sugataGarbha

Perfection of Patience

It was a long absence from blogging and there are a couple of reasons. Firstly as I'd mentioned on my other blog life has been pretty busy for me the last couple of months, and then this blog (and my other blog) was swamped with spam, so I spent the last weekend cleaning up the comments, and now with a new spam-blocker in place, things are slightly better.

I just got a mail from Kevin at Dharmastudent.com that he has an update available on the site and that the videos for Geshe la's teachings on the Perfection of Patience are available for download from the site. I'm in the process of downloading them (as it takes a long time here even with improved connectivity), you can also download the videos from here.

I should be posting my last installment on the lamrim meditations sometime soon, so stay tuned for that.

An article on His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the Business Standard

This article recently featured in an Indian newspaper called the Business Standard. It talks about His Holiness' 'gaining' popularity in the west and seems to suggest an ulterior motive behind it.

Quote:

By playing the spiritual charmer to the eager-beaver Americans, the Dalai Lama has at last found a justification for his long, but largely fruitless exile. In doing so, he is keeping himself busy, helping spread the Buddhist message and discovering newer ways to generate the money he needs to maintain himself and his entourage at Dharamsala. He hopes he can thus deflect some of the criticisms among his followers growing out of the frustrations of exile.

While I do not usually react to articles such as these, for some reason I chose to respond to this one. Here's my response:

To,
The Editor,
Business Standard.


Sir,

The BS article on HH Dalai Lama by Barun Roy (“Dalai Lama’s Brain Game” 17th Oct ’03) offered unique insights into the activities of the Dalai Lama. However, reading through the article one does get the feeling that almost all the inferences drawn are either ill researched or speculative.

Sure the Dalai Lama and Buddhist teachings in general are gaining greater acceptance in the USA, but this is not a recent phenomenon. It is a hangover from the 70’s appetite for Eastern mysticism that is finally surfacing. While the West’s fascination with Hinduism was much more evident in India, there were a significant number of Buddhist followers from the West at the same time. The only reason this was probably not that evident may have been because of the fact that these early Lamas were not as publicity oriented as the Mahrishis (The first visible Buddhist teacher in the west was probably Chogyam Trungpa, who established the Naropa University.)

So the West’s fascination for Hinduism is fading off, but apparently Buddism is still influencing a lot of Americans. Is this because of a publicity hungry Spiritual and Political leader? I really do not think so. The article speaks about the amount of revenue generated by the teachings and books. As far as I know, most of the revenue generated is re-distributed amongst a number of charities. A small research into this would have given a correct perspective to the article.

Also the article speaks of the large number of converts and teaching centers in the US. It gives an impression that HH is the inspiration for this. Please note that there are four sects in Tibetan Buddhism, and HH heads the Gelug sect, which though the most dominant as far as Tibetans are concerned, may or may not be the dominant form of Buddhist teachings prevalent in America. Also apart from Tibetan monks, American monks and nuns too have established large number of the Dhrama Centers in the US. And this would include a large number of Kagyu, Sakya and Nyingma monks, apart from the Gelugs, of course.

As far as the Dalai Lama’s experiments with the ‘Meditative Mind’ is concerned, this I believe is a proof of his earnestness and openness which is quite lacking in some of the spiritual leaders of today. Moreover with reputed psychologist like Daniel Goleman and others involved in the project, it also happens to some amount credibility, depending upon how you want to look at it.

All in all, without some of the above perspectives the article currently appears a bit like Chinese propaganda. And certainly the appearance of such an article in a publication of your reputation does not do it justice.

Navneet Nair

Digital Dharma is now Dharma Student

digitaldharma.org is now dharmastudent.com

The migration to the new site is still in progress, and I wish Kevin the very best...

Setting up an altar

Snow Lion Publications has this nice page that gives you clear guidelines on setting up an altar. See what I was able to achieve: