Jayasiddhi at Gampo

Not that anyone reads this anymore but my friend Jayasiddhi is living at Gampo Abbey for a year and is keeping a blog.

The Essential Sangharakshita

Wisdom Publications have announced the publication of their anthology of writings by Sangharakshita. Looking forward to seeing that they have decided to include! It's good to see Sangharakshita getting some mainstream recognition for his intellectual contribution after all these years!

“His contribution to the transmission of the Dharma form East to West has been immense.” -Professor Damien Keown, University of London.

Order from Amazon UK

Essential Sangharakshita: A Half-century of Writings from the Founder of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order

or

Amazon.com

Edward Conze

I stumbled on this dedication by Dr Conze to Miss Horner in a copy of Conze's translation of the Abhisamayālaṅkāra. It's in the Asian Studies Dept. Library of the Cambridge University.

I happened to be reading Conze's memoir at the time as well. Not very PC the late Dr, but an interesting man and a great translator.

Well OK one more post...

Couldn't resist writing about this. I was looking around for information on the question of whether or not the Śakyan tribe were Aryans (in the sense that they were related to the Vedic speaking authors of the Ṛgveda) - I gather there is some doubt due to the lack of caste consciousness for instance. I found lots of opinions but two in particular that struck me as making an interesting pair. I won't link to the pages as I do not wish to endorse either view.

View one.

The Buddha was either African, or at least of an Afroid (ie African looking race). The evidence here was largely visual, utilising "the earliest" images of the Buddha with frizzy hair, a broad nose, fleshy lips etc - which *this site* said proved that the Buddha was black (note: Black is still an acceptable term in the UK for anyone of African descent, and was used on the website in question).

I thought some of the images looked like they were from Java actually, and certainly some were not from India but South-east Asia which undermines the claim to be "early". But this theory might explain the traditional tight curls the in the hair of the Buddha. There were "people" in India about 400,ooo years before the present, and another wave of African immigrants is thought to have arrived around 70,000 years ago. There is a theory that the descendants this wave are the ancestors of all non-African peoples in the world. (It was in Michael Wood's doco on India).


View two.

The Buddha was fair skinned and blue eyed, the Śakyans (in this view) can be identified with the Scythians who are said to have originated from around the eastern shores of the Black Sea. As such the Germanic peoples and the Aryans in fact are linked, and more closely related that more dark skinned Indians. The "evidence" is from the Dīgha Nkāya.

Although I haven't checked the references I do think the person in this case has made a stupid error. The Scythians do indeed feature in Indian history but not until well after the time of the Buddha, post Aśoka; and post the Indo-Greek realm established in Gāndhāra, the most famous king of which is Menander (aka Milinda). In order to get to Indian before this, the Scythians would have had to cross Achaemanid Persian territory and that seems a bit unlikely as they were at the peak of their power at that time - Alexander did not smash the great empire until the 320's BC. At the time of the Buddha the Achaemanid's ruled Indian up to and a little beyond the Indus river. This may explain why no scholar, to my knowledge, has ever linked the Scythians to an Indian tribe.

Whatever the truth of the Buddha's origins I find this desire to claim him is fascinating. Hindus too claim him as an Avatar of Viṣṇu. In the West the Buddha is being absorbed into popular culture. I wonder how long it is before someone claims he was a European of some sort... perhaps they already have?

I no longer post here. I do still post on Jayarava Rave which is for short essays on mostly Buddhist subjects. I also do some blogging for visiblemantra.org - either what is new on the site, or interesting stuff on Siddhaṃ

Christian Zionists must be stopped

I've been off-air due to a prolonged bout of ill health but this has got my goat enough to write about it!

My mother began to be involved with a fundamentalist Christian group in Australia a couple of years ago. She mentioned at the time that quite a few of them were Zionists, but it didn't occur to me what that might mean. More recently she has been working in Jerusalem for an organisation called Bridges for Peace - they operate a food bank, and care for Jewish refugees amongst other things.

In talking about the middle east I was a little surprised to hear my mother coming out with strong anti-Palestinian views. Especially after quizzing her and realising that she had never met a Palestinian. Last week she sent me a newsletter from her organisation that contained an article which decried the two-state solution in Palestine, and expressed very negative views of the Palestinian people. Ironically she had met and liked a Kurdish man on a trip to Turkey last year.

I expressed my concern that Bridges for Peace, ostensibly an aid organisation, were involving themselves in Israeli politics and my Mother countered with some statements which I found rather alarming. Bridges for Peace position on Palestinians is this:

"There must be no talk of a Palestinian state—no money, no land, no release of terrorist prisoners as goodwill gestures, in exchange for “commitments.” - from their top news story 29-10-07.

My Mother echoes it in statements like: "they want domination and they want what they want and they will do anything to get it, even talk about peace". The Palestinians have no part to play in the future of Israel. According this this view, " In fact Palestine does not actually exist".

Hearing this kind of propaganda made me wonder, and I began to look into it. BFP are linked with an umbrella organisation for Zionist Christians called the Unity Coalition for Israel. UCI lobby the mainstream media and was the source of the anti-Palestinian article, although they carefully phrase their agenda in terms of being pro-Israel - their website makes no mention of the Palestinians. UCI apparently have links with Christian fundamentalist groups in the USA, and with the most militant right-wing Jewish Zionists in Israel. One reporter in the US, writing about the UCI said this:

"While rejected by all mainline Christian churches in the United States, Christian Zionist ideology is aggressively promoted by a small minority of fundamentalists linked to the Jewish Zionist lobby in the United States and allied to the most militant extremist elements of the Israeli political spectrum."

But why are Christian aid workers spouting anti-Palestinian propaganda, and why are Christian groups supporting right-wing Jewish groups? Why would Christians be working for Jewish domination of Palestine, and the complete subjugation of the Palestinians? The answer, apparently, lies in biblical prophesy. The old testament cedes the land of Palestine to the Jews: "Christian Zionism is confirmed throughout the Hebrew Scriptures" - from www.christian-zionism.org. Apparently however:

"Most Christian Zionists would agree that Israels reemergence on the worlds scene, in fulfillment of Gods promises to her, indicate that other biblically-predicted events will follow." - from www.christian-zionism.org

Once the Jews are in control of the Holy Land other Biblical prophecies are activated. With the removal of the Muslims from the Holy Land the Jews will be able to take down the Al-Aqsa mosque and rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem. This will be the fulfilment of prophesies in the Revelations of St. John - they are trying to bring about the Apocalypse. So Jewish and Christian fundamentalists, with no apparent commonality, manage to find common cause in the elimination of the Muslims from the "Holy Land".

I can't begin to say how much I hate the notion of Christian fundamentalist manipulating the dreadful situation in Israel/Palestine, and lobbying world powers for the purposes of fulfilling a biblical prophesy from which they believe themselves to be the only benefactors. Selfish Bastards! It's the crusades all over again.

They are mental and they need to be stopped. I have passed his story onto a number of media organisations, the Israeli embassy in London, and to a couple of Pro-Palestinian groups. Hopefully bringing it to light will help to curtail any influence they may have. A pox on fundamentalists everywhere, may they fail in every ill conceived project. May the consequences of their greed and hatred find them soon.

Visible Mantra Blog

I've had to lay off the internet for a few months now - more or less. Have rethought my life a bit and decided to focus on the Visible Mantra website. What's new, questions answered, interesting stuff on Siddham and mantra, and Buddhist calligraphy and epigraphy all feature on the (newish) Visible Mantra Blog.

NKT Succession

Vishvapani has written a blog post on the succession difficulties being experienced by the New Kadampa Tradition. It is a very interesting subject for Western Buddhists. The NKT approach is quit different from any other group. Assessing the success of their approach adds to the richness of our understanding of Western Buddhism. Vishvapani is not engaging in polemic here, but analysis which can help us evaluate how our organisations function.

