art School 2009 Thangka Calendar

Tsering Art School of the Shechen Monestary in Kathmandu publishes an annual calendar of thangka. Typically each month features a reproduction of a thangka by one of its students, printed on heavy gloss and featuring all the most important Tibetan holidays.

This year the calendar is doing something a little different. It features only one painting and 11 detail photographs of a large canvas by the Tsering Art School Principal Konchog Lhadrepa. The thangka depicts Zangdokpalri, the Copper Coloured Mountain of Guru Rinpoche and narrates the magical journey of the great Terton Chokgyur Lingpa to that pure land. One of our students is currently working on a copy of this very painting.

I had a chance to see the calendar this week and it is quite a lovely product, especially for those interested in thangka. This year for some reason, however, Tibetan dates have not been included, as you can see in the photos.



For those of you just tuning in, Tsering is the school where I study. You can order a copy directly from the school. Copies are also available from the Namse Bangdzo Bookstore in the USA.

• Tsering Art School
• Namse Bangdzo Bookstore

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Book Review: Buddhism in India: Challenging Brahmanism and Caste; Gail Omvedt, 2003

Buddhism in India: Challenging Brahmanism and Caste is an exploration of the historical roots of Navayana, or New Buddhism, an Eastern Liberation Theology launched seemingly single-handedly by the father of modern India's constitution, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. The first of India's untouchables to rise to not only national but international prominence, Ambedkar was a double PhD from Columbia and the London School of Economics.

A tireless champion of civil liberties who began his political career as a labor activist, Ambedkar later came to stress the primacy of social, rather than economic, revolution. He believed untouchables would never claim their full rights until Hinduism, a system built on caste and the moral justification of oppression, was repudiated and replaced. It was precisely for this reason that Ambedkar tussled with Ghandi, who dismissed casteism as an unpleasant accretion that could be cut away while maintaining the romantic (and, according to Omvedt, historically suspect) idea of India as a Hindu nation.

In Buddhism Ambedkar discovered the perfect vehicle for reformation, a home-grown religion in which individuals practice rather than believe, in which individual inquiry is held in higher regard than devotion to gurus or sacred texts, a religion based on ethics rather than metaphysics. After several years of careful study, he came to the conclusion that contemporary Buddhism had become cut off, distant, and unresponsive to the common man and was unsuited for the purpose of liberating the underclass. What was most needed was a new school of Buddhism, a Buddhism for the modern world, a socially engaged Buddhism that worked for enlightenment and nirvana for all people in this lifetime on this world. And so he composed a Buddhist catechism that rewrote some of the fundamental ideas of the religion as it has been passed down over 25 centuries.

Scholars and clergy have questioned whether this is a real form of Buddhism, or something entirely different posing as Buddhism. It is just this question that frames Gail Omvedt's study, a survey of the history of Indian Buddhism in search of antecedents of Ambekar's most controversial reinterpretations. These include shifting karma from the individual to society, setting nirvana as the earthly goal of stilling the passions, and reimagining the purpose of the monastic as a social worker rather than a self-absorbed recluse.

A naturalized Indian scholar in Dalit studies, Omvedt's sympathies clearly lay with the oppressed, - with untouchables, laborers, the peasantry, women - as well as with those forces associated with their empowerment - with Buddhism over Brahmanism, with Ambedkar over Ghandi, rationalism over romanticism, modernization over traditionalization. She presents her case concisely in clear prose, demonstrating through her survey that Ambedkar's ideas are nothing new in the history of Indian Buddhism. Observing that millions of Indians today practice Navayana, Omvedt concludes there is “no way that any true Buddhist of any school can deny that this is a form of Buddhism.”

Read the publisher's book description here.

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Book Review: One: Essential Writings on Nonduality, 2007

This slim volume collecting excerpts from some of the world's well known sacred texts and enlightened writers makes a simple point, that awakening to our true nature is not a process or experience bound by culture or theology.

Most of One's selections are quite short, ranging from 5-10 pages, and are served with up with introductions setting time, place, and context. If the title and the introduction hadn't already clued you in, it very quickly becomes obvious that sages of ancient India to the script writers of the popular film series The Matrix all have an identical message to convey, that conventional reality is only surface reality, the mind like a movie screen on which fleeting images of light are projected. What lies below, the real reality, can never be described, is approached through humility and abandonment of all conception and striving, and leads to loss of self, the dissolution of I into God, the union of subject and object – enlightenment, rapture, nonduality.

While the religious writings (including selections from Hinduism, Buddhism,Taosim, Native American animism, mystical Judaism, Christianity and Islam) are interesting enough, it's the book's latter half that has the most direct appeal to the modern reader. In it, writers working in such diverse fields as the arts, psychotherapy, and education present perspectives of their professions informed by nonduality.

Most of the selections should be fairly comprehensible to anyone with a decent secondary education. The introductions go a long way in helping explain concepts and expressions used in traditions the typical Western reader may not be familiar with, for example in Hinduism or Buddhism. Ironically for a collection issued in the US, I found one of the densest and least penetrable texts to be of a Christian enlightenment experience.

This is a wonderful book for a new spiritual seeker, or an old one who hasn't been exposed to the well-trod paths winding through other corners of the world. Reading it may help us recall that, despite differences in language or ideology, our quest for awakening is after all is a quest to be fully human.

One: Essential Writings on Nonduality
Jerry Katz, ed
Sentient Publications, 2007


Links:

• Google books preview
• Nonduality.com

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Book Review: Ambedkar and Buddhism (1986), Sangharakshita

Everyone has heard of Gandhi, almost no one of Ambedkar. If that's true for you, then you might like to pick up this slim volume by one of Europe's most prolific Buddhist writers. In under 175 pages you will be introduced to perhaps the most remarkable man of the 20th century.

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was born at the end of the 19th century as the last child of 14 into a family of untouchables. The lowest caste in Indian Hindu society, untouchables were not allowed to drink the same water as other castes, could not walk the same streets, in fact had to be careful of the sun so as not to cast a shadow over higher caste persons. They were denied education or any but the most menial employment. They were forbidden even to hear, sing or read the Vedas, the very scriptures underpinning the moral order enslaving them. The penalty for defiance could be death.

Despite having been born with few advantages, Ambekar would go on to become not only one of India's first university educated untouchables, but also one of the first of his caste to do post-graduate work overseas, earning degrees at both New York's Columbia University and the London School of Economics. Returning home he took up the cause of emancipation of the lower caste, tussling with Gandhi, whom he found patronizing, and after independence serving the Nehru government as chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee. He is remembered in India today as the father of the constitution. After establishing a college for untouchables and an unsuccessful run for political office, he retired to writing about Buddhism and in his final days led a mass ceremony of conversion to Buddhism for nearly half a million untouchables before passing away in 1956.

The author of this book, Sangharakshita, has an equally compelling story that is only briefly reviewed within its pages. An Englishman stationed to India during WWII, he stayed on after the war to become a Buddhist monk, spending 14 years in India during which he met Ambedkar on three occasions, participating in campaigns to empower untouchables through Buddhism. After returning to the UK, Sangharakshit founded the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order and became a prolific speaker and writer on Buddhist topics, including this biography, in which he attempts to trace the origin and development of Ambedkar's interest in and later adoption of Buddhism, as well as to summarize Ambekar's major writings. Beginning with the time he was presented as a child with a biography of the Buddha, the reader is given a thorough overview of Ambekar's life, as well as his major ideas, including the origin of caste and untouchability, and his conception of a stripped down, socially engaged Buddhism for a new age. Unfortunately in such a survey not everything can be described in great detail and so some particulars are glossed, but nothing so much that it leaves the story incomplete.

Despite having been written by a Buddhist, Ambedkar and Buddhism is pitched to the general reader, does not proselytize, and requires only a passing familiarity with Buddhism and 20th century Indian history. This book is also a worthy companion to the 2000 film, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, helping to fill in some of the detail in Ambedkar's thinking.

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Book Review: Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen; Shunryu Suzuki, 2003

Much as I would have liked it to, this book just didn't do much for me.

A collection of transcribed and edited talks given by Shunryu Suzuki, a prominent teacher in American Zen, the material here was delivered unscripted to students at intensive meditation retreats, marathon sitting sessions which cause a lot of physical and emotional discomfort for more than a few students. Not unsurprisingly, the themes of many of the talks are persistence, endurance, focus, and concentration.

The things Suzuki has to say are worth saying, especially in the context of a sesshin or ango. But collected together here they have little coherence. You might find a thought-provoking or inspiring idea, but you can't go back to the text to find more explanation or deeper analysis. It's a book of aphorisms, like a thought-a-day calendar. It's probably best read in small bits, which I tried, reading two or three each morning, much the same as I read what was for me a more inspiring text, Stephen Batchelor's Living With the Devil.

I've read a few books on Buddhism and Zen. I've been practicing mediation for a number of years. I've been to a couple of Zen retreats. Maybe it was just the mood I was in while reading this. Maybe if I go back to it in a couple of years I'll find it inspiring. I hope it does something for you.

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Book review: Life and Thangka (2005), Tiffani Rezende

My uncle once observed that for a blog about thangka, I didn't write much about painting. Learning how to draw and paint, at least in the initial stages, involves lots of copying, one leaf after another, day after day. I could write about the weather, the classroom, or my classmates, but it's hard to find anything to say about the work itself. You sit, you draw. Your mind wanders here and there, you pull it back to the work. The teacher says this part is ok, this part not. Try again.

Brazilian thangka artist Tiffani Rezende seems to have had much the same experience. Which may be why she titled her manuscript Life and Thangka, as it's the latter that gets most treatment in her self-published e-book. From her childhood in Brazil to traveling with her family in a caravan across Europe and Asia, Rezende presents material that would fit comfortably on a blog, personal anecdotes that only peripherally inform the brief sections on painting.

Through charm, sincerity, and web design skills, Rezende was able to secure a spot at the painting school of the Norbulingka Institute, an organization preserving and promoting traditional Tibetan arts from the seat of the Tibetan exile government of Dharamsala, India. When I checked with them in 2007 they were not accepting applications from non-Tibetans. Rezende's experience is another fine example of how we make our own opportunities by being in the right place at the right time – and simply asking.

Despite Life and Thangka's paucity of thangka-related text (perhaps 10 of 81 pages; the last 20 are poetry selections), Rezende's account does provide a glimpse of Norbulingka's painting program. Students apparently spend the first few months exclusively sketching with paper and pencil. Rezende's first subject was a Buddha head, followed two months later by a complete Buddha figure and then a complete Tara. Once her sketching skills improved, she began practicing painting, starting with background items such as flowers and clouds. After four months she was painting temple walls and shortly thereafter painting small background bits of commissioned thangka.

In contrast, at Tsering (where I've been studying) students spend the mornings drawing, the afternoons painting. Drawing practice is done with a wood stylus on an oil-and-chalk covered slate board. Every student begins sketching leaves, first titled right, then tilted left, then a right and left titled pair, before moving on to lotus flowers, clouds, fire, and then ritual objects such as conch shells and dharma chakra. Perhaps after 3-4 months they begin working on a Buddha head, followed by the Buddha's unclothed body, and finally the body with the complete set of robes. This is the entirety of the first year drawing practice. Painting practice is done entirely on paper. Students first sketch leaves, lotus flowers, and ritual objects, which they then use to practice techniques of dry shading, lining, wet shading, and triple shading.

I don't see any great advantage of one school's approach over the other, except that in so far as Norbulinka students begin doing authentic work in their first year it seems they might have a bit more motivation to practice, and practice more diligently. This seemed to be the case for Rezende, who found herself energized by the opportunity to do real painting in a real temple. I felt much the same myself after doing similar work, though it came at the end of my first year and wasn't a part of the school curriculum. If all you do is practice on your slate or sketch book, you begin to loose sight of your goal, like practicing scales but never playing a song, or practicing serves without playing a set of tennis.

Rezende concludes her story after having finished just over a year of study at Norbulingka and her first full thangka. While this first painting would normally be filed away in the school archives, most likely to never again see the light of day, Rezende's teacher allows her to keep hers. Reflecting on why a painting that took so much effort would be hidden away, the fledgling artist comes to realize the true purpose of thangka.

It became even clearer that to paint a Thangka is not always about the painting, but also the painter, who again doesn’t mean anything, because the painter is only another instrument of the art, like the brush, the paint, canvas and light. The illustrated manifestation of a deity or a mandala becomes free of any aggregate body of someone or something mundane attached to it. This is one of the reasons why a Thangka does not usually have the painter’s signature on it - just the blessed mantra ‘om ah hum’ for pure body, speech and mind, strategically placed on the back.

Rezenda maintains a website, mostly in Portuguese (with a bit of English), featuring a blog and gallery. She returned to Brazil in 2006 and has since been painting a new Buddhist temple in city of Viamão. Photos showing the progress of the painting can be viewed here.

A Portuguese version Life and Thangka, with additional material, will be issued soon from a Brazilian publisher.

Buy the English e-book at: http://www.lulu.com/content/157908

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Book review: Thank you and OK! (1994)

Do it yourself enlightenment

American Zen practitioner David Chadwick went to Japan in 1988, lived in a monastery for six weeks, taught English for two years, then went home and wrote a book. His description of monastic life is a fascinating account of a world about which little is written in English, the rest of his life less so. Chronicles of language teachers in Japan fill the cut-out bins of discount book sellers.

There have been some small changes in the twenty years since Chadwick trained at Shogoji, a Soto Zen temple in Kumamoto prefecture (which the author makes a thin attempt to veil by changing the name to Hogoji). A sodo (a dedicated mediation hall) and shuryo (study hall) have been added, and cooking is now done with gas instead of wood. But otherwise life on the mountain remains much the same. There is still no electricity, the kitchen is dangerously dark, poisonous centipedes are hunted with murderous intent, and practice remains remarkably sterile.

One of Chadwick's Zen mates, an American monk with a decade of Japanese Zen experience, confides that “the purpose of training in Japanese Zen temples isn't to help you along the path to enlightenment – it is to cultivate you into a refined and obedient Japanese priest for Japanese temples.” Having attended the 2008 training at Shogoji, this reviewer can verify that the purpose of the training remains precisely the same. (See my entries here on the 2008 Shogoji Ango.)

Chadwick's memory of an incident at the San Francisco Zen center is particularly revealing of the decline in Zen training. A gathering of senior American priests requested Katagiri-sensei, an important player in the introduction of Japanese Zen to the United States, teach them how to do dokusan, the practice of private interviews with students. Katagiri-sensei said he couldn't help them. That he had never been taught himself. That his teachers never taught dharma. They would have to figure it out for themselves, as he had.

There's certainly something to be said for being the source of your own enlightenment. The Buddha said as much in his parting message. But where, then, is the need for temples and priests?

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Buddhist Superhero

(Clicking on the pictures below should open larger versions.)

In the tradition of American comic superheros, the spoken word has had little power. Incantations, spells, charms – these were the tools of heroes of an earlier age. The modern hero's abilities are the frequent result of contact with nature unleashed: radiation exposure (Spiderman, Fantastic Four), toxic chemical spills (Daredevil) and genetic mutation (X-Men). A few have their powers conferred from aliens (Green Lantern), while a smaller number are themselves aliens living amongst us (Superman).

But there were at least two superheros who derived their power from magic words, both first published in the year 1940. One went on to fame, the other obscurity.

The best selling American comic book of the early 1940's followed the adventures of boy radio reporter Billy Batson, who transformed himself into Captain Marvel by shouting “Shazam!” The magic word was a neologism, an acronym of the ancient heroes from whom Captain Marvel derives his powers: Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury.

The other character whose superhuman abilities issued from the spoken word had a much shorter publishing history. By the 1950's he was already forgotten. But he had a most unusual mantra, a real one (if you believe in such things) dating back to the 5^th or 6^th century, one that is still used today by millions of people to summon the compassion of the celestial deity Chenrezig. An incarnation of this god is believed to be with us still today. His name – the Dalai Lama.

Long before Americans ever heard of the Dalai Lama, though, they may have heard of the Green Lama, the superhero alias of Jethro Dumont, a wealthy New York socialite who for 10 years studied in Tibet and through the recitation of the sacred mantra, Om Mane Padme Hum, transforms himself into a caped and hooded superhero.

You won't be surprised to find the stories of the Green Lama bereft of Buddhist philosophy or ethics. Few Americans in the 1940's knew anything about Buddhism or Tibet. What you'll find instead are folk bromides masquerading as Asian wisdom. “It is said good luck walks beside good people,” Dumont remarks to his Tibetan sidekick, Tulku, while viewing the fishermen of a bucolic New England village. A rapacious lender holds the mortgages on the village's fishing boats and hopes by preventing the fishermen from doing their jobs to foreclose the following day. Dumont observes under a sky of dark clouds that “Evil sails on speedy wings” before changing into the Green Lama to drive a massive school of fish into the nets of the waiting fishermen. There is no hint of misgiving about herding so many sentient beings to death. Especially not if it means a Merry Christmas for the villagers. For the Green Lama, it's results that matter. Even it it means a few bombs over Japan.

Should you care to sample the Green Lama yourself, you can download four mid-1940's issues from the public domain archival site Golden Age Comics. If you prefer paper to digital, then you might like to pick up the recently issued first volume of a planned two volume set of reprints from Dark Horse Comics.

Om Mane Padme Hum!

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Book Review: Awakening the Buddha Within; Lama Surya Das; 1998

Buddhist practitioners can levitate. They can see the future. When they die, their bodies turn to light.

So claims Surya Das.

I genuinely enjoyed Awakening the Buddha Within. The book is a primer on Buddhism, with a chapter on the Four Noble Truths, and one each on the Eightfold Path, clearly explained and illustrated for the western reader making his or her first encounter with Buddhism. Surya Das' writing is breezy and conversational, an easy-to-read style that keeps you turning the pages. Das doesn't get bogged down in the minutiae of theology or philosophy and personalizes his teachings by relating relevant stories from his own life and his own search for meaning. As much "what is," the book also offers "how to" in the form of simple meditations and other exercises, such as keeping a dream journal or a creating a collection of favorite spiritual quotations, simple steps to for helping build new awareness.

As much as I liked the book, I also found some fairly outlandish claims within, such as the section on Lucid Dreaming, in which Das writes that we can multiply our bodies, travel to heavenly realms to receive special spiritual teachings, and that he himself was able through such practices to see into the future.

He sets us up early on by letting us know that such super human powers, while manifest among the Buddhist elite, are ultimately mere distractions along the path.

Seekers, curious about the unknown, might want to know more about levitation, conscious dying, lucid dreaming, astral travel, rainbow bodies, and clairvoyance. However, that's not finally what it's all about. The Buddha did perform certain miracles, but he always instructed his disciples not to demonstrate miraculous powers except to inspire faith in the skeptical. Lamas say the same thing. The magical, mysterious and occult are special effects that can be produced, but it's not the whole story. The miracle of Buddhism is a miracle of love, not levitation. [pp 12-13]

As we're only on page 12, it might be reasonable to expect some future explication of such feats, but the only thing I recall reading is a couple of paragraphs in the last quarter of the book, in the section on Lucid Dreaming.

By seizing a dream we can perform spiritual activities, multiply our bodies, as well as go to pure realms of existence to receive teachings and blessings from Buddhas, transcendent Bodhisattvas, and saintly sages. In this way we train to master altered states and different ways of being, including astral travel and other out-of-body experiences.... With guidance from my teachers, ... I was able to get some indication of future events and to understand certain signs, portents and omens. [pp 330-331]

Amazing.

Perhaps not so amazing for a Tibetan who's grown up listening to stories about such super-human feats. But Tibetans are not likely to be reading this book, at least not in large numbers. This book is for Europeans and North Americans, the people most likely on planet Earth to be skeptical - and curious - about such claims.

And yet Das provides no evidence, no proof, not even an accounting of what he experienced or what he witnessed. For over 300 pages he covers the Four Noble Truths and the Eight Fold Path, a topic that is covered by most authors in a few pages. Das' account is padded with quotations, examples, stories, and illustrations, from the lives of saints, from every day life, from his own life. But here - nothing. He falls strangely silent.

I do not claim that such feats are impossible. They certainly may be. But Das' refusal to engage the subject makes it seem he has something to hide, which in turn casts a shadow of doubt across the rest of what is a well-written introduction to Buddhism. If he can't talk to us honestly about this, then what else can't he discuss openly? What else might he be hiding?

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Book Review: Everything Arises, Everything Falls Away: Teachings on Impermanence and the End of Suffering; Ajahn Chah, 2005

Ajahn Chah was not a writer. He was born in a fishing village in northeast Thailand in 1918 and spent many years there speaking to farmers and fishermen. Many of these talks were recorded, transcribed and later translated and compiled by one of his western students, Paul Breiter.

Ajahn Chah spoke simply for a simple audience. To illustrate his points, he spoke of fields, ponds, rivers, fish, frogs, dogs, plowing, planting, and harvesting. He used folk tales and parables. Here he speaks of how we are responsible for our own suffering:

"Really, someone who suffers when living alone is foolish. Someone who suffers when living with others is foolish. It's like chicken turds: if you carry them around by yourself, they stink. If you keep them when you're among others, they stink. You carry the rotten things with you."

On the futility of becoming overly preoccupied in affairs of the world, he reminds his audience of the beetle, scratching in the earth:

"It can scratch up a pile that's a lot bigger than itself, but it's still only a pile of dirt. If it works hard, it makes a deep hole in the ground, but it's only a hole in dirt. If a buffalo drops a load of dung there, it will be bigger than the beetle's pile of earth, but it still isn't anything that reaches to the sky. It's all dirt. Worldly accomplishments are like this. No matter how hard the beetles work, they're just involved in dirt, making holes and piles"

Translating the colloquialisms must have been challenging, but, as you can see from the above, Paul Breiter has done a magnificent job capturing Ajahn Chah's voice, making "Everything Arises, Everything Falls Away" a wonderful volume for even those who may have been practicing the dharma for many years.

For those new to Buddhism, this would be an amusing and enlightening introduction, not only because of the colorful language but also for the way in which Ajahn Chah reduces the message of Buddhism to a few easy-to-grasp concepts. He seemed to like reminding his audience that Buddhism was not all that difficult to understand, and he did this through the message of impermanence. As he remarks in a teaching on meditation:

"The way I practice medication is not very complicated - just this. This is what it all comes down to: `It's uncertain'. Everything meets at this point."

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Book review: The Best Buddhist Writing 2006 ; Melvin Mcloud, ed

This third volume in The Best Buddhist Writing series is a wonderful book for dipping into and out of, perfect for carrying on your travels and when finished for passing on to the curious of mind.

While this collection of 33 articles from the publishers at Shambhala features writing by some big names in Buddhism - the Dalai Lama, Pema Chodron, the Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, Thich Nhat Hanh, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, Jon Kabat-Zinn - it's the pieces from the lesser knowns that seem most touching and insightful.

George Crane relates the story of Ani Jinpa, a Western Buddhist nun taking care of street children in Mongolia, a pitifully thankless job miraculously infused with warmth and compassion. Psychologist John Welwood reminds us that in the search for perfect love, we begin and end with ourselves: "Bringing absolute love into human form involves learning to hold the impossibility of ourselves and others in the way the sky holds clouds - with gentle spaciousness and equanimity."

In a beautiful remembrance of her mother's painful process of dying, Mariana Caplan relates how both she and her mother learned to let go. In much the same way, Judith Toy finds the courage to live through her pain and to forgive the man who murdered her sister-in-law and two nephews.

Closer to the hearth, Nancy Hathaway describes the Four Noble Truths of Parenthood, while Norma Fisher shows how the practical, such as cutting vegetables and washing dishes, embodies the spiritual.

Order one of these for yourself, and order another for a friend who's interested in Buddhism.

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Book Review: Indestructible Truth, Secrets of the Vajra World; Reginald A Ray, 2002

This two-volume introduction to Tibetan Buddhism was written primarily for the author's students at the University of Colorado and at Naropa University (North America's only accredited Buddhist university). Across both books professor Reginald A Ray provides a thorough modern grounding in the history, philosophy and practice of Tibetan Buddhism.

The first volume, Indestructible Truth, begins with a rather dry recitation of the principle names, dates, and trends in the history of Buddhism as it came from India to Tibet and as it developed in the latter over the past two millennia. A more lively middle section covers assumptions common to all schools of Buddhism, warmly and wittily illustrated with anecdotes from the lives of Buddhist saints as well as the author's personal and professional life. The book closes with a rushed overview of Buddhist philosophy that is often more confusing than enlightening. This is partly made up for in the second volume with more detailed explanations and examples.

Secrets of the Vajra World is much heavier reading than the first, if only because Ray has a wider canvas, including the minutiae of Mahamudra and Dzokchen, the two primary schools of Tibetan meditation. The volume concludes with chapters on the lives of tulkus, the reincarnated Buddhist masters, and a riveting recounting of the miraculous passing of one such master (the 16th Karmapa) in an American hospital.

Despite the title of the second volume, very few "secrets" are revealed. Besides being a well-read scholar, Ray is also a committed Buddhist and meditation instructor unwilling to disclose tantric methods. Unfortunately, he also seems unwilling to challenge assumptions. To his credit, Ray acknowledges the difficulties western practitioners and students have with ideas such as reincarnation, the worship of deities, the guru-student relationship, karma and free will. He often provides alternate conceptualizations, such as the Six Realms of Existence (in the Wheel of Life) as psychological states, but never once makes clear that he accepts anything bu the orthodox teaching.

Read these books to know what has come before. To see where Buddhism is headed, including Tibetan Buddhism in North America, you might like to sample the three volumes of Shambala Sun's series, Best Buddhist Writing, or have a look at Stephen Batchelor's Buddhism Without Beliefs.

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Book Review: Images of Enlightenment (revised); Jonathan Landaw & Andy Weber, 2006

If you've ever seen Tibetan Buddhist art and wondered who or what is represented in these colorful paintings (known in Tibetan as thangka), what the various objects in the paintings symbolize, or how the paintings are used in the practice of Buddhism, Images of Enlightenment may answer your questions. Concisely written for a western audience of general readers by two English students of Tibetan Buddhism, this book also provides an introduction to basic Buddhist principles and practice, as well as a brief history of Tibetan Buddhism and short biographies of some of its greatest teachers.

Images of Enlightenment is organized around 32 full-color plates, paintings by Andy Weber, a UK-based artist trained in Nepal by refugee Tibetan painters and now himself a widely traveled and respected teacher in Europe and North America. (See the artist's website for more examples of his work and his current teaching schedule.) Each chapter of the book begins with a theme, followed by explanations of the handful of paintings that best represent them. The first chapter on the life of the Buddha and the basics of Buddhist philosophy, for example, includes descriptions of paintings of the Buddha, stupas, and the Wheel of Life.

As an introductory text, the authors cannot hope to cover the nearly 200 deities of Tibetan Buddhism. They manage, though, to provide an informative, well-written, and properly illustrated volume covering some of the most popular images. If you'd like to learn more about the methods and materials used in painting thangka, you might like to see Jackson and Jackson's Tibetan Thangka Painting: Methods & Materials. The paintings used in this book, while well executed, are quite simple and not cluttered with many of the background items found in many thangka. There is, therefore, little in this book explaining many of the minor elements of Tibetan painting. For a more thorough treatment of symbolism and iconography, see Robert Beer's A Handbook of Tibetan Buddhist Symbols. If you'd like to see larger and more elaborately and finely detailed thangka, have a look at two collections in Romio Shrestha's Celestial Gallery and Goddesses of the Celestial Gallery.

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Book Review: Spoke in the Wheel; Amita Kanekar, 2005

A Spoke in the Wheel is a cleverly constructed and insightful novel about a 3rd century Indian monk named Upali who writes the first biography of the Buddha, some 800 years after his death.

The book opens with Upali's first chapter on the birth and early life of the young prince of an Indian ruling family, a boy known as Siddartha who will when he grows up renounce his family, kingdom, and inheritance for the life of an aesthetic, eventually becoming the enlightened one we know today as the Buddha.

Between the chapters on Siddartha's life are chapters on Upali, conscripted by Emperor Asok to compose the first biography of the Buddha. A late convert to religion, Asok was responsible for spreading Buddhism across a large part of Asia and even into parts of Europe, but only after leading campaigns of conquest, imperial adventures that created an empire spanning nearly all of current India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and parts of Iran. Among those conquests was Upali's kingdom, a genocidal campaign that has left the monk scibner with an abiding contempt for his emperor and patron.

