ALSO IN THE MEDIA:
The Dalai Lama's Swiss visit was a bigger hit than expected with 30,000 people attending his teachings, raising SFr350,000 ($280,000) for charity. Organisers said they were also delighted with the publicity the event generated for Tibet after the Dalai Lama met interior minister Pascal Couchepin last week in a move criticised by China. [SWISSINFO]
Thai Buddhists win beer battle - Thailand's new finance minister on Wednesday indefinitely postponed consideration to list major brewer Thai Beverages on the stock exchange, prolonging a seesaw battle with opponents to the stock offering.The producer of the country's best-selling Chang Beer and a top-selling whisky had planned to raise more than one billion dollars in April in what could have been the country's largest initial public offering (IPO).Massive protests by thousands of Buddhist monks and anti-alcohol campaigners postponed the listing, but after a review by regulators the brewer quietly filed to list on the Stock Exchange of Thailand last month. [INDEPENDENT ONLINE]
Laser show at Bamiyan
An elaborate laser show plans to "recreate" Afghanistan's famous Bamiyan Buddhas, the towering, 1600-year-old statues destroyed by the Taliban amid international outrage in 2001.
The life-size, lurid images will be projected on to the clay cliff faces of the Bamiyan Valley where the archaeological treasures originally stood on the Silk Road linking Europe and Central Asia.
Some 140 "statues" will make up the installation, due to premiere in June 2007, subject to approval by UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organisation.
Hiro Yamagata, 58, a Japanese-born California artist, wants to use wind and solar power to project the images on to 6.5 kilometres of the cliffs in the central Hindu Kush mountains, about 150 kilometres from Kabul. The Afghan Government supports the project.
UNESCO, which has a prominent presence in Bamiyan, where it has been evaluating methods of preserving mural paintings in man-made caves surrounding the Buddha sites, must ascertain whether the laser beams could damage the cliffs.
Carved into the mountainside, the two Buddhas were of international cultural significance. The larger of the two was, at 53 metres, thought to be the world's tallest standing Buddha. The smaller stretched to 35 metres and both were sheltered by giant niches hollowed from the rock.
The statues escaped damage during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the country's bitter civil war in the 1990s but in 2001 the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, ordered them destroyed, although UNESCO said the act would be "a crime against culture". In March, militants used dynamite and artillery to blow up the fifth-century statues. The Taliban considered the Buddhas idolatrous and anti-Muslim. All that remains is rubble and the cavities in the cliff.
The demolition triggered calls for the rebuilding of the statues or some commemoration at the location, a site of pilgrimage for centuries because of the Buddhist monastic complex that flourished from the second to the eighth centuries. A Swiss plan to rebuild the Buddhas at $A37.5 million each was abandoned.
Mr Yamagata's $12 million installation will feature 14 laser systems casting overlapping, faceless images on to the cliffs every Sunday. [THE TELEGRAPH VIA SYDNEY MORNING HERALD]
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[KYODO NEWS VIA YAHOO! NEWS] Bamiyan Buddhist murals seriously deteriorated
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Taking the monkey mind on retreat
Living in busy Bangkok, I welcomed the meditation retreat opportunity offered me by my colleagues from Rajabhat Surin University.
"Every Buddhist should meditate," I explained to my family. "Time won't wait for me. I need to do it while I'm still able."
Then I added: "I will also extend the merit I earn to all of you."
My family, always reasonable and understanding, nodded. So off I flew to Ubon Ratchathani for the long weekend retreat at the beginning of Buddhist Lent.
Wat Pa Dong Ka, in the district of Lumduan, about 20 kilometres off Muang Surin, was beautiful and calm. It was founded by the late Luang Pu Dool, a famous meditation teacher in Surin, following the tradition of the forest meditation monastery established by his own teacher, the great guru of Isan, Luang Pu Mun.
Many merit-makers came to the temple to present alms and candles to mark the beginning of the three-month Buddhist lent. Buddhist monks, since the time of the Lord Buddha, would annually take an oath to respect lent and to meditate only within the temple compound in order to avoid disturbing the environment in springtime.
Luang Po Pattana, the current abbot, acknowledged our pledge to practice meditation at his temple and solemnly gave us instructions about the rules of his community.
Late morning and afternoon would be free for individual reading, cleaning or walking meditation. Fruit juice would be served at two. At six in the evening, all monks, nuns and lay people would gather at the sala for prayers and meditation until nine, when all would return to their living quarters. Electricity and noise would be kept to a minimum.
In the morning, from three to five-thirty, all would come to the sala for meditation and prayers. At six, the monks would walk into the villages with bowls in their arms to beg for food, returning at seven-thirty. The nuns would put all the food from the monks' bowls into two sets of trays, one for the monks and another for the nuns and other people. At eight, everybody would take as much food as they needed from the trays and eat their single daily meal. All remaining food would be put in bags and given to the poor children in the villages.
My friends and I received the eight precepts from the abbot, changed into white garments and went to the evening meditation session on time. The 12 monks sat on a raised platform while the laymen from the village and the three nuns who had been with the temple from the day it was founded took their seats on the floor below.
The chanting of the evening prayers went smoothly, followed by a short lecture on meditation given by the abbot for the benefit of the newcomers. Then all the lights and candles were blown out leaving everyone to quietly work on achieving mindfulness.
My ordeal soon began. My knees, ruined by tennis, consistently protested and my stomach groaned loudly. In the stillness, I heard some of my friends start to snore.
Changing position many times, I let my mind wander around the world and shift back and forth in time and space.
I remembered reading from my mother's book that our mind was like a monkey, always jumping about actively. To train it we must follow it, empty it of useless thoughts and focus it on our in-and-out breaths.
All evening I kept chasing my monkey-like mind, pulling it back again and again to watch over my breathing, yet it quickly escaped on its own never-ending journey to unfathomable lands.
"Stop and stay still!" I called out to the monkey. "Why?" it yelled back. "Because we need to be still together so that we can learn to develop ourselves and attain some wisdom," I argued.
The monkey laughed and leaped away saying, "Remember how you tirelessly ran after the lemurs in Madagascar last year? You used to enjoy it then."
"Yes," I said, "but we are here for a different purpose and I need to tame you now, even if only for a moment. Come here and say a short prayer with me."
I fought hard with the monkey inside me. The agility that used to foster my creativity and my decisiveness now obstructed my path to peace within myself. Angry yet undaunted, I kept repeating, in monosyllabic muteness, the short prayer that was meant to soothe the two of us. Outside the rain cooled the air as nocturnal creatures stirred and sang to the soft wind while the leaves shook and danced.
The clock chimed nine. Then a gecko on the ceiling called out nine times.
I looked at my monkey and it looked back at me, happy and contented, for what seemed like an eternal second. Then I opened my eyes feeling fresh and awake. Somehow I knew that my monkey-mind and I had become more spiritually and intellectually bonded, and that both of us would rest peacefully that night.
Tomorrow would be a new day. [BANGKOK POST]
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A rare blessing
By Danai Chanchaochai
As humans, we have the chance to practice all four foundations of mindfulness
This week we have yet another important question for Phra Acharn Manop Upasamo, with an answer that reminds us why Vipassana meditation is so important in the practice of Buddhism. Question: You said there are two main types of meditation: deep concentration (Samatha) and mindfulness (Vipassana). Why did Lord Buddha say that Vipassana is "the only way" to escape the endless cycle of suffering?
Answer: Because deep concentration meditation will not lead you to any wisdom or insight. More worrisome though, is the fact that people who achieve an advanced level of deep concentration meditation lessen their chances of developing real insight that leads to enlightenment.
First, advanced deep concentration meditation means your mind will reach the state of jhana or a simple, non-questing, tranquil state of mind. When Samatha practitioners reach this stage in their meditation, they feel completely detached and unaffected by sensations and feelings of the ordinary world, and they remain in that state for a long time. When your mind is in this dormant mode, naturally you are not likely to learn anything.
On the other hand, Vipassana, mindfulness meditation, is just that. Your mind is totally awake and you are being continuously mindful of what happens to your body and your mind. In other words, you are learning something about your body and your mind with every observation you make, in every little moment of your life.
Now, what's next? If you were to continue to practise Samatha meditation throughout your life and reached the advanced level of the simple, non-questing, quiet state of mind, you would be reborn as an Arupa Brahmin or Asanyata Brahmin, both a type of higher being. These two types of Brahmin have two distinct characters: they represent the tranquil state of mind with no physical body and have a very, very long life.
The state of being: having no substantial body form like that of humans beings means that they would be unable to practice Vipassana. This is because to practice mindfulness, we need to be able to practice all four foundations: body, feelings, mind and mind objects. So the life of a Brahmin is nothing more than mere existence. Just as when they practiced Samatha, they can learn nothing.
Lord Buddha foresaw that his doctrine would survive no more than 5,000 years. But a Brahmin's life is much longer than that. This also translates into their missing out on the opportunity to learn how to practise Vipassana meditation and permanently escape from the cycle of birth, and in so doing, from rebirth and all suffering.
A good example is that of Lord Buddha's former teachers, Arara Dabos and Utaka Dabos. After Prince Sidhartha was ordained and went in search of how to end all suffering, he went to study in many schools, the last being that of these two teachers who were prescribing deep concentration meditation as "the way."
Because of his strong determination, Prince Sidhartha was able to reach the highest level of jhana but felt something was still missing. He found that he could not completely rid himself of the kilesas, or mental defilements, by simply practicing deep concentration meditation. He could only suppress them by this form of meditation. But once out of that trance state of mind, all the suffering of life remained the same. Therefore, he set out on his own and, by trial and error, concluded that mindfulness meditation was the answer and eventually, by this method, achieved enlightenment.
Once enlightened, Lord Buddha thought of his two teachers. He wanted to go back and teach them _ to help them escape all suffering. However, he discovered that they had already died and were reborn as Brahmin. It was then that Lord Buddha expressed his sorrow for both of them, for they could not be reached or taught. By the time their life cycles as Brahmin ended and they were ready to be reborn again, Lord Buddha's religion would already cease to exist.
Therefore, all of us should be happy that we were born as human beings in this life, and having discovered the truth of Buddhism, been given the opportunity to learn and practice Vipassana. Lord Buddha said these are the world's rarest blessings. Why? Because as a human being, we have the chance to practice all four foundations of mindfulness. In this respect we are better off than those who are born in the same state as Lord Buddha's two teachers.
So use your four foundations of mindfulness well. The path to dhamma made possible by Vipassana arises out of the accurate observation of how we see, smell, hear, taste, touch and feel. From right observation comes right understanding of cause and effect. Our ears hear a voice and the mind determines what it is, generating an emotional response that results in a physical reaction. If we can step back with a "detached" attitude and observe what's going on in a non-judgmental fashion, then we are practicing Vipassana. That is a knowing state of mind, and our first step to eventual enlightenment.
So please, maintain your meditation. You have the rest of your life to practice. [BANGKOK POST] |