BTW Congrats to the NKT for their excellent new website!

Amazing Aussie Critters

One of the things I like about Australia is the critters. You got your snakes, spiders, scorpions, marsupials, sharks, and then there's the ants. Aussie has ants! My friends will probably all recall my description of the Bull Ants at the Vijayaloka Retreat Centre.

These incredibly aggressive little Aussie bleeders are about an inch long, and they see you coming they stop what they are doing to watch you, their whole bodies tracking you as you move. If you stop then they run towards you with clear intent to injure. And they sting if they get a chance, and yes it hurts like hell. Some people may have thought I was exaggerating, but National Geographic this month have a feature on them, and you can see that I wasn't!

Google - why I still like them, 2

I've been spending some time on maps lately. If you follow the link you can see a high res image of the site of the ancient city of Mohenjo Daro - (see also left) one of the cities on the Indus River which date (depending who you talk to) from about 4000 BCE or perhaps as old as 7000BCE. This is the Swat Valley/Gandhara region home to many innovations in Buddhism - and closest approach to the silk road. Here is the Mahabodhi Temple marking the site where the Buddha meditated and Awakened.

I don't care what anyone says... this is way cool.

News from Home

I don't see much news from home in the UK papers. So I thought I'd celebrate this one from the Guardian 31 March 2007. The comments of the spokesman are troublesome of course since he assumes that education must show a profit - what a dismal view of the human being this represents.

For those who don't know what a "bogan" is, there is - surprisingly - a lengthy and referenced Wikipedia article on the subject.



Meanwhile two NZ school girls found that, contrary to claims of the manufacturer, ready to drink Ribena contains virtually no vitamin C. Ouch!

New Blogger

Finally had to sign up for the new Blogger. It was mostly painless. Conversion wasn't obligatory so I didn't have to do much work on my six blogs (six!). However I have converted the jayarava rave over, and that necesitated a change of template. Actually I think it looks better now.

For a great dose of artisto-Buddhist weirdness take a look at Gunasara's MySpace - the blue robe he's wearing is his ordination robe :-) Touch of Dada there. A gentle trickle of FWBO people making it onto MySpace - it's an easy way to get a webpresence I suppose, although I'm not convinced that it is any better than having a webpage and a blog (or six). Many of the MySpace layouts - which are created on 3rd party websites - suck terribly. Too wide, can't read the text because of back ground images, and sound files that start whether you want them to or not. Yuck.

The latest rave goes back to Gombrich and the 2006 lecture series - metaphors. Cool stuff and I can only hope that he'll publish them soon. There's an interview with Gombrich on the Ordinary Mind wesbite which is interesting.

I've been relistening to the 2003 BBC Reith Lectures by V. S. Ramachandran on The Emerging Mind. His theory of language, particularly metaphor, involving cross activation in the brain (aka synaesthesia) is very interesting and one that I hope to work into my thesis on mantra.

This looks promising

Newish Buddhist blog: Old Pond. Most recent post is on Buddhism and science. And they link to me, so they can't be all bad :) I don't get much time to read blogs these days. I've been writing a big chunk on Buddhist archetypal psychology which has been a joy. Freed from the leash of references and citations, and simply drawing on my own experience most of the time I have been able to just write and it has been flowing quite freeely. The manuscript is out with a reader at the moment, and I hope to have something finished before the end of the year. A few things have been falling into place in my thinking, and resulting in a few good Raves coming up.

Support Call

You might think that this is a fiction. That people aren't this stupid. You'd be wrong. This is based on a true story. I know. I was in it. All you tech support people... you know what I'm talking about don't you!

Thanks to Pema for this. I'll write soon Pema!