The chapters on Upali are hit and miss. The more interesting ones detail the theological and historiographical issues facing the monk as he attempts to piece together a biography from material that was intended to preserve the essence of the teachings, and not the details of history. The less interesting chapters follow Upali's efforts to act as matchmaker between caste-crossed lovers, and the investigation of a monk's murder.

Still, this is a book worth the time and money if only to explore some of the issues involved in trying to sort out the historical from the mythological Buddha. Upali argues, for example, that the story of Siddartha's home leaving is far-fetched. As typically presented, the young prince leads a sheltered life, protected by his father from anything unpleasant. Siddartha's world is turned upside down in a matter of hours when he one day ventures out of his family's estate and witnesses poverty, sickness and death, sights that cause him to leave home that very evening in search of the meaning of life. How utterly fragile a person Siddartha would have to be, argues Upali, to have such unpleasantries cause him to run away. But even assuming he did leave home on that very same evening, its unlikely Siddartha had never been exposed to suffering. As the prince of a nation, Siddartha would have been groomed from a very early age in religious practices (which included animal sacrifices), statecraft (which involves a good measure of deceit and threat of violence), and martial arts (which on many occasions would have produced bloodletting, maiming, scarring, and even death).

Is the Buddha a god - or was he just a man? Is the purpose of his philosophy the means (leading an ethical life), or the end (enlightenment)? These and other such issues make A Spoke in the Wheel an engaging read for those interested in Buddhist or Indian history.

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Book Review: So Close to Heaven; Barbara Crossette, 1995

Subtitled "The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas," So Close to Heaven doesn't quite live up to its billing. About three quarters of the book focuses on the tiny kingdom of Bhutan, with perfunctory chapters on Sikkim, Ladakh and Nepal, and nothing at all on Tibet, the region's former center of scholarship and religious authority. Nor is there more than passing reference to Dharmasala, seat of the Tibetan exile government headed by the Dalai Lama.

Even so this is a readable introduction to the people and history of the Buddhist cultures of the Himalayas. A first-person account of her travels through the region organized topically, former New York Times correspondent Barbara Crosette never ventures into the territory of modern travel writers to describe how the journey changes the writer. She writes instead as she would for her newspaper, with great attention to the facts of history and details of her surroundings, allowing the reader to feel immersed in this often exotic corner of the world, one that has over the last half century been slowly disappearing as development encroaches on traditional culture and as powerful neighbors usurp political independence. Unfortunately, for a reporter from such a prestigious news organization she makes little effort to investigate claims of human rights abuses against the Bhutanese monarchy, with which she admits having cordial and cozy relations.

First published in 1995, this volume remains in 2007 an interesting introduction to the region, a place slow to change and still experiencing many of the pressures and conflicts Crosette recorded a decade ago.

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Book Review: Way of Tibetan Buddhism; Lama Jampa Thaye (Dr David Stott), 2001

This short book offers a concise introduction to the tenets of Buddhism in general and to Tibetan Buddhism in particular. Beginning with a brief outline of the life of the historical Buddha, English scholar and Tibetan mediatation practitioner Dr David Stott (writing here under his Buddhist name, Lama Jampa Thaye) leads the reader through the historical and philosophical development of Tibetan Buddhism.

Written in unpretentious, everyday English, Stott stays on topic and, except for a lengthy middle section readers already familiar with Buddhism might like to skip, presents in less than 150 pages a succinct outline of what makes Tibetan Buddhism unique as well as to what separates Tibetans in matters of Buddhist philosophy.

Tibetan terms are not overused and are explained as they are introduced. A glossary is provided but unfortunately a guide to pronunciation is not. Also available for your edification are the author's opinions on theism (you cannot practice Buddhism and be a Christian, Jew, Muslim or any other kind of theist), reincarnation (which he claims is the cornerstone of Buddhist philosophy and without which the entire system would collapse), and orthodoxy (anyone wishing to be a Buddhist must accept it whole, the complete 2500 year accretion of study, practice and tradition).

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