Book Review on FWBO News

I've just published my review of British Buddhism : Teachings, Practice And Development by Robert Bluck over on fwbo-news.org. This is a very interesting book. Bluck is an academic who has made a detailed study of the seven largest Buddhist groups in the UK - the book is based on his doctoral thesis. Amongst the clamour of internet self-publicists it is very refreshing to read a real attempt at a neutral point of view by someone with no obvious agenda. Bluck is not uncritical of the FWBO, but he concludes that most of the criticism from sources such as the until recently anonymous FWBO Files (actually written by Gary Beasley) is unfair.

Bluck suggests that the conscious isolationism of the FWBO during it's teens and twenties has been a major reason why the criticism has continued, because it prevented a dialogue from taking place about the FWBO's innovative approach to Dharma practice. The FWBO now has members on the executives of the Network of Buddhist Organisations, and the UK Network of Engaged Buddhism, as well as being active in pan-Buddhist organisations such as the European Buddhist Union and the International NEB. These connections are beginning to bear fruit in a more open and understanding relationship between the FWBO and other Buddhist groups. One good place to follow some of the meetings that are going on at which the FWBO is represented is Dhammarati's blog.

Perhaps surprisingly Bluck concludes that the various Buddhist groups have a lot more in common than it seems at first glance and that they share many of the same dilemmas in trying to transplant the Dharma in the west, even if they come up with different solutions to those dilemmas. I found his treatment of the NKT and Soka Gakkai equally even handed, and learned a lot in reading about them - again they have often been criticised unfairly. All in all the book is a very useful outsiders view of the FWBO and some other prominent UK Buddhist groups.

Unfortunately the book is hideously expensive so it may not get a very wide circulation - I'm suggesting that every centre buy a copy which might help to create a demand for a paperback edition. I plan to circulate a precis of the FWBO chapter so that people can get an idea of what it says.

Jayarava Rave Nominated

My short essay on the Red Rite - one of the magical tantric rites - which was posted on the Jayarava Rave website in July last year, has been nominated as one of the best blog posts of 2007 (along with eight other posts). The Blogisattva Awards are run by the guy who does Blogmandu (I think). It's been a while since I looked at Blogmandu, so it was good to be reminded about it.

Highly sensitive people of the world unite!

How do you relate to these questions?

• Are you easily overwhelmed by such things as bright lights, strong smells, coarse fabrics, or sirens nearby?
• Do you get rattled when you have a lot to do in a short amount of time?
• Do you make a point of avoiding violent movies and TV shows?
• Do you need to withdraw during busy days, into bed or a darkened room or some other place where you can have privacy and relief from the situation?
• Do you make it a high priority to arrange your life to avoid upsetting or overwhelming situations?
• Do you notice or enjoy delicate or fine scents, tastes, sounds, or works of art?
• Do you have a rich and complex inner life?
• When you were a child, did your parents or teachers see you as sensitive or shy?

Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes!

If you also answer yes to these questions then you probably feel like shit. You probably don't understand why. I've found this new book by Elaine N. Aron which is shedding some light on my life. The book is The Highly Sensitive Person: How To Thrive When The World Overwhelms You. Available in all good books shops on and offline. Read it, it just may change your life, although don't blame me if you still feel like shit.

Internet Radio

This is cool: Internet Radio by Pandora : music genome project. You put in a seed artist and it plays back music from that artist and from artists which the creators have decided are kin of similar. It did throw up some interesting stuff that I'd never heard before, Tears and Fountains of Wayne for instance. However there is a heavy bias to US bands even when I put in a New Zealand artist (well I would wouldn't I?). I left it running for a while and it seemed a pretty good sound-track to my afternoon. Aliens will have to fake a US zip code - I like 90210 - because as seems to happen quite often the designers can't imagine that the rest of us don't actually live in the land of the free.

Downside is that you ca only skip so many songs per hour. I skipped 3 or 4 and got stuck with a bogus track. However reloading sorted that one out!

I'm back!

Almost 6 months since I posted anything here! I've been suffering from "non-specific upper-limb pain" which has kept me clear of the keyboard for a while. Still adjusting to life with chronic pain, some days are better than others.

My current fav site is "What Tarot Card are you?" - which is actually available in lots of places but this one comes near the top on Google. I am The Heirophant (apparently) and the Heirophant's purpose, according to the website you understand, is "to bring the spiritual down to earth".

I'm in the process of moving FWBO & TBMSG News onto WordPress which is fun. The new site will launch in a few weeks and feature an FWBO blog aggregator - with 20 blogs on it and only three of them mine (which is partly why I thought I'd better write something here.

Oh and I have a MySpace site now for what it's worth. See you.

Being Jackson Pollock

Clever little web app which allows you to be an action painter on the web. Saving is difficult and this is a screen shot. Looks about right for my current state of mind. http://www.jacksonpollock.org/

Google - why I still like them

The whole China debacle took the shine of Google to some extent didn't it? But I have to say that I still use Google, and not just the search engine, but also things like Sitemaps. What draws me to Google is innovation - they are constantly innovating. Two examples of interest to those with an astronomical bent are:

moon.google.com which is like Google Maps for the moon. Places where the Apollo missions touched down are marked, and they have little popups telling you who was in the mission. I loved this stuff as a kid! try zooming in to the maximum magnification...

And then there is Google Mars which is much more sophisticated. It combines a number of sets of data so that you can see colour coded topo maps, infared, or visible spectrum views of the planet's surface. There is also more info on mountains, spacecraft, canyons etc.

Both of these are potentially useful I suppose, to someone, but the beauty of them lies not in the usefulness, but in the vision of a company that would allow it's employees to work on something cool like this that brings in no direct revenue what so ever. They might have done a bad thing with China, but that doesn't mean they are a bad company.

More Happiness

Martin Seligman of "Authentic Happiness" fame is being invited to the UK to give happiness lessons to children aged 11 - a crucial age apparently. The story in the Independent seems to confirm Seligman's celebrity status here in Blighty. This was front page news yesterday although I'm not sure if other papers covered it. The article and at least one other go into Seligman's background, and he has already been a very influential fellow in the world of psychology. Worth a read.

Avalokiteshvara Mantra... in Klingon?

Yes that's right. I have added a Klingon script version of the Avalokiteshvara Mantra, aka the Six Syllable Mantra, aka the Mantra of Compassion, om mani padme hum, on my Visible Mantra website. This is, I believe, a world first! Why Klingon you may ask. Well I remember reading somewhere that there were now more speakers of Klingon than Esperanto. There are a number of websites which are dedicated to the language, and even a few that compare Klingon with Esperanto, and Omniglot provides a Klingon alphabet, so I thought, why not? There is no reason to assume that speakers of Klingon, or even Klingons themselves, might not benefit from hearing/seeing the mantra. I also fancy that there is a vague resemblance between Klingons and pre-Buddhist Tibetans, who were a vicious and much feared warrior race given to attacking outlying Chinese settlements and Silk Road wagon trains, and look what happened to them once the mantra took hold. Now that they've made peace with the Federation, who knows what is possible?

I've also added the mantra in the Elvish script. Actually to be accuarate I have written the mantra in the Tengwar script, using the Quenya mode. Tengwar is the script that Tolkien invented to write Elvish languages, which he also invented. Quenya seemed the better of the two main modes to write mantras in - being sometimes described as "High Elvish". The Elves have a long tradition of magic and magical words and letters, and I suspect they'd take to mantras like ducks to water. Tengwar is not an easy script to write Sanskrit in, but it's easier than, say, Japanese which has a more restricted sound pallet.

I plan to do a few more Elvish mantras, but Klingon is a bitch to do calligraphy for, so I think I'll just have the one for novelty value.

Live long and prosper __\\//

The Power of Google

Surf to "www.google.co.uk"
Type "liar"
Click on "I'm feeling lucky".

The resulting page does not contain the word liar. It would be surprising if it did, since it is the official UK Government biography of Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of the UK. How does this happen?

Well, if on my page I have the word liar linked to Mr Blair's bio, (as I do back there), then Google adds a little weight to that site wrt to the keyword liar. If 10,000 people link to a site using the same keyword, then Google starts to think that that site must be important for that keyword. Obviously at some, unspecified, threshold the page can begin to rank highly - even to the point of becoming no.1! - even though the word doesn't appear on the page at all. The Google wise will tell you that typically to rank highly for a keyword you include it in the url, title, meta-tags, headings, text, alt tags, image names, etc of your page multiple times.

So how many people must link to Tony's biography using the word liar in order to rank no.1 for a word which does not occur anywhere on the page? One can only guess at present, since I know of no application that will tell you the content of the link text that link to a page, but it must be tens of thousands of links, surely? But if you do a links check on the site Google reckons that it is linked to by "about 1150" other websites - this is chickenfeed on the web!

Maybe this another example of the Google programmers sense of humour? An example of this is to type "french military victories", and click on "I'm feeling lucky" which turns up no hits at all and asks you if you meant to search for "french military defeats" - I tried it today and it's still there. If you do an ordinary search for "french military victories" you do actually find plenty of hits. Ergo this is something programmed by a Google emp somewhere. But no, in the case of "liar" even a standard search turns up the same page.

Has someone at Google got it in for Tony? Or is it the revenge of the internet as a medium for political activism?

BTW If any of you non-brits are wondering, it is widely thought, and said, here that Tony Blair and George Bush lied about the reasons for invading Iraq, and have been lying ever since.

Violence in music

Recently in the UK, the leader of the parliamentary opposition complained that the BBC was broadcasting music which might encourage violence. This letter to the editor in the Independent last weekend, caught my eye...

Sir, I agree with David Cameron wholeheartedly in his condemnation of broadcasting by the BBC of music which may encourage violent crime. Only last month I heard a BBC transmission of music by a man called Wagner. It contained graphis illustrations of theft, robbery, incest, a number of murders and a very nasty bout of boar hunting (with chorus). There was clearly incitement to carry weapons, with spears, swords and hammers in abundance. It also glorified bling, which is one of the most distasteful aspects of society today. Well done David Cameron! Wake up BBC!

John Mackeonis
London W6

DMOZ

I'm now the DMOZ category editor for the obscure category: Society: Religion and Spirituality: Buddhism: Lineages: Friends of the Western Buddhist Order: Publications: Personal Pages. Since this more or less coincides with my FWBO People Directory it shouldn't be too arduous. I want to make sure everything on FWBO People is on dmoz.org - dmoz is used by all the big search engines, so an entry on dmoz is like submitting your website to all of them at once (eventually as some of them take their own sweet time about it). Having a website without a dmoz entry is, like, social suicide! And serious websters should edit at least one dmoz category, just as they should have a few Wikipedia pages.

The Monkey Chow Diaries

Can a human subsist on a constant diet of pelletized, nutritionally complete food like puppies and monkeys do? One man, an angry Canadian man, a foolish man perhaps, but a man none the less, has made it his mission to find out. And you thought the Supersize me guy was stupid.

Visible Mantra... reprise

OK, I have the new Visible Mantra site up and running in it's new home: www.visiblemantra.org. Thanks so much to Paul Powell for the hosting.

If there is a mantra or a seed syllable that you are interested in that you can't see on the website, please get in touch and I will see if I can do one for you. I have one commission for a 'mai.m' already and that should be on the website by the end of the week.

Visible Mantra

I've just updated the Visible Mantra website. I've added step by step instructions on writing the letter 'a' in the Siddham script - an internet first I think. I have also found some charitable hosting, so should be in a position to launch visiblemantra.org sometime soon.

Enjoy!

I'm listening to...

95bFM on the internet. It's making me homesick like crazy, but it has served to remind me that Kiwi music is different from the rest, and that it is good!